To all those who purchased a HD DVD player, my sincere apologies…Blu-ray just won the battle in High Def DVDs. (Craig, you owe me a dollar). Before this happened, we had a lot of debates about who would win this battle. HD DVD was clearly a more obvious name – it seemed like an easily understood evolution from regular DVD format. However, as a name, Blu-ray was definitely more unique and really stood out.

Still, when it comes down to it, this competition wasn't really about a name, it was about a tribe. It seems clear that Sony's marketing genius was in their focus on a specific audience they had a lot of face time with – Playstation consumers. By putting a Blu-ray player in every PS3, they guaranteed that the barrier to entry to watching a high def DVD on Blu-ray would be small for a specific demographic. On the flip side, HD DVD had to count on consumers purchasing a HD DVD player – a $800 cost early on, now closer to $300, not to mention the cost of the new discs themselves. Like Marty Neumeier says in Zag, "Customers today don't like to be sold – they like to buy, and they tend to buy in tribes…In a tribe, news spreads quickly, which gives brands extra traction". At the end of the day, marketing to a small tribe of people passionate about Sony's Playstation proved much more successful than the battle of the names.

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