what you have to consider for both formats is that they are both expensive yes blu ray is more expensive but that i sbecause it has the performance advantage over hd dvd,  hd dvd is able to pack 15gb onto each layer and can have a maximum of 3 layers for 45 gb of data, while this is still a lot of informationyou still have to look at market sense, if you can pack more on one disk then why not do it. Blu-Ray is able to pack 25gb on one layer 10 more then hd dvd and put 2 layers on a disk, as of currently, for a total capacity of 50 gb now that might not seem like a lot be 5 gb more is a lot of information thats more then one dvd now-a-days. you should also remember that when dvd first released it was very expensive too and it had players running in the thousand and up range. Both offer exceptional quality picture at 1080p resolution which is a display of 1920 x 1080 which is a great pixel count and will give you great image clarity buy when your talking about a resoultion that high the new generation games are going to have to hold a lot of information on them so these next gen formats are going to have to be  a must. What i think that microsoft is going to do is within the nest to year announce that they are going to produce a new xbox with support for new format, by that time the format war will be over and one of them (either hd-dvd or blu-ray, but i think it will be blu ray) will have one. and include a new graphics/ physics/ cpu core. for thier next consol they will have to have a least two of possibly even four gpus onboard and some crazy watercooling solution. to be competitive with not olny sony and nintendo but also with computers, now that consols are finally offering the smae resoultions that pcs have offered for years. oh and for those of you that dont have high def tv's, start saving your money thanks to president george bush and congress they passed a law that states by the feb 17th 2009 all comercial cable amd satelite compaines will stop broadcasting annalog signals which means that if you dont have a digital of high def tv you tv will no longer work. so start saving your pennies