If it was not included and needed for games then I am guessing there would have been a different strategy. But yes, it is obvious that the PS3 is one of the major factor that BD is kicking HD DVDs butt. Funny that some thought it would have zero effect.

It is also the major reason that HD-DVD has 0 chance of winning

1) every game is on BD so that decreases replication costs because a lot more BDs are replicated in extremely large numbers

2) because every game is on BD it means that Sony can't remove the BD drive, so BD/PS3 players for the next 3-5y will outsell all other players

3) People don't need to go out of their way and "bet" on a movie technology that might not go anywhere by spending money on a format that does not succeed. As penetration increases and BD gains momentum more of the people that own a PS3 will use it as a BD player until the time where their confidence in BD and the price of stand alones becomes cheap enough that people feel comfortable to buy more players. That is why Toshiba will never sell enough players. 300$ or 200$ might seam cheap to us, but to someone that goes to the stor and sees the 25$ DVD player and the 100$ up scaling player that can play every movie makes that extra money seem high for so little more




BD is not Sony proprietary, it belongs to the BDA. And unlike HD DVD that seems to only have Toshiba's support and appears to be mostly dropped by its other contributors (where is Sanyo or NEC) BD has many manufacturers from the beginning that contributed to it and still support it.