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Xbox 360 Finally Getting Blu-ray
Starturtle writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had admitted that Microsoft had been working on support for Blu-ray under Windows during this year's Mix08 conference. Rumors began to swirl and many began to expect Microsoft to announce a Blu-ray peripheral for the Xbox 360.
However, Microsoft came out and denied all rumors, stating that they were not exploring any kind of Blu-ray add-on or in talks with Sony about integrating Blu-ray into the Xbox experience.
After months of rumors and denials, the Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray disc drive is due to be manufactured soon and shipped in Q3 of 2008. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, is reported to have received the winning order from Microsoft for a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360."
News at 11!
the corporate denials were being taken with a very big pinch of salt by everybody... sure, they weren't in talks with *Sony* to put a Bluray drive into it.
phew, at least that dilemma is sorted out. just one big one left...
the next 360 game should be Steve Ballmer on a snow board chasing Jerry Yang, trying to hit him with a chair, called Yamped!
to confirm it. All this article is is a claim that a Blu-Ray version of the 360 is being manufactured - which is what rumour sites have been suggesting since the death of HD-DVD. Until Microsoft confirms it, or we see one in the wild, this is still hearsay and speculation.
And tomorrow the stock exchange will be the human race
Why do people want Blu-ray in their 360? Just to watch Blu-ray videos?
Certainly no game manufacturer would do a Blu-ray game since it could not be guaranteed to be in every machine. So what is the point?
If you want to watch Blu-ray videos then you could use some other method, why hook it to a 360?
No developer could take advantage of it given all the 360s out there with DVD drives.
And furthermore, you're going to add another new layer of complexity onto an already flaky hardware?
It's like building a beautiful sculpture on top of a condemned building about to collapse.
There are only a few real killer features that separate one console from another. Integrated Blu-Ray movie support was the PS3's biggest advantage. If the 360 can manage this and beat the PS3 on price, Sony may be screwed.
The 360's killer feature is Xbox Live. They nailed it, and it's going to be a license for them to print money just as Windows has been. Even if Sony comes out with better online support, it's too late. What good does that do when all your friends are on Microsoft's service?
This may be a death blow to the PS3, because it may not have anything left to offer over the 360. Better reliability and the ability to run Linux in a limited environment aren't going to be enough.
Did you have the right to know Microsoft's future plans 6 months ago? Does Microsoft have the right to know yours?
Why should they pre-announce a new feature 9-12 months in advance? People might wait to buy an XBox 360 until then. And sales would go down for 360s and fewer games would be made, and Microsoft shareholders would lose, and current 360 owners would lose. I wonder why they might lie?
What would you do? Tell the truth and screw over the 360 owners and the MS shareholders?
It's a little more complex than that.
20,000 people might be willing to buy them at $500. With that volume, it might cost $350 to manufacture.
If 25,000 people are willing to pay $375, but the manufacturing costs only drop to $300, then it makes sense to keep the price higher and sell less.
If 1 million are willing to pay $150 though, and the manufacturing costs drops down to $125, then it's worth it at that point to drop the price in order to sell more, and lower the production cost.
In the old scenario (before the death of HD-DVD), the people who were buying at a high price were early adopters, and the number of buyers wasn't likely to increase nearly as much with a price drop as it is now.
So, even though people are now more willing to buy them, we'll likely still see a price drop soon. ATM they're still sucking up all the techies who want it and are willing to pay the high prices but who didn't want to buy before the "format war" was decided. Once revenue there wanes they'll drop the price and pickup the next round of customers willing to pay the new price.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
And besides - my primary computer is a laptop, and I just don't have enough space to rip high def to my laptop willy-nilly. (See also, reasons why I don't want a 22 megapixel camera.)
If Microsoft produces a Bluray add-on like they did with HD-DVD drive it is going to be about the same price as the original HD drive and this would possibly be attractive to Xbox360 owners although like the HD-DVD drive it would be not be that popular especially when the total costs are greater than that of a PS3. This is up to the customer since they do have a choice.
If Microsoft brought out an Xbox360 with inbuilt BD/DVD/CD drive they are going to alienate many millions of people who already own an Xbox360, especially if game companies start to bring out games on Bluray disk. Personally I don't think this will happen but you never know, it would be interesting to see how Microsoft could spin this. Of course you get people who like to buy the latest thing and something like this would not bother them.
It must be noted that while the PS3 went through some changes the fundamental configuration which consists of a BD/DVD/CD player, wireless/blutooth, USB (4 to 2 but still there) and hard disk (20GB,60GB and 80GB and whatever you feel like adding) was never changed. The only things that got dropped were the SD/MS/CF readers (nice but not critical) and backwards compatibility which personally I feel was not a good move but it may be possible that software compatibility will be brought back. If the Xbox360 came out with an in-built BD/DVD/CD player this will be a radical change that could seriously undermine their credibility, still only time will tell.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
I bet they're getting a handsome licence fee for every Blu-ray reader sold. So Microsoft will be paying them every time they sell a 360.
They've already won the format war, they have little chance of winning the console war (A large chunk of PS3 sales have been purely for its capability as a good Blu-ray player / DVD upscaler), if they're smart they'll stick to what they're making money on now and work on getting it right for the next generation.
Games would never come out on Blu Ray for 360. Drives are too slow, and it'd be market suicide to release your game on Blu Ray for the 360, since there's already about 13-14 million people with 360s already.
And I'm also pretty sure they could easily make the 360 not boot from Blu Ray, or simply not sign blu ray discs for retail games.
"We need to get over this notion, that, for Apple to win... Microsoft must lose." - Steve Jobs, 1997
Because then there's no real reason to go for the PS3 instead of the 360 unless it has some specific game you want as things stand now. IMHO, based on facts, figures and looking into both consoles when trying to figure out which to get:
- The 360 has more games, more of which are higher rated and that sell far more units even when available on both platforms
- The 360 wins on cost, whether that'll be true with Bluray in I don't know, and whether it remains true with the XBox live cost on top I'm still not sure
- The 360 wins on downloadable content, it simply has more equally as good content
- The 360 wins on online experience, it's just better integrated, the downside of course is cost of XBox live, it's down to personal opinion whether or not people feel it's worth it
- When it comes too both consoles are pretty much as powerful so there's not much of an argument there, Cell is great but the 360s graphics card is also superior, when everything is taken into account they do balance out pretty evenly perhaps with an ever so slight edge to the PS3, whether we'll see any real edge in action though is questionable
- The 360 has better indie developer support via XNA
As it stands, the PS3 wins as a media centre simply because of Bluray support. It's also the only real futureproof Bluray player and as such if you want a Bluray player it's the best choice out there even if you never play a single game so Sony can increase sales figures by selling the PS3 as a Bluray player.
It would be silly of Microsoft not to challenge this and provide a similar offering by creating a Bluray addon or 360 with Bluray built in so that people have the same reasons to buy the 360 as they do the PS3. This is especially the case if MS can keep the cost down below that of the PS3.
The real question is what Sony's move will be in response, they'll surely have to add value to their console in some form or another - arguably this could be via Home and LittleBigPlanet so it could well be the case that Sony put more money and effort into getting these out the door as they'll be pretty major selling points.
Either way by the end of the year I'm sure there'll be plenty of reasons for people to own both consoles, why settle for just one - chances are by the end of the year or thereabouts you'll be able to buy both for the cost of the PS3 at it's original release although I suppose that's little comfort for those who already purchased.