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."

Comments

Doesn't make sense

[spleen_blender]

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.

Re:Doesn't make sense

[MBCook]

I saw that. I say... wrong. The prices went up. That's economics. There are two resons.

1. The closest substitute good (HD-DVD players/software) is now gone
2. Development

People were pushing the players at a loss (Toshiba, et. all too, from my understanding). Now that the pressure is gone, the prices have moved from the dumping range to the "possibly sustainable" range.

I've seen people complain about the new players being more expensive than the old ones, but that always happens when the new players have more features (BD-Live and all it's costs like Ethernet, flash storage, etc) than the old ones.

They're not "leveraging a monopoly", they are just not competing at/near a loss anymore. You can't leverage a Blu-Ray monopoly, because there is no market share for it right now. DVDs will be the "monopoly" in the video market for a few years yet.

I would not be surprised to find a new coalition of HD-DVD-interested companies form to create a new, open, set of technologies to compete with Blue-ray and bring that rampaging giant down.

Sarcasm: Yes. That worked so well the last time. I'm sure they'll try it again with yet another incompatible format.

Correction!

[Cadallin]

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.

Re:Correction!

[Sawbones]

No monopolist is ever going to support a product from a direct competitor...The difference? None of them are monopolies and accustomed to monopolistic control in a market.

That's just a bit of hyperbole there, don't you think? Microsoft was part of the list HD DVD backers - who's members contain more than a few direct competitors (Corel competes as directly as possible with Office). Nothing is quite as cut and dry as you're making it out - after all, sony still makes computers that run windows, don't they?

HDi

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

Re:The reason is simple...

[tmcfulton]

Apple just didn't want to miss out on 85% of the computer market. If Microsoft didn't have a near-monopoly, there wouldn't be iTunes for PC.

Re:The reason is simple...

[ergo98]

No. You can't (legally or easily) load OS X onto your generic or HP, Dell or Lenovo PC. OS X only runs on Apple hardware, therefore it does not compete with Windows in the non-Apple hardware space. Linux does.

I don't think many people buy hardware based upon the binary "Apple or non-Apply hardware?" decision point. OS X absolutely is a competitor to Windows, regardless of whether it implicitly binds additional decision points.

Re:Live marketplace

[LWATCDR]

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.

Re:The reason is simple...

[mweather]

And Microsoft wants to miss out on 100% of the HD movie market? They're not dumb enough to think downloadable content is going to be a competitor any time soon. And if consumers buy separate blu-ray players, they'll buy the cheapest one: the PS3. And that cuts into 360 game sales.

Re:Eventually ...

[Pojut]

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.)

Re:The reason is simple...

[zippthorne]

But Nintendo has the advantage of having never sold the Wii at a loss. They could put out an upgraded machine right now without having real losses (pro-forma "losses" though)

In other words, they're well positioned to be the first ones out of the gate for the next generation of home theater / video game equipment, and they won't have to worry about figuring out which disk format to back.*

Now, whether they actually take advantage of that position remains to be seen. But they've by no means screwed themselves out of anything with their design decisions regarding the Wii.

* of course, if it takes Blu-Ray as long to overtake DVD as DVD took to overtake VHS, USB thumbdrive movies will be well within possibility. Remember, this jump was a big jump data-wise, but High definition is pretty well defined for the next decade or so: 50 gig is going to be plenty for any storage medium for some time, but it's also going to get much easier to achieve. In that sense, Blu-Ray is a disaster. We should've gone with HD-DVD as an interim format (well, it was supposed to be cheaper), knowing that it would be replaced fairly quickly by something much more durable, storable, reliable, and possibly even cheaper.