If you didn't think that Sony was taking this bitter DVD format war seriously, you can be almost sure of it now. According to PC World, Sony is planning a new Blu-Ray player that would "cost $400 less than current models."

I laugh at the irony of it. Sony's already getting worried that they might suddenly be backing a losing format, and begins to seek ways of making the format more popular. Unfortunately, the cost of the format's player is only a fraction of the cost of buying up all the content that will be played in the player.

Do you get what I'm saying? It's unlikely that an attractively-priced player will do much to increase the chances of success of a particular format. The reason is because consumers do not want to back a losing brand. No company or price will decide a format war, it's always the consumer. So to have chances of winning, you have to convince the consumer that your brand is going to win.

Some companies see this as simply trying to provide as much content and as cheaply as possible. I do not think this to be completely the case however. A large part of convincing people is marketing. And I don't know about you Americans, but I certainly haven't seen any commercials for either format in this DVD war...

Regardless, it will still be interesting to see what Sony's next move is, and even more interesting, how this war will eventually play out in the end, especially with the release of the extra-pricy PlayStation 3 in Europe.