Warner: Rising gas prices drove its Blu-ray decision

Scott Fulton, BetaNews: In one of the stranger explanations provided thus far, for a format war that has already seen a treasure trove of awkward moments, a key Warner Bros. executive late yesterday blamed the state of the US economy for having driven its decision to back out of the HD DVD group and publish high-def movies on Blu-ray exclusively, as first published by Reuters.

Kevin Tsujihara, President, Warner Bros. Entertainment Group: We've typically been recession proof. But the thing that we saw in the fourth quarter...was gas prices beginning to affect sales. And since we're considered an impulse purchase, it's beginning to impact us."

Scott Fulton: Tsujihara's comment implies the existence of some internal polling numbers which may have revealed that sales of HD DVD movies did not rise as anticipated, along with the bump in HD DVD console sales precipitated by last year's price drops.

Late Sunday, the HD DVD Promotions Group published a statement boasting that console sales in North America had broken the one million mark over the holiday season, but which obviously omitted references to Warner alongside Universal and Paramount, the other two HD DVD backers -- at least as of last Sunday.