Is Sony mired by their own inventiveness?

Do you remember the Betamax format? It's okay if you're not familiar with it; I wasn't even born when Sony released this videocassette format back in 1975. Technically superior to the VHS, Beta just never caught on, and that's why VHS became the choice medium for videotaping your most embarrassing childhood memories, and subsequently, playing them back in front of your present-day boy/girlfriend.

How about the MiniDisc? Another Sony-pioneered format launched in 1992 with ambitions to take over the portable music player market. That didn't happen either. Portable CD players won that game, and the introduction of the MP3 player made the MD a thing of the past--now only used by reporters trying to catch the next big soundbite.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell that Sony has trouble with winning format wars.

An article in the UK's Independent caught my attention. Heading into the holiday season, Sony is really pushing to get their new PlayStation 3 under as many trees as possible. But once again, Sony is being held back by the technology they've developed. The Independent reports that the Blu-ray is in part, responsible for the PS3 shortages, citing problems with the Blu-ray laser diodes as restricting production of the scarce black boxes.

Microsoft has recently released an HD DVD player add-on for their Xbox 360 console. The bigwigs at MS are also insisting that HD DVD-games are not in the works--a good thing for Xbox 360 owners who don't see the need to tack on a superfluous HD DVD player to their console. What this also means is that Microsoft isn't throwing the 360 headfirst into this format war--this may be a good decision.

This brings up another question. Are we ready for Blu-ray, or even HD DVD for that matter? Blu-ray boasts its higher data capacity, but HD DVD players are ostensibly cheaper than Blu-ray players. But we might be getting ahead of ourselves--I know I still haven't chucked my DVD player out yet.

The High-Definition medium format war has yet to play out, but will HD DVD's victory mark the downfall of the Blu-ray format, and subsequently, the Blu-ray-equipped PS3? Conversely, will Blu-ray, championed by the PlayStation 3, lead Sony out of the format war-doghouse and into millions, or perhaps billions of homes worldwide? Only time will tell.

What we do know now is that Blu-ray technology is holding Sony back from bursting out of the gates in this generation of the Console Wars. And that can't be good news.