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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.
"The New Age. The New Beginning."
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.
I guess the recent poll was wrong then. "who cares" was not the correct answer.
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 would have called it iHD so Microsoft had to call it HDi
:P
Dibs on PODi and TUNEi!
-> I use my TUNEi to fill my PODi
Goodbye Slashdot. You've changed.
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!
Ummm, because like others have said, the war is not over. Blu-ray discs still have to compete with digital distribution. Even Gates mentioned at CES. They've partnered with quite a few places (One is Disney!) so they will likely pursue downloads through their Live marketplace, including HD content before trying to license something from a competing console.
The media the games come on is irrelevant, Nintendo proved success is possible with an unusual format.
Microsoft also has stated they are trying to move toward a content-download type system, so the physical media would, again, be irrelevant.
As others have said, there may be a standalone Blu-ray player in the future, but I think MS thinks they simply don't need it. And Ballmer himself has said no Blu-ray for Xbox, of course that's not really worth much and could change with the market.
http://www.crn.com/digital-home/206903456
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.
This is SUN vs. MicroSoft
(BD-J vs. HDi aka MSJava Script)
Java is the platform for the world wide distribution of IPTV.
I don't think that MS will be pushing anything that competes with their version of a Java virtual machine much less include a Sony product in their 360.
(the final offer by MS and Toshiba to prevent a format war was the inclusion of HDi... Sony and Sun walked away)
While it makes Cents that they should, I don't think they will.
Another reason for not including Blu-Ray capabilities... Like I'd be able to hear the movie?
This isn't a troll. I love my 360, I do. But I've used it to watch DVDs and stream videos from my laptop, and honestly, even in the most well-ventilated of spaces, the console is just too loud for me to enjoy it as a media center at all.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
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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Reading the article (yes foreign for slashdot) it says that they can use the HDi for other things. My money says they're planning some form of distribution down to the road via X-Box live perhaps? Especially now that vendors like NetFlix do online video rental.
Of course, with HD content you have the not so insignificant issue of transferring many Gigabytes of data for any feature length content, and how many of them could you store on a stock 360?
In any case, this is probably a boneheaded move destined to backfire.
Sony vs. Microsoft. I guess Slashdot is going to have to go with Sony. We have been triangulated.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
is how Nintendo is just laughing their asses off at all of this.
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 know... just because HD-DVD is dead in the consumer market, it may not stop them from using it as a proprietary system for the console. If anything, it might afford them more protection from piracy than any DRM. If no one can get HD-DVD drives to read the disks, no one can decrypt or copy them. The Blu-ray BD+ DRM has already been broken by Slysoft (AnyDVD), for instance.
I could see a problem with production. They'd have to find a company willing to continue to manufacture the drives for them; knowing that MS might be their sole customer. They wouldn't want to get into a position of being dependent on that manufacturer and then have to pay through the nose for the hardware. So either pay more for them, or bring production inhouse. Either option more costly than Blu-ray drives.
I'm curious to see where they go with it myself.
It makes perfect sense if you realize that the PS3 is the only really future-proof Blu-ray player on the market right now. That, and the fact that it's almost the same price as a stand-alone player, plus you can play games, media, and install Linux on it.
I like to think of online DRM as something akin to a college -- you pay for lessons until you learn something.
XBox Live is about to take a kick in the teeth in Canada. Rogers has announced that they will start capping their bandwidth this June. If you go over it will cost you $2/gig (up to $25) extra per month. Until now we have been fortunate. Not sure if Microsoft has taken something like this change into account especially with higher quality videos creating larger data costs for the end user. At this point if no Blu-Ray player is coming, I go out and buy a separate Blu-Ray player (or PS3) and rent movies than risk going over my limit. I already pay Rogers enough.
I don't think Microsoft cares that Blu-Ray is Sony's standard, just that it's not Microsoft's standard.
