E3, The Next Generation and the Future of Movies

The Playstation 2 and XBOX were very instrumental in the adoption of the DVD format. The PS2 brought the DVD player into 87 million households, with 1.5 million sold in the first month alone. And with a High Definition DVD format war on the horizon, we look to the video game industry to see the future of movies in our home. The annual E3 video game convention takes place this week in Los Angeles California and our sister sites Joystiq.com and Engadget.com are there providing live coverage. Three next generation systems have been announced, and the good news is all of them will be HDTV and DVD compatible, but only one of them will play a next generation High Definition DVD format. Could this be enough to influence the future of watching movies at home?
Microsoft, who will have the lead, will be releasing XBOX360 in time for Christmas. The 360 is going to run existing DVD media (for both games and movies), and will not support either of the HD-DVD format discs.

Nintendo will be second out of the gate with its Revolution System in early 2006. The system will run on disc-based media this time around which will be capable of playing current DVD movie discs. But like the XBOX360, it won't be compatible with either of the competing HD DVD formats.

Sony announced the Playstation 3 for the Spring of 2006. It will support Blu-ray High Definition Movies as well as DVD, CD-ROM, and DualDisc formats, with 480i, 480p, 720p, 1080i and 1080p video resolutions. In other words, it will play all of your existing DVD movies and they'll look better than they do now on your regular TV. This system also looks to have the most power and overall better-looking graphics.

The future of home entertainment could rest in this next generation of systems. It all depends if people are willing to wait for the PS3.

With more than 190 million units shipped of the Playstation 1 and Playsation 2, Sony is the industry leader. Xbox, last out of the box last time round, is #2 with more than 20 million consoles sold, ahead of Nintendo which has sold some 20 million of its GameCube. So if Sony can keep even half of its market share, we'll likely see Blue-ray as the possible winner of the format war.

If you're interested in the differences between the two formats, and the history of the war, check out IGN.com's great article "Battle of the Next-Generation Formats."