5 Comments

Microsoft Passes on Blu-Ray on XBox 360

March 13, 2008 by in Entertainment with 5 Comments

So sorry Sony, Microsoft dropped the big N – O on Sony regarding retrofitting a Blu-Ray drive to the XBox 360 system.

Microsoft Corp is not in talks to include Sony Corp’s Blu-ray high-definition DVD technology in its Xbox 360 video game console, an executive said on Wednesday.

The comments by Aaron Greenberg, group product manager for Xbox 360, poured cold water on recent speculation that Microsoft could support Blu-ray after Toshiba Corp, backer of the rival HD DVD format, gave up when key movie studios and retailers abandoned the technology.

“Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience,” Greenberg told Reuters in an interview.

Seems that Microsoft is standing on belief that digital downloads will be the preferred method of movie watching – which begs the whole question was Microsofts backing of HD-DVD just a ploy to tangle up the next generation DVD formats to allow time for digital movie download adoption to increase? I say Hmmmmmmmm!

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  • Tom

    With the state of high speed bandwidth, especially in the U.S., we are no where near mainstream HD movie downloads. Highly compressed 720p looks like crapola compared 1080p Bluray.

  • Ian

    Exactly. I’m not really interested in waiting a week for my true HD movie to fully download. Even if streaming is utilized, it’s still not really feasible.

  • http://www.progoth.com Steven

    I still occasionally download 720p or 1080p mkvs and convert them with mkv2vob to watch on the ps3…but it’s a pretty big pain, and 1080p being a minimum of a 9GB download, even at full 6mbit from newsgroups…I generally just stick with blurays from netflix.

    don’t even get me started on the “hd” movies from apple or microsoft. /puke

    bought the ps3 just for rock band, was close to getting a 360, very glad I didn’t

  • SMASH

    there getting all teckie on these comments… i just wanted to say you say hmmmmm and i say strechingggggg

  • http://www.reelsmart.com Stephen

    I think a missing point would be that the Xbox with its standard internal DVD drive only allows game developers 9GB of space to develop HD games as compared to Sony’s 50GB Blu-ray drive. This will make the Sony PS3 more desirable to developers going forward. Added to this the fact that the PS3 gives your an included HD Blu-ray movie player that is a feature that has already helped them sell the PS3.

    Microsoft bet wrong on HD DVD with its half hearted support for the format and do not want to pay Sony a licensing fee for Xbox’s they sell. This leaves them at a disadvantage going forward. It will now be up to Sony to execute on this advantage.

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