Japanese corporation Toshiba surrendered to Sony’s Blu-Ray technology and released a statement announcing the end of the road for the HD DVD. Toshiba says however that HD DVD consumers will continue to have full product support despite the decision not to develop and manufacture HD DVD players anymore.

Toshiba Corp. will put an end to the HD DVD business by the end of March 2008, which includes besides players and recorders, HD DVD disk drives for PC applications and games. However, the company will continue to support and develop the standard DVD format, regardless of what is going to happen to the HD DVD market.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will be best help the market develop,” Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation, said according to the company’s press release. “While we are disappointed … Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Since the beginning of this year, several retailers took the decision to swear allegiance to the Blu-Ray, including Woolworths and Wal-Mart, and despite Toshiba’s announcement that it will stay devoted to the HD DVD format, the inevitable happened. Analysts expected Toshiba’s move sooner or later, as Blu-Ray became a market’s favorite.

Several attempts to find a common solution and promote a single format brought Sony and Toshiba to absolutely no agreement, and Blu-Ray continued to make its way to the top. Despite several announcements in the past few months of companies such as Warner Bros. Entertainment or China Film Group that they’ve decided to turn exclusively to Blu-Ray format, Toshiba said it will continue the collaboration with Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Animation, Intel, Microsoft and HP in the future, “utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.”