It didn’t take long for the truth behind the Paramount/Dreamworks backing HD-DVD to come out – $150 million in financial incentives. For a second I thought maybe, just maybe Paramount saw something in HD-DVD that it didn’t in Blu-ray and maybe others would see it too – but no, they were paid off to adopt a lesser technology. These shenanigans might just be enough to get me to go out and buy a Blu-ray player right now.

The next-gen DVD war is turning into another console war, with companies spending millions of dollars to lock up exclusive titles and content. And wouldn’t you know it, guess who are the common players in both worlds? Microsoft and Sony.

As The New York Times points out, Microsoft is “the most prominent technology company supporting HD DVDs”, and even though they are (kind of) denying spending any money on this deal, I would not be in the least bit surprised if they were the main catalysts in it after watching them buy exclusive title after exclusive title and company after company in an effort to compete with Sony in the console wars.

Look for Microsoft to start buying some movie studios next just so they can force them to only release their films on HD-DVD. Most of the time competition is a very good thing, but when hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent so studios will back a worse technology, it’s the consumer who loses.