Speaking to Pocket-lint, electronics giant Samsung has claimed that the Sony-sponsored Blu-ray format will be dead in five years.bluray2
“I think it [Blu-ray] has five years left,” commented Andy Griffiths, director of consumer electronics at Samsung UK. “I certainly wouldn’t give it 10.” The reason? In five years time Samsung thinks downloadable distribution will reign supreme.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom though. Griffith said that 2008 would be Blu-ray’s golden year, citing cheaper Blu-ray players and the victory over Toshiba’s rival HD-DVD format as justification.
“It’s going to be huge,” he told Pocket-lint. “We are heavily back-ordered at the moment.”
The entertainment industry’s transition to downloadable distribution is widely considered inevitable, but just how will this affect Sony’s projected ten year PlayStation 3 life cycle? Will slowing Blu-ray sales have a knock-on effect on PS3 unit sales, as the console’s built-in Blu-ray player becomes less of a commercial asset? Or will PS3’s built-in storage space offset the growing obsolescence of its Blu-ray component? [PSU]