But I don't think the war will be over any time soon.
Here's what I do see happening:
Okay, even with all those studios that Microsoft bought, Blu-Ray is still in a huge 3-1 lead--again, after they bought all that studio alliance. These figures are more or less the same as they were in the spring, so it seems that HD-DVD has had no gain whatsoever. And I think that the 3-1 gap will continue to grow, especially once all the people that just got Blu-Ray for Christmas start buying titles in the new year. By mid-2008 I don't think the 3-1 gap will widen significantly, but I think that the sole HD-DVD exclusive distributor (who is it?) will go format neutral, because it just doesn't make business sense, even if MS pays them big bucks to stay they could be making quadrupal the revenue. And when that happens support for HD-DVD will slip steadily, hopeful by the end of the year we'll be seeing a 4-1 gap, and theres really not much room for Toshiba to lower their prices so they've basically used up their leverage ammo already, and when this happens stores simply won't stock HD-DVD anymore. I think it will take into the spring of 2009 for things to be really finalised though, before the towel is officially thrown in--if these trends hold true then i can easily see a 8-1 gap snowballing by then and all the parties involved would basically be out of business if they kept at it any longer.
But you never know, I said the exact same thing at this time last year, and then Microsoft surprised everyone by buying out studios. My reason for thinking that it will actually happen this time is that even after Microsoft persuaded studio alliance, it seems to have done nothing to help (only draw things out), and after the hardware price-cutting that realistically can only be lowered by a tiny bit more, I really don't see any wiggle room here. The only thing that would screw things up is if the Blu-ray exclusive distributors somehow, miraculously, went HD-DVD exclusive, but with the 3-1 gap that would be financial suicide even if they had payoffs--going format neautral will draw things out another few months but thats it.