Except that the deal for the fab was in the works well before Warner's announcement and the downfall of HD-DVD, and Toshiba has been working with Sony and IBM on the Cell for a long time.

It's funny that so many people keep coming up with wild speculation on why the format died, when for a solid year, Blu-ray outsold HD-DVD discs worldwide. Toshiba also probably looked at the Japanese sales numbers, where both movies and recordable media was heavily in favor of Blu-ray for a long time. But nah, it couldn't be that simple, there has to be "foul play" somewhere! Warner's announcement was likely due to their own sales numbers, as they released movies on both formats at the same time. When they did announce, it was simply the momentum needed to swing it in favor of one over the other.

I did find this cool.