I'd love to be wrong, but I believe this is too little, too late. Price does not matter when your product isn't attractive. I can get a VHS player real cheap, but I'm not interested. People simply don't want to have two movies players per TV. When there were 3 studios supporting HD DVD, it made people wonder which format to choose. Now that it's down to 2, and rumors of those two going neutral or Blu, it just doesn't make sense for someone to pick HD DVD right now.
It's an unfortunate fact that the consumer has not spoken in this war. It has never been about the consumer. The biggest swings in this war have revolved around companies bribing each other back and forth, and absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with technical merit or consumer interest.
Toshiba should have made these price adjustments on Nov. 1. They should have lit a fire under the studios during 1Q07 when the releases stopped and HD DVD supporters started turning purple. The software promotion should have been 5 in store immediately instead of mail away, so customers could get whatever they wanted and so they would be counted as sales. MS should have bundled a black HD DVD add-on with the Elite, and dropped the price of the AO to $129 on Nov. 1. Maybe, just maybe, this would have created a user base large enough that studios would be forced to make a decision based on the long term outlook of the formats rather than on a backstage bidding war. Some of you point out that Toshiba can't control what MS or the studios do. I agree, and therein lies the problem. Toshiba can't win a format war alone, and they've had some lousy partners on their side.
Toshiba couldn't get their partners to do the things that made sense when HD DVD was holding its own. What makes them think their partners are going to continue to support them after a death blow? Paramount and Universal don't care about the MSRP of the A3, they care about the size of the bag of money that Sony can pass them under the table. Last one to switch might not get a bag.
What Toshiba can do to help ME, one of their supporters through the war, is to bring an affordable 2.0 BD player to market. Prolonging the death spiral isn't helpful.
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