HD DVD Abandoned Even by the Porn Industry

These past couple of days have been absolutely catastrophic for HD DVD, the next-generation disc format backed by Toshiba, Microsoft and Intel. First of all, Warner announced that it would commit solely to Blu-ray from now on, then the rumor mill had Paramount going the same way fast, while the sales figures released by the Blu-ray Disc Associations completely belittled HD DVD. However, it seems that this nightmarish week will end even worse than expected, because it seems that even pornographers are about to leave this sinking ship.

Thus, according to the German publication Heise, who has interviewed Digital Playground's founder, Joone, at this year's AVN Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE), it looks like the porn industry is seriously taking into consideration the possibility of going Blu-ray-only in the near future. Furthermore, the respective publisher has declared that, by the end of 2008, all of its new movies will probably be released in Blu-ray format only.

As expected, Warner's move was quoted as one of the most important reasons for this switch, but it seems that Blu-ray discs loaded with porn movies sell a lot better than their HD DVD counterparts. However, this shouldn't come as that big of a surprise since, as you might recall from a previous article on the subject, Digital Playground has released its first Blu-ray title a short while back, due to the overwhelming demands from PS3 owners who wanted some XXX content for their consoles. So it seems that the respective owners have really lived up to their promise.

This situation is even worse for HD DVD since the publisher has had some problems with Sony (who forbid the use of its discs for releasing pornographic content due to its partnership with Disney), so it was forced to go to some independent Blu-ray manufacturers.

As mentioned earlier, this seems to be the "perfect" ending to a week the honchos from Toshiba won't probably forget any time soon, because it's the week the death sentence of their format might have been officially signed. I can only imagine Betamax waiting with arms wide open in oblivion for HD DVD...