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Microsoft To Drop HD DVD
HockeyPuck writes to let us know that Microsoft has decided to stop making HD DVD players for the Xbox 360. No word on supporting Blu-ray on the platform though. "Microsoft said Saturday it would continue to provide standard warranty support for its HD DVD players. Toshiba President Atsutoshi Nishida last week estimated about 300,000 people own the Microsoft video player, sold as a separate $130 add-on for the Xbox 360."
No, rather than give into the accepted winner of a de facto standard, MSFT will introduce their own proprietary HD disc that only plays on an XBOX360.
does noone even read the summary anymore?
I don't know that they had a choice for the same reason.
Consumer: If I go with PS3, I get the next generation of digital video players as well.
Consumer: If I go with XBOX I get none.
MSFT: If we don't offer a solution to include consumers in the next generation of digital video players, they may go with our competition.
MSFT: If we go with Blu-Ray, we may give the impression that XBOX is somehow inferior to the PS3 which inherently comes Blu-Ray equipped. Thus, we will go with HD-DVD.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Won't Microsoft have to pay Sony royalties on blu-ray players if they were installed into 360's?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
From some of the forums I've read, Blueray rips can be up to 27GB. Even with high-speed broadband, that's still several hours or more to legally download a movie. All that bandwidth will cost the distributer a lot of money. So I'm assuming they will compress the hell out of it (like HD-lite) and you'll see artifacts. Then what's the point of HD if there's a bunch of macroblocking, etc.? Plus, legal downloads are DRM'd to your PC. What if I want to transfer it to my media PC in the living room? Or if I want to watch a late night movie in my room? No, I don't think online disto can compete with the quality and "freedom" of a physical disc.
This of course in addition to the inherent hardware unreliability of the Xbox 360. I only know one person who hasn't had one give the red lights of death at least once, and one of them actually had their console die on them three times.
Much as we all love to hate on Sony for being evil, the PS3 has proven itself more reliable than the Xbox 360, and as such is an additional point as big as the choice of HD video format they picked to support.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it! --Longbottle
No one would pay extra for a player nobody makes content for. So it also goes something like this:
MSFT: "If HD-DVD wins then the PS3 is basically doomed to failure."
>Microsoft has damaged its whole gaming platform by getting into a sparring match with Sony over video formats.
First off, MS barely sold those add-ons. What exactly is wrong with add-ons? If anything, its Sony wh o took the bigger risk.
Hell, whats so wrong with hd-dvd. It was the superior format with no region encoding, PIP early on, cheaper production, etc. Gasp, cant we admit MS was on the right side for once. If there is such a thing as being on the right side when it comes to proprietary drm format wars.
Oh please. Betting on the losing format would hurt them much more than any perceived inferiority ever could, and they would know that. If they hadn't thought HD-DVD would be more likely to win, they wouldn't have picked it. They just guessed wrong - like all the people who bought a HD-DVD player.
Microsoft certainly did not damage its gaming platform by siding with HD-DVD. HD-DVD was always an add-on for the 360 and never a major selling point. This (along with questionable quality control) allowed Microsoft to release the 360 a year ahead of the PS3, gaining significant market share and pressuring developers to focus on creating games for the 360 rather than its competition. This strategy has paid off for Microsoft because those who wanted a gaming system got a gaming system as well as a large library of games. The attach rate for the 360 is currently the highest by far among the 3 consoles competing in this generation. As a gaming platform the 360 is doing pretty well for itself.
Sony, on the other hand, has been making progress in terms of consoles sold undoubtedly because of its blu-ray capabilities, but the slow start due to blue laser shortages and the high expense of blu-ray components has significantly hurt their sales. PS3 is still in 3rd place in terms of the attach rate and has suffered from developers supporting the 360 as the PS3's expense. In the end, these machines are primarily games consoles and their media playing capabilities are a secondary function. Microsoft focused on games as a selling point and has been the most successful in that respect while Sony focused on the media capability with Blu-Ray, but at significant expense. High manufacturing costs as well as studio support both took a toll on Sony's bottom line for a high-def disc market that is still in its infancy.
To the average Xbox 360 owner, the format war has been a non-issue because their console uses DVDs. Cross platform games still look equally good on both platforms, so the size constraints of DVDs is not yet apparent. This may change in the coming years, but for now DVD is still king in most living rooms.
Why is it so hard for people to grasp this simple concept? My Wii doesn't play movies at all and yet it still sells well. If people really cared that much then I would say that yes Microsoft is in trouble. But no, you can't say that this is a nail in the coffin of the 360.
"Armed forces abroad are of little value unless there is prudent counsel at home" - Cicero
Back before either console was released, assorted media aficionados were saying that the 360 was being released too early and that the lack of an integrated HD drive would hurt it in the long run. What they missed is that Microsoft had to do this in order to get a head start over Sony: it was the only way they would avoid taking another beating. Consumers paid for it with poor quality control.
The Blu Ray victory was the tipping point. Now the 360 is just a game console that plays pretty much the same games as Sony's, but which will probably break down, and costs quite a bit more when you include wireless and online gaming to bring it up to spec.
While the format war was still on, blu ray on the PS3 was a curiosity (I know I bought mine largely out of curiosity about it). Now you are basically getting a free next gen DVD player with every PS3 - that is not something Microsoft will be able to match in price any time soon.
Props to Sony. Whatever their other evils, they clearly kept their eye on the ball in this case.
Full disclosure: I own both consoles.
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS
Depends on the content.
I could see online distribution taking over the rental market, but I don't necessarily see it overtaking the purchase market.
"Huh?" I hear you ask.
Consider the content of Amazon's current top selling DVD, American Gangster. It has the original movie, as seen in theaters. It has a new "extended version." It has commentary, and a couple of documentaries on the subject matter and the making of the film. Almost 7.5 hours of video!
