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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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
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