Microsoft denies Xbox 360 is Blu-ray bound Microsoft's Xbox division and Sony aren’t chatting about incorporating Blu-ray into the Microsoft console, despite a Sony executive stating that the two companies are discussing the HD technology. Sony US' President, Stan Glasgow, confirmed last week that talks between the two companies had taken place, though he didn’t say …
Why would they choose not to replace the HD DVD with a Blue-ray version? It maketh not sense.
When the HD DVD add on drive was first released, while I was tempted, I decided to wait to see which was the Betamax.
Now that we know, I'm prepared to invest. But if MS doesn't jump in soon, all those like me that have been waiting will spend their money elsewhere.
Given that the best value Blue-ray drive is sat snugly inside the PS3, aren't MS taking a rather large gamble on the potential of downloads?
Personally I'm not very keen on the downloads idea. For one thing, I like having something tangible for my money (less likely to loose that a file in a random directory on a computer and, a more likely consequence of downloads with the Xbox, it doesn't keep me tied to a vendor for life just to be able to view the content a second time). Plus I worry that US and Japanese tech wizards will end up putting together some lovely approach to downloads that won't be applicable in the UK for some time due to the fact that BT is lagging so far behind with fibre broadband tech.
Ultimately, if MS don't announce a Blue-ray add on soon I will be dumping the 360 on eBay and buying a PS3. The clock's ticking Mr Greenberg, I don't want to keep buying low def DVD's for any longer.
Why bother? For Sony Blu-Ray integration was the prime selling point of the PS3 and a means of winning the format war, and sell movies. A resounding success.
What use would a Blu-Ray player be to Microsoft? It's not going to generate much revenue for them, especially as they have no media to play on it, unlike Sony who have both games and movies.
XBox 360, maybe not. But I can't see the next MS console not having a Blu-ray drive. The MS dream of downloading games seems pie in the sky - at least for another decade anyway. (When by then we might have BT Supermegaturbobroadband which is upto* 100MB/sec and 100000TB storage) . Besides, people will want there new console to at least be able to play their Blu-ray discs.
*meaning still throttles to 56k/sec most of the day (all of the day) and download limit of 10gig a month.
Ok, if I send my 360 in for repair will it get repaired? After about 10 minutes it gets the red ring of death, which MS said they will repair. But when I power cycle it, it usually goes away only to come back soon after.
If I send it in, will they power it up, say it works fine, not do anything, and send it back?
Maybe talks have already taken place hence why they're not taking place at the moment! :p
360 appears to be fairly decent price now actually with the price drop mentioned in the article. Just looked at shopto.net and the arcade is £139.99, the premium is £179.99 (As cheap as the Wii!!), the elite is at £239.99.
Even the PS3 is only £259.99, wont be long now before people will be able to afford to buy all 3 soon anyway!
I'm sure fanboys will persist to troll on anyway though :p
MS is in a bind, a big, bad bind.
They are claiming that a supply shortage is preventing better sales of the 360 in North America. OK, what caused that shortage, and why do I still see plenty of units in stores? If supply is a problem, where's the out of stock sign at Amazon? MS has already attempted to discount the NPD numbers for February (just in time as well) and have pre-emptively dismissed the March numbers acknowledging that PS3 will sell better in North America during March as well.
I have news for MS, we can see through your smoke screen. Your sales of 360 units have been declining for a year now. The death of HD-DVD did nothing to help and the confusion over a Blu-Ray drive for the 360 won't help you in the future. Worldwide sales of console units have seen the 360 slip into third place for monthly sales for a few months now. Nintendo still leads the way by a considerable margin, but Microsoft is trailing both nintendo and Sony in worldwide console sales. Many people see the Wii as being in a different market segment to the 360/PS3. Certainly from the point of view of consoles capable of HDTV resolution (720p) gaming the PS3 is comfortably outselling the 360 worldwide. 360 still has a greater installed user base, but quoting that fact is akin to sitting on your laurels.
Microsoft claim that Blu-Ray is not part of the Xbox future and instead point to digital downloads. If Digital Downloads were the future why did MS spend so much time and money attempting to have HD-DVD win the HD format war?
Digital downloads are undeniably the future for video - long term. Long term as in 10 years or so. The real problem is that current broadband market penetration is not even close to 100%. Of the customers who have 'broadband' the number with a sufficiently fast typical connection speed is not very large. There are some urban areas where fiber has been installed, and some cable providers quote really good numbers for *peak* bandwidth, but typically the real world sustained bandwidth is no where near this peak. Most DSL customers get between 1.5 and 3 Mbits/second, at best. This is not high enough to handle streaming video at HD resolution, nor even DVD resolution. For downloads to win truly high speed broadband has to become a universally available commodity, just as you can get plain old telephones to work just about anywhere as long as there is a pair of wet strings connecting you. That is simply not going to happen in the short-medium term. There is too much infrastructure to put in place and too much market penetration to be done, especially at a time of economic uncertainty. So downloads, regardless of arguments over quality, are not currently practical for the majority of customers. I'd argue that since the quality of even the best pseudo-HD content available for download is in reality no much better than a well encoded DVD, it's not entirely honest to call it high definition. Granted Apple's HD downloads look better than most of the horribly over-compressed HD pay-per-view movie feeds. Still they aren't HD, and they don't equate to Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.
