It's not uncommon for fans to question why a certain movie was released on some high definition format and not the other, but Michael Bay's answer was not that common.
On his official forum, Michael Bay was asked why the Transformers movie was released on HD-DVD and not Blu-ray. The famous Hollywood director's answer was that Microsoft is behind a scheme to sabotage both high-definition disc formats.
"What you don't understand is corporate politics. Microsoft wants both formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads", Michael Bay said. "That is the dirty secret no one is talking about. That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray. They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth."
Paramount, the studio behind Transformers, and DreamWorks signed an exclusive HD-DVD agreement on 20 August 2007. Several news sources reported that the two studios received $150 million in financial incentives for their commitment to HD-DVD.
Similar allegations were made a month ago by 20th Century Fox's president Mike Dunn at a Blu-ray festival. At the time, Kevin Collins, director in the Microsoft Consumer Media Technology Group, said that "the [Blu-ray] camp's claims about Microsoft's desire to have a format war are baseless. Microsoft has over 100 people working on HD DVD interactivity and we believe that HD DVD is the next-generation optical format."
