But Sony must have known that parts might be an issue for a long time, they dangled the carrot of a 2006 launch in Europe to stop 360 sales this year. I have a feeling, that they have lost a lot of good will in Europe. I will be able to wait, providing that the Wii is released before Christmas and Pro Evo Soccer does not look too good on the 360.

Typical, treating us as second rate consumers again!

To be fair I think Ben believes that the format itself is better (or will be when they start putting out 50GB discs).

Brian: "we should be nervous of the fact that so many studios are already behind one of these formats. That makes this battle more about money and politics, than the best format winning"

I would be more nervous backing a system that isn't supported by lots of studios. Maybe the studios believe that Blu-Ray is the format that will give their consumers the best HD experience whilst also providing the best protection for their content. They may have other motives, but as a consumer a greater selection of titles is more likely to persuade me to buy into a format than marginal differences in PQ.

I really don't care which format wins. I will buy a PS3 for the games and might buy the odd movie. If HD-DVD becomes the winner, by the time that becomes apparent , the HD-DVD players will be cheap enough to buy without a second thought.

A few points, I don't think Vista's native support for HD-DVD will be an issue, as all Blu-Ray drives sold will come with the drivers needed and software better at doing things such as authoring video and burning than Windows will offer (I think Nero already has Blu-Ray support?).

Secondly, away from movies, a great deal of people that use DVDs on a day-to-day basis do not use them for just watching movies, they use them for data storage, it would appear that the larger capacity of Blu-Ray discs might appeal to people who are interested in using the discs to archive their data.

Finally I do not think Sony intends for the PS3 to be everyones main Blu-Ray player, but I think it wants it to be a lot of peoples first. I know my PS2 was my first DVD player, I bought a few DVDs for it and a year later a bought a stand-alone player. The PS3 will introduce a lot of non-hardcore movie buffs to the format, who Sony will hope will then go on to buy stand-alone players when the prices drop.

Jessica Alba half naked in beautiful HD, it might just be!

I think the "small African country" that you mentioned was actually Trinidad and Tobago, which is nowhere near Africa.

I agree, I'm English so of course it's Football, especially as the game is mostly played with feet, unlike the American "Football".

Or due to the fact that the World Cup is in Germany he could have used Fußball.

No one is being forced to do anything, if people want a system without Blu-Ray they can buy a 360. These comments suggest to me that this guy doesn't think people actually want a 360 so therefore have no choice but to buy a PS3. I think Microsoft are getting scared that the PS3 is going to out sell the 360 even with it's higher price.