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Why Microsoft Won't Have Blu-ray on the Xbox
Ian Lamont writes "Ever since Toshiba stopped production of HD DVD players, many Xbox 360 owners have been wondering when Microsoft will offer some sort of Blu-ray option for the Xbox 360. The answer: Probably never. Microsoft's product manager for the Xbox 360 has told Reuters that Microsoft is not in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association. Why not? The Industry Standard points to HDi, an obscure Microsoft technology that was part of the HD DVD interactivity layer. HDi may be dead on physical media, but it could potentially be applied to other Microsoft HD-compatible technologies such as Xbox Live Arcade and Windows Media Center, and be part of a long-term play to own a big share of the market for HD content delivered over the Internet."
Have you ever seen Microsoft Office for Linux (w/o any emulator like Wine)?
Nobody is ever going to support a product from a direct competitor (or backed by a direct comepetitor) . Microsoft & Sony are direct competitors.
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Profit is profit is profit is profit, so why would they not take the opportunity to have an overpriced blueray disc player accessory for the 360? Doesn't seem like sensible business practices to me.
No monopolist is ever going to support a product from a direct competitor. Plenty of other companies do so. Toshiba, Sony, Panasonic, and Samsung all directly compete in many of their core markets. Yet they also often adopt and support technologies developed by one another. The difference? None of them are monopolies and accustomed to monopolistic control in a market.
Can't say I'm the biggest fan of MS technologies, but I will say that I think they did a pretty decent job with HDi (all of the menus, animations, bookmarks and other interactive features on an HD DVD are done using it). I'm sure there are any number of other companies who could've done the same thing, too. But if MS wants to use this technology for downloadable videos, then I'm all for it. It'd be nice to actually have a downloadable video that has menus and chapters and the other niceties that we've grown used to.
This guy's the limit!
This seems like a bad idea to me. I would assume that a lot of gamers will just buy a PS3 as their BluRay player, in absence of a 360 add on, now that HDDVD is dead. At least that's my most likely course of action. If the PS3 ends up getting a decent selection of games, it is just going to cause MS to lose market share where they previously would have taken all of my gaming money.
Microsoft may well take charge of online HD content distribution, but what about games on the 360? Surely those can't be downloaded, as you'd need tons of space, right? If they choose not to adopt Blu-Ray, then how will they keep up with the PS3 in terms of next gen games? By limiting themselves to dual layer DVDs, don't they risk being overtaken by superior offerings on the PS3? We've heard Kojima say that MGS4 can barely fit on a Blu-Ray disk, so that must mean the 360 is screwed, right? In a few years when developers start to fully utilise the vast amounts of space available on Blu-Ray disks, I can forsee the 360 being left behind and fading into obsolescence - unless Microsoft decides to act. Adopting Blu-Ray may seem counterproductive for Microsoft's business interests, but if they want the 360 to survive, I can't really see any other options for them. They're gonna have to support Blu-Ray eventually.
I have a 360. I have the HD-DVD drive for my 360 because I want to play HD content (Microsoft clearly recognizes this market segment exists, why else create the HD DVD drive in the first place). Now instead of buying a Microsoft brand 360 Blu-ray Player, I will be buying a Playstation 3. Seems like a brilliant plan on Microsoft's part - if they wanted me to buy a competing product.
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Sure if MS doesn't include a Blu Ray drive, it would mean Sony was deprived of some royalties. But at the same time it would negate the one major advantage the PS3 has over the 360 so they'd lose sales. So I think Sony would be quite happy if MS skipped Blu Ray altogether. It would be just another reason for many people to buy a PS3.
I don't think so. The ISPs are not going to want to face Microsoft, Google, Apple, Disney, and Sony. Yes I know that it seems that it is a battle of who can buy the most congressmen but Microsoft, Google, Apple, Disney, and Sony all have deep pockets and they all feel this is a battle they must win.
If need be Google and Microsoft both have the bucks to become the worlds largest ISPs. They both have the technology base and the motivation if the ISPs get too nasty with them.
Also the cable companies are hated. They are hated by the public at large. Congress know this so it may be a battle that they are willing to take on since Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Disney's money is just as green as Comcast's.
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I don't think Microsoft cares that Blu-Ray is Sony's standard, just that it's not Microsoft's standard.
From there, the decision to forget about a high-definition player add-on for this generation makes sense. The attach rate for the HD-DVD drive wasn't very good (typical for a console add-on), but Microsoft was willing to take that hit for the sake of promoting HD-DVD. (Not to mention keeping up with the Playstation 3 Joneses.) A Blu-Ray movie player for 360 would be just another console accessory that doesn't sell enough to justify the cost. (See also: Sega CD)
XBox "720", if it uses an optical drive at all, will probably use Blu-Ray out of necessity. As a baseline for the platform, it will be far easier to justify that cost as upfront R&D.
