> The end of Sony standalone players (in Japan) isn't necessarily the end of the bluray format. There are other manufacturers.

I think it's just Panasonic at this point?

It's strange that Sony are retiring their current player so soon after they introduced it. As the article mentions, that model was introduced last year. It's the exact same as Sony's previous model from 8 years ago except they took out the streaming functionality and raised the price. It's the sort of thing you'd expect them to do if they were going to keep the product on the market for a long time, since they wouldn't have to invest in firmware development to keep the streaming functionality working.