In a relatively young HD format industry, the economical HD-DVD was viewed as the crowd favorite early on, leading the market and sitting in a lofty position ahead of rival Blu-ray developed by Sony. However, the tide turned quick in Europe as it did in North America as soon as the high-end Sony PlayStation 3 game console launched.

In November of last year, HD-DVD was selling significantly better than Blu-ray until a week after the launch of the PS3. This marked the rise of Blu-ray sales and after the March 23 European launch of the PS3, a similar trend was observed in the continent. According to the Blu-ray Disc Association, 87 percent of all HD media sales came in their format.

The PS3 has the distinct advantage of carrying a Blu-ray laser built into it, which drove its price up. However, it's still cheaper than a lot of stand-alone players of its kind, making it the choice device for more people to play their Blu-ray content.

The strategy adopted by Sony has often been compared to Microsoft's move against Netscape in the mid-90's to win the internet browser war. In the early days of the web, people found themselves preferring the Netscape browser over Microsoft's internet explorer. Microsoft responded by bundling in the IE to its Windows operating systems, making users choose IE which came in instantly over third-party Netscape which had to be bought separately.

In similar fashion, Sony bundled the Blu-ray player to the PS3, swaying users to use Blu-ray with it instead of buying a separate HD-DVD player. It's an aggressive move, but it seems to be working so far as far as the format skirmish is concerned.