From there, the decision to forget about a high-definition player add-on for this generation makes sense. The attach rate for the HD-DVD drive wasn't very good (typical for a console add-on), but Microsoft was willing to take that hit for the sake of promoting HD-DVD. (Not to mention keeping up with the Playstation 3 Joneses.) A Blu-Ray movie player for 360 would be just another console accessory that doesn't sell enough to justify the cost. (See also: Sega CD)
XBox "720", if it uses an optical drive at all, will probably use Blu-Ray out of necessity. As a baseline for the platform, it will be far easier to justify that cost as upfront R&D.
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Microsoft NEVER go with a pre-existing stadard as-is. Its like they feel the need to have their own customized version of everything for some reason. I guess they feel it gives them control of something.
Consequently even if Microsoft licenced Blu-Ray, I'd bet they'd change parts of it somehow to make it their own in some way that would be incompatible with everything else.
Because standard def looks like poop after having seen so much HD content.
M$ bought a huge chunk of Corel, and probably control the company these days. I'm never seen any analysis of the fallout of this deal, it was a while ago.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
I see what you did there. Clever.
Rampant stupidity aside, I think that if Microsoft will integrate Blu-Ray into their consoles it won't be until the next Xbox is released.
Not to mention there is still no garuntee that Blu-Ray will win...it beat out HD-DVD, but now it has to beat out plain vanilla DVD. Sony may have been able to win by buying out some of the movie studios, but it's real challange lies ahead: convincing folks to stop buying DVDs and DVD players (which can be had for thirty dollars) and buy Blu-Ray discs and players (whose prices have gone up, not down since there is no long any viable HD competition)
Sony's biggest hurdle, really, will be convincing your average joe everyman that there is a significant enough difference between DVD and Blu-Ray to drop a couple thousand on a TV, a few hundred on a player, and on average pay $5-$15 more per movie. Not saying it's impossible or won't happen, I'm just saying that getting rid of HD-DVD was the easy part.
Living With a Nerd
...but it's real challange lies ahead: convincing folks to stop buying DVDs and DVD players (which can be had for thirty dollars) and buy Blu-Ray discs and players... This is a task that electronics retailers (such as Best Buy) are in a real position to do with side-by-side demonstrations. Heck, I was in a Future Shop on Boxing Day and saw two identical televisions - identical except that one was the 1080i model, and one was 1080p - and I could tell the difference. It was subtle, but it was there. Showing someone a 1080p Blu-Ray feature next to the 480p DVD feature on the same television is going to be a pretty convincing show.The real trick is going to be getting the same content on both TVs, despite different sources. Perhaps downsamping the HD version, then letting the TV upscale it, would be a demonstration? Hard to say. Still, that would make a lot of 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.)
Living With a Nerd
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?
The problem with a PS3 as an HD player is that it lacks discreet analogue audio outputs for 7.1 sound. This means that to get the 7.1 sound you have to have a receiver that does HDMI 1.3 and have the proper codecs to decode the audio.
My current amp has discreet analogue inputs and the BD players have the outputs. Four pair of audio cables later and I get the new HD 7.1 surround. With a PS3 I need to also drop about a grand on an amp. I consider the audio more important than the video so I wouldn't even consider the PS3 for movie playback. At this time. If I had a suitable amp I might.
Yes, the Blu-ray standard supports 1080p. Finding a movie encoded at 1080p and a player capable of 1080p output is the harder part. HD-DVD and Blu-ray supports flung so much misinformation at each other, it's hard to know what is truth and what is fiction these days. Suffice to say, both standards are more alike than they are different.
I used up all my sick days, so I'm calling in dead.
Too bad it turned that way. the prices on bluray already has gone up.
great screensavers
The videos are only 720p, the bitrate is not high, and it's a problem to transport the videos to bring to someone else's house to watch (you have to bring your 360) much less another room in the house. You can't purchase movies and keep them, and it costs $6 to rent one. You need a Live account. The selection is not that great. Although it might be a good companion, it's just not a suitable replacement for Blu-Ray.
Twinstiq, game news
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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