That's a lot of stuff.
Conversely, if I go to, say, an online distributor such as iTunes Store or Amazon Unbox, I get the original movie, as seen in theaters. About 2 hours and 37 minutes worth of video. But if I really love the movie and think it's great and awesome and fantastic and all, I'm going to want the rest of that content. But to download 7.5 hours worth of video is going to take a long time. I'm pretty sure I could drive to the mall, buy it, and come home before it finished downloading all that content.
That's why I'm not convinced that online distribution is going to kill Blu-Ray. Garbage expands to fill the space allotted and there's alot more room for garbage to expand on a Blu-Ray disk than online distribution is going to be able to conveniently handle.
I think you are right about digital downloads though and they only saw HD DVD as a means to an end. They're probably in an interesting quandary right now - ignore Blu Ray and risk suffering by comparison to the PS3 (it's already happening) or embrace it and risk diluting their digital download message.
Why would they be trying to confuse physical distribution? People will pay $10 or $20 more for a disc copy than the digital download because of the mindset that they're actually getting something tangible, archivable, and resellable.. it only costs someone a few cents to manufacture and press the disk and they're making obscene profits on top.
Movie studios dropping support for UMD didn't kill the PSP.
Personally, I like BluRay's higher density and I like the fact that Microsoft had nothing to do with it.
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
If MS did not concern itself with a HD format, why did it not give users a choice of an add on player? Because Blu Ray does not include the features it MS wanted, features that could have been potentially used to tie content to a platform, not to mention long term royalties for MS, something no sane person wants, other than Apple and MS. In the end HP was used a proxy for the MS camp, HP was rejected, and Sony was able to use the broad based coalition to defeat the unilaterally supported HD-DVD.
XBox consoles have sold because MS has sold them cheap. They have a good market share right now because you can't get a better console for less. But the market share right now is meaningless, except to the average game player. What MS has to do is regroup and decide it the current strategy is going to win the living room, or if the battle is won but the victory will go to Sony and Apple. If MS does feel that new direction is needed, vis a vis Vista, then the average games may care very much, because they may be paying more for a console that is much less user centered.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Because so many, like myself, only bought a PS3 to play movies.
The thing even comes with a movie as a pack-in now. Its priorities are clear.
You can't stream Blu-ray quality. You just can't.
I agree that On Demand content and AppleTV rentals are here now and HD, but that's not the sentiment expressed higher in the thread. These are not replacements for BD. They are perfectly adequate replacements for DVD.
the current development restrictions that in practice gain Sony nothing
Games consoles are generally sold on a similar principle to inkjets and cartridges or razors and blades. The console is sold cheap (sometimes at a loss sometimes at a small profit) and the real money is made from the games.
That afaict is why the linux system is locked out of the 3D graphics. If it wasn't locked out people would be able to develop and market games without going through the official channels. That would be bad for the game revenue stream.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Sony is already "winning" the console war (at least the part they are in). I was in a hurry before, but what I should have mentioned is that both Sony and Nintendo played it smarter than Microsoft. The PS3 and the Wii are competitors, but not direct competitors in the same way that the 360 and PS3 are. Nintendo knew that competing with Sony and Microsoft directly was not a good bet, so they made a much cheaper console sans HD, but gave a lot of people who don't usually buy games a reason to buy a Wii. This was an extremely smart move and Nintendo deserves every bit of the success they have had for being so bold.
Sony aimed at a different segment of the market by creating a hi tech gaming media centre. Microsoft did the same and, as I said above, had to release first, or they would have been buried by Sony. They bet on lower tech (DVD) and an early release to try to create such momentum that the contest would be over by the time the price of a PS3 came down. Initially it seemed as if they were right: the PS3 was extremely expensive and there were hardly any games for it compared to the 360 (even though there weren't that many great games for the 360 until Oblivion and GOW came out). That's over. The PS3 is now the better deal.
For Microsoft to be successful they would have to sell 360s at a much faster rate from launch than the PS3 sold from launch. If Sony kept pace and Blu Ray won, then the PS3 would eventually overhaul the 360 because it is better hardware. The longer the PS3 keeps pace in sales from launch, it becomes more attractive, because once both are discounted to the sweet spot for consoles, the PS3 is better value (you get the winning HD optical format, integrated wireless, etc.). In other words, it's the tortoise and the hare. The 360 really had to sell at Wii like rates in order to inflict a crushing win over Sony.
There's one way to tell if Microsoft's strategy worked: is PS3 adoption slower than 360 adoption? The answer is no. PS3 adoption is slightly faster than 360 adoption, even though you would expect 360 adoption to be better because of the advantage of more games. Unless the 360 can pull away at a fast rate, the tortoise will eventually catch the hare, and once that happens the hare is fucked.
Why did this happen? Well, Blu Ray was always the stronger format, so the PS3 was eventually going to get a big boost from that, but the main reason in my view is that Nintendo undercut Microsoft in a big way. Like I said, the 360 would have had to sell at Wii like rates in order to win, but unfortunately for Microsoft the Wii ended up selling at Wii like rates (bad joke, I know). Nintendo ate up the lower end of the market. Microsoft has ended up in the middle with a console that is more expensive than the Wii (and thus lost the cheap end of the market) and which has less features than the PS3 (which beats them at the high end). It's the red headed stepchild of consoles.
In 2006 Microsoft shipped over 10 million consoles. In 2007 they shipped about 7 1/2 million. That means that 360 appears to have peaked back in 2006. All the press about cumulative sales from launch is meant to hide that inconvenient truth (and the other inconvenient truth that the PS3 is winning outside North America).
"by that I mean people who don't sit on slashdot all day wondering why everyone else isn't building robots" DECS