I wonder if exclusivity is only in the US market.

For instance, here in Taiwan we have neither format officially launched but we do have some BD players and disks available and the 360 AO (but no disks) available. HD DVD basically has no chance here IMO and I doubt it really ever gets off the ground. Will all studios just release BD(or HD DVD if that's the local choice) in markets like these?

Hopefully some insiders can tell us what exactly will/can happen.

Japan didn't embrace DVD when it launched because SVCD (video on CD) had been out and was well adopted. Even after DVD had won the format wars in the US movies were released in SVCD then slowly they were released in DVD & SVCD then more and more titles stopped appearing in SVCD and there were no titles from Hollywood on anything but DVD in Japan. SVCD hung in there for a couple years as local studios continued to push titles on both formats but eventually DVD became the one standard.

If HD DVD "wins" (i.e 0 new BD titles in the US) they will "win" worldwide. I think we are heading towards a combo/dual format outcome anyways so it will not matter.