Xbox Head Proclaims Blu-ray Dead

Blacklaw writes "Microsoft has sided with Apple in a rare case of solidarity between the two companies, and declares that Blu-ray will be 'passed by' as a high-definition format. In many ways, it's hard to disagree. US markets have seen the demand for legal digital downloads of PC games exceed sales of the physical object for the first time, and Apple famously refuses to put a Blu-ray drive in its Macs, as Jobs prefers to send people towards iTunes to download their entertainment. That said, there's an argument for physical media, too. A recent survey suggested that the majority of gamers prefer physical discs, and digital downloads have the secondary effect of entirely cutting out the popular market for second-hand films and games — a plus for publishers, but a big negative for the consumer."

Comments

If indeed, truly sad news

[elrous0]

I never thought I would say it, but I can now quite easily envision a day very soon when all my new media (games, movies, music, TV shows, books, etc.) will belong to studios, software companies, publishers, etc.--with me just renting it. There will be no such thing as buying a used book, or a used videogame. I will never be able to resell any media that I "buy." If the studio decides to have a moritorium on a movie (like Disney so often does), they will just be able to flick a switch at any time and turn my copy of that movie off. Publishers will be able to edit all my books retroactively. When a director decides he doesn't like the ending of his movie, he can change it and force that change on everyone who owns it. If a studio goes bankrupt and takes down their servers, all my movies from them will turn to digital dust. If a judge issues a court order, all copies of a piece of media will evaporate with a single command from a media server somewhere. And when my internet goes down, so does every piece of media I own.

I will own nothing. The media companies will control how I watch or use my media, when I use it, where I use it, and how long I use it, and even *if* I can use it. I will either be completely at their mercy, or forced to resort to law-breaking to enjoy my own media as I wish.

Re:If indeed, truly sad news

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course the customers would complain and whine. The copyright owners, however, backed by the best copyright protection laws money can buy, will make sure they don't get a choice.

"If you don't like it, don't watch," will the the response of those who buy into the system. "Film your own movies"/"Write your own books"/"Build your own games"/"Perform your own music" will be the response of the copyright conglomerates. And people will and do now, but, good luck distributing anything when all playback devices are locked down. Trusted Computing will prevent you from running apps that aren't signed by huge corporations that can afford to pay the certification and membership fees which really just funnel back to themselves because they belong to the organizations that benefit (see the existing relationships between movie studios and the MPAA).

Hold on to your unprotected old analog stuff. It'll be pretty valuable once this takes over.

Re:If indeed, truly sad news

[commodore64_love]

>>>-with me just renting it.

Pretty much.

But before we jump on that bandwagon, let's not forget practical limitations. A Bluray holds 50 gigabytes of data. Downloading that over my 750k DSL connection would take 7 days, and there are a lot of people who don't have even that speed (still suck on dialup). Plus once I've downloaded the file I'll want to store it somewhere permanent, like a Bluray-R so why not just save some time, go to the store, and get the Bluray already conveniently pressed on disc for me?

Bottom Line - Blurays are not disappearing yet. People like the convenience and instant gratification.

Also Steve Jobs has a bad habit of burying technology while it's still alive & breathing in the coffin. He famously stopped putting floppies in Macs (1999), when people still needed floppies to trade work files, or to access older archived software, or to revive dead systems, thereby forcing Mac users to spend extra for an external drive. NOW it looks like he's doing the same with DVDs and Blurays - declaring them as "not needed" when they still ARE needed.

Hmm

[Pojut]

Eventually, yes...but I think optical media will still be around for a while.

Purely from a gaming perspective, it will be interesting to see if Microsoft includes Blu-Ray in its next Xbox. I doubt the next Xbox will be far enough in the future to support only digital downloads (due to ISP bandwith concerns), they won't be able to just stick with DVD9, and they would be pretty stupid to try to release their own optical format.

All that being said, I'll agree that Blu-Ray is likely the last (or the second to last) optical media standard that will ever hit mainstream status.

Re:frog in the cauldron

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an urban legend. Please stop spreading it.

http://www.snopes.com/critters/wild/frogboil.asp

HD in Bluray quality is dead as well

[HockeyPuck]

"CD Quality" is dead, to be replaced by downsampled and compressed mp3s
"Bluray Quality" is dead, to be replaced by downsampled, compressed iTunes downloads, streamed netflix/comcast, Hulu etc..

Hell, even the stuff on TV that is claimed to be "HD" is compressed by your cable provider. It's a shame as a Bluray just provides that much more content than some compressed/re-encoded file. While it's not as easy to tell when watching "HDTV" on a iPhone or iPod. When you have a 50in TV and a 5.1 stereo, you can tell.

Steve Jobs' motto should be, "Compressed media, through earbuds, it's good enough."

Internet activation

[tepples]

I have an installer, I have the game files

The installer requires a connection to a server that Activision Blizzard can shut down at any time.

If you so desire, you can burn everything that you "do not own" over to a disc and voila! you now have a physical representation of your ownership.

How does this store the state of Internet activation of the copies that you own?

Re:frog in the cauldron

[Thanshin]

None the less, the anecdote is still good even if the science isn't.

Really? Wow! My analogies will be even better now!

You know, if you throw a car into a pool of acid, it will jump out, but if you throw it into an empty pool and then pour the acid, it will stay and die. Thus, you should buy physical disks of all your games because cracked installers will magically disappear tomorrow.

Re:frog in the cauldron

[MarcQuadra]

Hello, I am a strategist for the Tea Party. We are intrigued by your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.