Sony Corp. C.E.O. Howard Stringer was quoted Thursday as saying that the Format War is a "stalemate".

 

Quite the turnaround to the many and repeated statements of victory that have come from the Blu Ray camp in the last year. Stringer called the duel between Sony's Blu Ray and rival HD DVD "a difficult fight". "We were trying to win on the merits, which we were doing for a while, until Paramount changed sides," Stringer stated. Stringer shrugged off the importance of the fight between the rival formats, saying it was mostly for bragging rights. "It doesn't mean as much as all that," said Stringer. He did express regret for the two sides not being able to come together behind one format before the launch of both Blu Ray and HD DVD.

 

Sony's C.E.O. expressing such sentiments publicly should alarm all Blu Ray advocates. It demonstrates a waning commitment to their format, or at the very least, a serious decline in the confidence they have in their format's chances in this struggle for HD optical supremacy.