Xbox 360 HD-DVD Player Just for Movies

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.

Comments

Re:It Sure is

[stevo3232]

The number of gigs worth of data in a game is slightly less important than gameplay, imho. With the new indy developer program, if it actually works like Microsoft says it will, I think this will be a MAJOR bonus for the Xbox 360.

Ugh!

[N3Roaster]

So the HD-DVD drive for the XBox 360 (a game console) won't play games and Sony's Blu-Ray drive for PCs won't play Blu-Ray movies. What's the point again?

Are there any games with multiple DVDs yet?

[Donjo]

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.

I love options

[The_Pariah]

I said it before, and I'll say it again: I LOVE options.

MS brings up the point I keep pointing out: Next-gen consoles DON'T NEED next-gen media formats. DVD9 is fine.

Sony is still forcing the Blu-Ray format, although the only reason for it is for Sony to push it's agenda that Blu-Ray > HD-DVD. There's no need for Blu-Ray on the PS3. But it's still there. And you HAVE TO pay that premium price ($200 higher than the XBOX 360) even if you never want to watch a soon to be obsolete video format.

Thank you MS for not forcing HD-DVD on us.

Re:It Sure is

[elzurawka]

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.

Not entirely true

[aiken_d]

I think the point is that there are no plans to ship games on HDDVD, which makes perfect sense because only a small percentage of 360 users will have the drive.

Since the HDDVD drive itself is basically a transport and laser, and just sends the raw bytes to the 360 for processing, it seems like it would just take a software update of the 360 itself to enable HDDVD games, should the need arise in a year or three. There's no actual movie-specific logic or hardware in the HDDVD drive; no vc-1 decoder, no surround sound processing, nothing. The drive is just like a hard drive: the 360 tells it what sector to read, the drive reads it and provides the raw data with no interpretation.

So it's not that the drive has some physical limitation that means that it can't be used for games, it's just that there are no plans to update the 360 to run games from the drive.

-b

They have to do this

[Skraut]

Otherwise you end up with the Sega CD situation. You've fractured your customer base to those that can play games on a HD-DVD, and those that can not. If by some miracle 35% of all 360 owners buy the HD-DVD add on, just how many games do you think would be produced for it. In this day and age where game production decisions are made by accountants, ("another Madden Game, Sure!", "It's not done yet? Put it on the shelves, we need the cash.") just how many bean counters are going to approve a game that 65% of the potential customers can't buy.

Re:Does anyone on /. actually have a 360?

[blueZhift]

Actually, I've got one and I think that it will appeal to anyone on /. who is sick of upgrading and troubleshooting their PC to play the latest PC games. Granted, that may be a small number around here, and I personally love problem solving, but it takes time away from playing, and of course, posting on /.! I've got mine connected to my PC monitor and so far it is working pretty well, I just need to find a decent USB KVM switch so that I can use my PC keyboard, the Belkin I tried was way too flaky. For better or worse, the 360 is likely going to become the next home for PC games. Microsoft's development tools have made the path the 360 pretty compelling.