Obviously Sony will do whatever they ultimately decide is in their best interest, but I find it hard to believe they'd pull the plug this soon. Look at a couple of their other failed formats, MiniDisc & Beta Videocassette. Although by all monetary figures a flat failure, MD is still supported now (by the media & hardware divisions) and Sony only this year announced they'd no longer support Beta. That's a combined total of almost thirty years of support to formats that were marginal at their peak. I think Sony would find the loss of prestige more damaging than the cost of carrying the format another half decade.
At any rate, if Sony Music never released another SACD, the format could still be "successful" to about the same degree LPs are, so long as the audiophool labels are still able to release music for the format. It would be bizarre to drop SACD and sit on the technology instead of liscencing it to recoup production costs.
I'm not really worried, myself. Even if it's cancelled, hi rez digital will migrate to whatever format survives. MLP has been incorporated into the HD-DVD standard, and Blu-Ray will also utilize some type of lossless, 24 bit audio. We could finally have SACD/DVD-A quality along side HDTV-level video, and HD movies with a true 24 bit soundtrack.
Perhaps the days when one format rules alone are long gone?
