Nothing official has been said yet, but seeing as we all know that Sony Pictures owns the Resident Evil movie license and is currently in the process of developing the first ever Resident Evil CG movie, Resident Evil: Degeneration, it begs the question: Will Sony ensure that Resident Evil: Degeneration will be Blu-ray exclusive? Sony is obviously fighting to promote their Blu-ray platform and win the ‘high definition’ war against the HD-DVD format and releasing the next Resident Evil movie as an exclusive Blu-ray title can only help boost Blu-ray sales.
Personally, I think it would be great to be able to watch Resident Evil: Degeneration in glorious high definition on a Blu-ray media player, such as the Sony PS3, but I understand that HD-DVD still retains 30% of the market at the time of my writing this article. That’s an awful lot of people who would be missing out on Resident Evil: Degeneration if it were to go Blu-ray exclusive. If you only owned a HD-DVD player, would you purchase a Blu-ray player just to watch it? Would RE: Degeneration really be entertaining enough to warrant spending over $500 or £400 on a Sony PS3 or Blu-ray player?
Like I say: Nothing is official just yet. But the folks at Sony Pictures would be fools to release Resident Evil: Degeneration on HD-DVD. I’m fairly confident that we’ll only be seeing this next Resident Evil movie in Blu-ray format and, perhaps, in a PSP-friendly UMD format – but a UMD release is a long shot in itself.