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Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player Just for Movies

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the at-least-for-now dept.

The Gamerscore blog, an official Microsoft news organ, lays to rest the rumours that the HD-DVD drive might be required to play future 360 games. According to them the new HD drive is solely intended to play movies, and will not be used to accesss game content. From the article: "Since announcing the Xbox 360 HD DVD Player accessory at E3 2006, we've been clear that it is designed exclusively for playing HD DVD movies. It will not play games on HD DVD. At this point, we haven't seen anything to suggest that next-gen DVD formats offer a better game experience than current DVD. What we do know is that these formats will bring added cost to game developers, disc manufacturing, and could even result in added costs and longer load times for the consumer, which would negatively impact the game experience." This is, of course, not to say another peripheral or future version of the console might require such a thing.

4 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Doesn't preclude HD-DVD game extras... by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    While they are still maintaining that no game content will be accessed on DVD, I have to think they have some plans for promoting the device that would involve gaming. One way to do that would be to have the actual game on a DVD but ship an extra HD-DVD with game extras (like making of videos and so forth) that would be in some kind of premium pack...

    Otherwise I can't see how Microsoft can really promote the drive with just the limited selection of movies around at the moment.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  2. Are there any games with multiple DVDs yet? by Donjo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember in the playstation days there were quite a few popular titles that required switching disks (Final fantasy games, grand turismo, metal gear solid etc.) and I don't own a single game that uses multiple dual layer DVDs for actual gameplay. Maybe I just got lucky and didn't buy one but to me that is a sign that the format is not quite dead yet and we don't need to worry about HD-DVD game content.

  3. Re:It Sure is by elzurawka · · Score: 3, Interesting

    What stops Sony from doing the same. These will be the standard systems for the next 5-7 years. I think that right now it may be hard to fill a blue-ray disk with data for a game, but who knows what will happen in 2,3,5 years? I think leaving yourself the option to add more content cant hurt you. 9 gigs is alot, but imagine the incredible ammount of contect a game in 5 years could have. HD graphics(i assume) takes up lots of space. If you wantted to creat a huge world to explore, being limited by data cant be good. Ive already esen Xbox games hada are a full dual layer DVD, dont tell me you wont ever need more for a 360 game. And as someone else stated, swaping disks just gets annoying.

    --
    -EL
  4. Re:It Sure is by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    By the end of the PS1's life, it was clear that 1 CD didn't cut it. Games would frequently come on 2-4 CDs.

    Now, at the end of the PS2's life, how many games come on multiple DVDs? I'll wait...

    The answer is: none. There are no multi-DVD PS2 games. There's little to no danger of games spilling over the 8GB+ that a dual-layer DVD offers. In fact, more recent games are getting SMALLER as compression techniques improve.

    There's no point in forcing people to use Blu-ray on the PS3, it simply isn't needed for games.

    It's only needed to try and force people to use Sony's technology. Sony is essentially "bundling" Blu-ray to try and force it into the market using their present market dominance. Fortunately for the market, it looks like it's going to backfire on Sony.