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Microsoft NEVER go with a pre-existing stadard as-is. Its like they feel the need to have their own customized version of everything for some reason. I guess they feel it gives them control of something.
Consequently even if Microsoft licenced Blu-Ray, I'd bet they'd change parts of it somehow to make it their own in some way that would be incompatible with everything else.
Because standard def looks like poop after having seen so much HD content.
Renting an HD movie from Live Marketplace is almost ten times as expensive as renting a Blu-Ray movie from Netflix, and the downloaded movie is more compressed than the Blu-Ray version (6GB vs. 20GB). Microsoft will have to significantly lower the price of HD rentals, to about $1 each, to make it competitive.
Plus, the Microsoft Points purchase system is way too clunky. You have to buy the points in advance, and you can buy them only in multiples of 500 or 1600. Since HD movies cost 480 Points, you're always going to have wasted Points.
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I'm surprised the OP didn't catch on to this.
Java's inclusion in the BluRay menu system means forcing Microsoft back into implementing a Java VM on a new platform. Let's hope that none of the Sun v Microsoft legal agreement prevents them from doing so.
Not that MS seems to be doing much to capture the developer market (and it wouldn't take much effort to do better than Sun in this regard... I even find the Apache community lacking in some aspects).
There's absolutely no denying that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray look considerably better than just an upscaled DVD. The question is, are retailers going to be able to convince that there is a big enough difference that warrents a couple thousand dollars to get started, as well as increased prices every time they buy movies.
People sometimes say "well, it worked with DVD and VHS!" That's because DVD was an ENTIRELY different technology...no rewinding, perfect still images, clear and focused slow-mo, chapter selections, extra features, multiple language and audio, etc.
Blu-Ray, even with its "internet enabled extra features", is at its core nothing more than a prettier version of DVD. It's not nearly the leap that VHS to DVD was, and as such I think it's going to be much much harder to convince folks to switch (ESPECIALLY considering how much cheaper DVD is, both for the player and the movies.)
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I'm hard-pressed to spend any money on Blu-Ray technology due to Sony's actions. The $300 million they spent to bribe Warner Bros god knows how much on others, should have been used to cut the cost of players and media, then they could have won the Format war following free market ideals instead of underhanded deals that are now requiring Sony to jack up the prices on everything Blu-Ray to make up the diffrence. I would really like to see the Justice department go after Sony for these pratices. If M$ gets hit with anti-trust violations because they included a useful web browser integrated with thier OS, how does Sony get away with out right bribery to force out the competition?
Too bad it turned that way. the prices on bluray already has gone up.
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Well, Steam works, but keep in mind, even big games are only 1-2GB (massive ones may be 4 or 5). Also, you only DL games periodically, tend not to share them often with family, and don't expect to start playing one 5 minutes after clicking download... Also, they have to be installed, which eliminates any traveling options (airport, car, etc) unless you DL'd them in advance. It's just not as convenient as whipping out a disk and inserting it, and the games/movies I use most would already be on my HDD as instaleld/copied items or as virtual disk images.
/8Mbit / 60sec / 60min = 7 hours.) "Streaming" a movie over 8Mbit really isn't an option, and 40Mbit connections are not available in the USA yet... ...and I'm not even talking about how to back up a 1TB data set periodically that's growing at over 250GB per year... and wait until 2011 when 4X HD is a big hit. 100GB per movie? not even if 1TB drives were under $50 would I considder that. Now lets see you Defrag that, or do a virus scan. Call me next week...
This is why I say, HD video downloads work from local cable services across broadband chanels, as part of a VoD or rental service. Direct streaming for keeps, not likely a reality. If one assumed that I could start this now, purchase and download a fair number of movies over time (say 1 per month) then in 3 years, I'd need something akin to 1TB just to store those flicks on a single PC (assuming 25GB ea, fairly average for a BD movie with HD audio). If my drive crashed and I had to re-download that, over an 8Mbit connection and assuming maximum throughput, it would take 10.5 days to re-download that content! Even assuming I'd be willing to dedicate 50% of my bandwidth to that, i'd be looking at almost a month to re-download just 36 lost movies. Heck, just to DL a single new movie at 25GB would be 7 hours if my math is right... (25GB X 1024MB X8bits
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People sometimes say "well, it worked with DVD and VHS!" That's because DVD was an ENTIRELY different technology...no rewinding, perfect still images, clear and focused slow-mo, chapter selections, extra features, multiple language and audio, etc.
While I do believe that all those features are ultimately why DVD was seen as worth the upgrade, it's also worth pointing out that it did look better than VHS without you having to buy anything but the DVD player.
No real new features except a superior picture, and you only get that if you buy a brand new television too. That's a much tougher sell no matter how you slice it.
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