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For the last three years, consumer electronics makers, computer companies and Hollywood studios have been choosing sides in the battle over the dominant format for the coming high-definition DVDs--Blu-ray vs. HD DVD.

Yet after all the jockeying by these companies, it may be the relatively low-priced video game consoles that tip the balance toward one format--or prolong the stalemate for several more years. That's because the new game machines from Sony and Microsoft will play high-definition DVDs and may spur discs sales far faster than stand-alone players.

Sony said in 2004 that its PlayStation 3, due out this spring, would play Blu-ray discs. Not to be outdone, Microsoft, at the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week, said that it would make an external drive to play HD DVD discs on its Xbox 360, which went on sale in November.

Both the Blu-ray group, led by Sony, Panasonic, Dell and most of the big movie studios, and the HD DVD camp, which includes Toshiba, Microsoft, Intel and three studios, are starting to release stand-alone players that cost as much as $1,800. But Sony and Microsoft are expected to sell millions of cheaper game machines well ahead of sales of stand-alone DVD players.

The view among industry analysts has been that the HD DVD group would ultimately lose to the Blu-ray group, which includes more electronics manufacturers, more studios and Sony's game machine.

But if enough Xbox 360 users started watching HD DVD movies on those machines, Disney, Fox and other studios that have committed to making only Blu-ray discs might be persuaded to make movies in the HD DVD format, too. This shift could delay any resolution to the format showdown.

Perhaps unintentionally, the movie studios, which want one standard, may have hardened the standoff. In October, Warner and Paramount, two companies that had exclusively supported HD DVD, decided to make DVD's in the Blu-ray format as well.

This gave the Blu-ray group an edge, with commitments from nearly every studio. On the other side, just one major studio--Universal--said it would provide movies in the HD DVD format only. Blu-ray's newfound advantage prompted Microsoft to beef up the Xbox 360 so that it could play HD DVD movies. Microsoft did not want PlayStation to have an advantage, according to an executive who has followed the rivalry.

"The movie studios' strategy of trying to unify the format around Blu-ray as the de facto standard backfired," said Warren Lieberfarb, who was a leading Hollywood advocate of DVD in the early '90s and is an adviser to the digital media division of Toshiba.

Microsoft now expects to ship up to 5.5 million Xbox 360s by the end of June, though it has not said when it would release its HD DVD player. Sony's PlayStation 3 will not be on the market until this spring, but Kaz Hirai, the chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment America, said PlayStation 3's DVD player would be built into the unit, while the Xbox 360's high-definition player would be an attachment and an added purchase.

"Traditionally in the video game sector, consumers are not willing to pay additional money for add-ons," he said. "People expect plug-and-play right out of the box."

Hirai declined to say how much the new PlayStation would cost, though he said the machine would play both high-definition movies and HD games. Microsoft has not said whether the Xbox 360's HD DVD player will play more than movies.

Bob Chapek, the president of Buena Vista Home Entertainment, a division of Disney, said his company had no intention of providing movies in the HD DVD format because it would not help resolve the format fight.

"While typically we're format agnostic, we don't want to do anything that prolongs a format war," he said.

But Disney, Fox and others now in the Blu-ray camp may soften their stance if Xbox and Toshiba's low-cost HD DVD players sell well, industry analysts say.

"The studios are going as fast as they can into as many formats as possible," said Mark Stahlman, an analyst at Caris & Co., an investment bank. "A year from now, when all these movies are out in both formats, no studio will be exclusive, with the exception of Sony, and we'll be saying, 'what format war?'"

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