Ee hee hee! I like the headline "Shortage of Blue Lasers". It makes me feel like I'm living in the neon-grit future that I crave, instead of this obese, mooing present.

Anyway, now that everyone is making or planning to make HD-DVD and Blu-ray drives, the laser supply is taking a strain. Blue laser diodes, which both HD DVD and Blu-ray use, are difficult to manufacture. The yield rates for the things are not increasing much, even though the demand for them is. But Sony's got our back!

This puts Sony in particular in quite a bind. Sony has obviously invested quite a bit in the Blu-ray format and the company would very much like consumers to pick up a Blu-ray player and not an HD DVD player or the HD DVD peripheral for Microsoft's Xbox 360. In order to make sure that the Blu-ray enabled PlayStation 3 does not run into any further problems, Sony has actually suspended shipments of blue laser diodes to other customers so that the components can be used for PS3 manufacturing first.

Hoarding all the blue lasers for the gamers, eh Sony? That's the girl I married! Eliza Gauger

Report: Blue Laser Shortage May Affect Blu-ray/HD DVD Battle [GameDaily BIZ]