The format war is
officially over as it looks like Toshiba is pulling the plug on the platform. The format was on it's last legs after Warner Brothers, Best Buy, and Netflix all chose the platform and it looks like the killing blow was Wal Mart's decision to stock the platform
exclusively.
What does this mean for gamers? More than likely it means that the next generation of consoles (due out in 2010/2011) will more than likely feature Blu Ray drives. While digital distribution is picking up steam it's unlikely that we'll see digital distribution only until two generations from now and it's clear that developers are already outgrowing the storage limitations of the DVD format. Of course Microsoft could go with some kind of proprietary HD format of their own for the next iteration of the Xbox franchise but I don't think they would be foolish enough to go down that road.
I'm also interested to see if Microsoft will develop and release a Blu Ray drive for the Xbox 360. This would require Microsoft to eat a bit of crow but if they want to remain a player in the HD movie arena they will need a Blu Ray device for the 360.