Last, Microsoft may have a bigger problem with Blu-Ray than the obvious one of not wanting to support anything Sony. Profile 1.1 of Blu-Ray requires certain things. You need to be able to handle two video streams to do the PiP, and you must have at least 256MB of storage available to the Blu-Ray player. Otherwise you're not going to make it as a Profile 1.1 player. Profile 2.0 takes the local storage thing a little further still, mandating 1GB. Microsoft's problem here may be two fold. Can they write a Blu-Ray player for the 360 that can handle the two video streams and do PiP? Can they honestly say that every 360 has 256MB (or 1GB) of local storage for Blu-Ray? The old Core system sure doesn't. Microsoft may literally be in a position where they have to have an almost complete Blu-Ray player as an external add on that simply feeds the processed video via USB to the 60 for display, making the Blu-Ray drive a more complicated add-on to produce than the HD-DVD one ever was.
So there may be both political and technical hurdles for a Blu-Ray Xbox360 add-on. We'll never know, Microsoft aren't telling, and they sure aren't going to admit that the 360 can't handle it, nor will they willingly release a BD add-on that can only manage Profile 1.0.
Like I say, they're in a bind, and it may be a really big, bad bind.
"Besides, people will want there new console to at least be able to play their Blu-ray discs."
Will they though?
I don't need my Wii to play DVDs.
I'd rather console makers concentrate on games now. The PS3 does movies, so nice and fine, but let's get some decent full spec and fully featured quality standalones out there dedicated to movies for AV enthusiasts, and cheap players for the ASDA shoppers. 360 and Wii for games, and if Sony have any sense, get the gaming side of the PS3 up to scratch. Heck, once cheap BD players are out, why not release a cut-down cheap PS3 without the BD player to promote the gaming side? Finally has a chance to replace the PS2 which outsells it!
The 360 HD-DVD drive had built in storage (around 512mb iirc), so whether a 360 has storage already is irrelevant to any storage requirement for handling various Bluray profiles, they'll just build it into the drive itself - 256mb to 1gb flash memory costs nothing nowadays compared to the cost of the actual high def. drives. Even consumers can pick up 1gb flash memory for about £3 (or about $4) nowadays.
Not having a built in HD-DVD drive in the Xbox 360 when it was first release is the main reason of the HD-DVD downfall, they could have dominated the market well before blu-ray appeared, now they are stuck with the dead tech.
If I was sony, I wouldn't supply them the blu-ray drive, at least not cheap. Now PS3 has an edge over 360 and they should press on and win more ground.
Sony will never make a PS3 without BluRay support. For one, because all the games ship on that format of disc, so you need the drive present. Then the decoding and display of the video files contained on a BD movie is done through software on the Cell. So, since a PS3 without a Cell isn't much of a PS3, there's no money to be saved there, either.
The only point you'd save on, is not paying the rights holders for the various codecs. And that's not exactly a huge amount for the value proposition of continuing to associate PS3==BluRay in the consumer's mind.
Interesting thread - I havent bought any media in shops for almost a year now. I thought about it, but with the format war going on - I decided it would be mad to buy any discs. Now its over, I decided I can buy discs again, obviously Blu-ray but no more DVDs. Yes I own an Xbox 360 too, so again here is some real experience to share.
After much thought, I've just bought a hardware player for £200 quid, and couldn't be arsed to wait for all this contractual commercial posturing. Yes I'd rather have one box plugged into my lounge instead though, but realised this enterprise level contract stuff could go on for a year!
Not only is my Samsung Blu-ray hardware player 80% quieter than the 360 when playing back discs, it also seems to be better in terms of picture quality, generally as well as for upscaled DVD media.
And yes, I've rented movies via XBOX live too... Been very impressed so far, especially for viewing those films I missed at the cinema but don't want to buy. Prices are reasonable for older titles too (even those in SD) The biggest shame with the downloadable movie service that nobody is mentioning is the fact that in the UK the highest HD quality available is only 720P... apparently in the states they have 1080P videos for rent.
If you have a decent telly - save those pennies and go and get a hardware player, or wait another 6 months and they'll be around the £150 mark - you won't be disappointed. In a year they'll be £100 and in two years you'll be able to buy a blu-ray player in Tescos for £30.
You might be disappointed with the blu-ray interactive menu system, which still isn't much better than what we've seen on DVD for the last 10 years. But thats another thread entirely :)
Derek Foley
Yes , not many games need more storage now. That is changing...
rewind back 2 months. There was a game for xbox 360 released recently on 4 DVDs (Lost Odyssey). I say it needs space now for SOME games.
FFwd a few months. MGS4 creators have already said 50gig blu ray wasn't big enough.
You are right that some games on 360 look better than ps3. Games written specially for 360 wont look great on ps3 unless developed well. However, now that devs are getting better with ps3 - expect some games (crysis?) that will be ps3 ONLY due to its superior hardware (cell and bluray).
Essentially off topic but:
Highlander - I always enjoy your posts. While others can be narrow minded, you always make well thought out comments. It's a pity that quite a few others aren't able to grasp this.
Anonymous posts: Should be banned. People who hide behind masks shouldn't be given the opportunity to comment on named subscribers' posts. They don't deserve the luxury.
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