The whole HD DVD format project was a scheme by Microsoft to mess with Sony, according to John Dvorak on Tuesday. What seemed like an honest competition later showed evidence of Microsoft manipulation: whenever anyone sat down with Toshiba, Microsoft was always there.

Noting how the early HD DVD players were cheap and the Blue-ray players expensive, Mr. Dvorak wrote "There was a sense that the entire HD DVD war was just a grand scheme to submarine Sony and the PS3 in some way." [iPO notes that the Blu-ray player lens has a higher numerical aperture making it and the disc stabilization system more intricate and expensive. However, how much that adds to the cost hasn’t been widely revealed.]

In the heart of his argument, Mr. Dvorak wrote: "And there were notes of insincerity coming from the HD DVD camp. The early players were a joke. They ran Linux and took forever to boot. I thought these clunkers were peculiar and sensed the invisible hand of Microsoft making sure that Linux was associated with the thing. I also noticed that Microsoft was not making the HD DVD a permanent feature on the Xbox—just an add-on. That was fishy."

[Again, for clarity, Microsoft was interested in winning the game console war and Sony was interested in winning the next generation HD disc war and nevertheless selling a lot of PS3s. Leaving the HD DVD player out of the Xbox allowed Microsoft to sell their game console at a lower perceived market price than Sony’s.]

"In hindsight," Mr. Dvorak concluded,"I have to conclude that the entire exercise was a sham, plain and simple. Perhaps it was part of a larger marketing effort to screw with Sony."

If this is true, and no one will ever know for sure, it’s not the first time a company believed that its partnership with Microsoft would automatically make it rich and successful, only to find that Microsoft was the winner in the end.