Microsoft Intentionally Sabotaging HD DVD and Blu-ray, Claims Director Michael Bay

Acclaimed director and aspiring game developer Michael Bay (Transformers, The Rock, Playboy Video Centerfold: Kerri Kendall) has lambasted Microsoft's HD DVD initiative as a ploy meant to weaken the format and eventually strengthen the company's on-demand video service.

"Microsoft wants both [HD DVD and Blu-ray] formats to fail so they can be heroes and make the world move to digital downloads. That is the dirty secret no one is talking about," Bay wrote on his official forums.

"They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth," he continued. "That is why Microsoft is handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just [to] embrace the HD DVD and not the leading, and superior Blu Ray [sic]."

Microsoft is currently using the Xbox Live Video Marketplace to sell television shows and rent on-demand movies to Xbox 360 users in the United States. Just yesterday, the company announced it would be expanding the Video Marketplace to Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, France, and Germany on December 11.

The Xbox 360 is the only video game console that can play HD DVDs, a functionality that requires an external add-on. Meanwhile, Sony's PlayStation 3 is the only console that can play Blu-ray, positioning the platforms on opposite sides of yet another sales war.

Bay has long been a proponent of Blu-ray in the HD war between it and HD DVD. Following Paramount's decision to drop Blu-ray support, the director briefly threatened to not be involved in the production of Transformers 2.

The director also recently decided to get involved in video game development. "I make world-class images," he said at the time. "Why not put those images into a game?"