According to a company source at Toshiba, the company is in the “final stages” of giving up the battle in the next generation DVD format war against Sony’s Blu-ray. After years of fighting it out and causing confusion among consumers over which format to purchase it looks like Blu-ray is actually going to come out on top, and HD DVD will go the way of the Betamax.

The most significant move that seemed to cause this battle to take a turn in Sony’s favor happened when Warner Bros. Entertainment announced they would only release movies in the Blu-ray format. The companies plan was to end consumer confusion allowing them to make a decision and subsequent purchases of one format or the other, in this case Blu-ray.

From that point on HD DVD tried a last ditch effort with large price-reduction sales on DVDs and players but the momentum in favor of Blu-ray was already too much and a number of places including Universal, Best Buy and most recently Wal-mart pledged their allegiance to the Blu-ray format. Even Microsoft said last month it would consider using the Blu-ray format for the Xbox 360, where it currently uses only HD DVD.

No doubt Toshiba will still roll on with their vast array of products and according to the source, the company said they can chalk this loss up to a great learning experience if nothing else.

Reuters