It could be the plot of his next movie for all we know - large corporation prompts war between two parties for its own financial gain (Ed. - hang on isn't that the plot for Tomorrow Never Dies), but Transformers director Michael Bay thinks that Microsoft's support for HD-DVD over Blu-Ray is only so it can sell downloaded HD content itself without the need of little plastic discs.

On the director's official chat forum, the movie man responded to a question from an eager fan on why Bay had chosen to release the robot movie on HD-DVD only, when said fan owned a PS3?

"What you don't understand is corporate politics," said Bay. "Microsoft wants both 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."

He added that this was why Microsoft was handing out $100 million dollar checks to studios just embrace the HD DVD and "not the leading, and superior Blu-Ray," Bay said. "They want confusion in the market until they perfect the digital downloads. Time will tell and you will see the truth."

You can see where Bay's loyalties lie, but there is one fly in this particular ointment. There are very few places in the world that enough bandwidth to allow the downloading of HD content, unless you want to wait for a couple of days to do so.

Update: This piece from Ars Technica counters Bay's allegations with comment from Kevin Collins, the head of Microsoft's HD DVD unit, who flatly denies that Microsoft had any financial involvement.