More predictions that Blu-Ray will win its battle with HD-DVD by end of this year.
UPDATE: Since this story was posted, there's been some more banging of the HD-DVD drum. Universal Pictures Australasia issued a statement committing to plans for at least 20 new HD-DVD movies in 2008.
Toshiba's discounting strategy on its HD-DVD players is a futile gesture in a battle with Blu-ray that is "all but over", according to analysts.
Toshiba cut pricing on its HD-DVD players in US retail outlets last month, but Gartner reckons that the game is already up.
"Toshiba's price cutting may prolong HD-DVD's life a little, but the limited line-up of film titles will inflict fatal damage on the format," said Hiroyuki Shimizu in Gartner's Semiconductor DQ Monday Report.
"Gartner expects that, by the end of 2008, Blu-ray will be the winning format in the consumer market."
The analyst firm stated that Blu-ray will become the next-generation replacement for DVDs, defeating HD-DVD in the consumer market by the end of the year.
Toshiba's price-cutting move followed the decision by Warner Bros to ditch HD-DVD in favour of Blu-ray, giving Blu-ray the upper hand in terms of movie content.
Just two of the seven major Hollywood studios, Paramount and Universal, now back the HD-DVD format.
Microsoft is widely expected to be one of the losers should the HD-DVD format fail to gain significant traction in the consumer market.
The software giant currently uses HD-DVD on the Xbox 360, but would be forced to switch to Blu-ray to enable users to play high-definition games.
This would be a huge blow to Microsoft as the Blu-ray disc was developed by arch rival Sony specifically for the PlayStation 3.
CORRECTION: We have noticed some errors in the last three paragraphs of this article. David Field, author of PC Authority’s High-Def Corner, has made these corrections:
All Xbox 360 games are authored to DVD, with the additional HD DVD drive serving only to playback HD DVD video discs.
According to the latest reports, Microsoft will not support Blu-ray even if HD DVD should lose the format war. Next generation discs aren’t required for HD gaming, as games for the Xbox 360 are all distributed on data DVD and can be rendered by the system in high definition.
Sony is one of the major companies involved with the Blu-ray Disc Association, which defined the standards for the Blu-ray format. Its Playstation 3 uses the Blu-ray disc format to author games, and as the internal drive is capable of reading HD video from Blu-ray discs, it is also a native Blu-ray video player.