Some of you might say that day will come when “hell freezes over,” but history demonstrates that this particular hell has frozen over numerous times in response to evolving business conditions. Let’s go back a few decades (perhaps before you were born) when the major videogame consoles were made not by Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo, but by Atari, Mattel, and Coleco. Atari was the biggest of them, and they could boast about the numerous exclusive titles in their library. Mattel had some pretty good games too, but nobody could really compete against Atari’s big lead.

The business reality for both Atari and Mattel was that there were plenty of people in the other camp who would never cross over. There were enough of these potential customers that it made business sense to make games for the competitor’s system. It seemed like heresy to suggest that Atari would make its classic games like Battlezone, Centipede, and Pole Position available for play on Apple ][ computers, PCs, or the game systems from Mattel and Coleco—but they did. Atari’s venture into making games for PCs and other game systems was called AtariSoft. Mattel and Coleco even joined the cross-platform lovin’ and followed Atari’s example. (By the way, The First Quarter : A 25-year History of Video Games is a great book to read if you’re interested in more videogame history)

What’s the HD DVD and Blu-ray point here? My previous article suggested that the proliferation of HD DVD drives helps to establish the format by making it more commonly available. Sony has already accomplished this for themselves by building in a Blu-ray drive into their PS3 game console which has sold a few million units. Every PS3 owner is also a Blu-ray owner, which means that the format gets a pretty good boost in terms of installed user base and potential Blu-ray movie watchers.

Business loyalties go where the customers are. Once staunch Blu-ray supporters, Samsung and HP, have already indicated that their loyalty is not to a format but to their customers (alright, it’s actually to customers’ money), and these companies have already committed to dual-format players and devices. These companies didn’t change sides in the format war, they merely acknowledged that both formats are likely to co-exist for quite a while. Whether it’s video games, movies, or automotive accessories — if you only make products for one format or platform, then you’re missing out on sales to the people who prefer the other brands.

Will Sony make an HD DVD hybrid drive? Definitely not in 2007 or 2008, or maybe even 2009. But I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that their VAIO laptops eventually offered HD DVD compatibility in the future. It’s simply a business decision, and nothing more than that. After all, they already make a lot of really good VCRs—in the competitor’s format. Sure, it would involve some major pride-swallowing for Toshiba to make a Blu-ray device as well.

You never know what the future holds. Instead, you can study the past a little bit, and try to be more rational about how companies make their business decisions. When you do that, it eases some of the brand loyalty pains that you might have developed as a consumer.