MS: Xbox will not go Blu
Giant has 'no plans' to bring the format to its console
Microsoft has once again poured cold water over the latest rumour that it’ll launch a Blu-ray Disc drive add-on for the Xbox 360.
A blogger going by the name of “Major Nelson” has posted an audio interview online with Aaron Greenberg, Microsoft’s Group Product Manager for the Xbox 360. In the interview, which took place at the Tokyo Game Show this week, Greenberg said: “We have no plans to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience.”
Earlier this week, it was rumoured that a joint venture between Samsung and Toshiba had been tasked with making the add-on drives for the console, which would be sold for between $100 and $150 (£51-87/€73-110).
However, Greenberg went on to say: “We also believe that the future's digital, and that's why we've invested in a massive library of entertainment content.”
His comments echoed a statement released by Microsoft back in May in which it stated that is has “no plans to introduce a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360” because “games are what drive consumers to purchase game consoles”.
Greenberg also went on to disparage Blu-ray as a format and said that “if you look at retail sales and availability, there's not a lot there, and what is there is at a premium.
"It's pretty clear it's not the next DVD,” he said.
Blu-ray also took a beating from Blockbuster Video last month, when the firm's CFO, Thomas Casey, hinted that wholesale and retail prices of Blu-ray films has slowed consumer adoption.
COMMENTS
Re: Laughable
"e) you bought your nonname TV from Morissons/Adsa/Aldi"
That however is exactly the reason why Blu-Ray will never replace DVD. Contrary to what techno-geek readers of The Reg may buy, and even what is on sale in Currys etc, the vast vast majority of the UK public have basic TVs, many being noname cheapos, along with a £20 noname DVD player. And it does them fine.
It doesn't matter a flying fig whether the PS3 has a Blu-Ray player and the Xbox 360 does or doesn't. The audience for these two consoles is not 99% of the population. Probably not even 50% (the population does include women and OAPs after all!). However the vast majority of the population has a TV and a DVD player (and likely still a VHS machine), and it's good enough.
You could beat them over the head with a bat trying to tell them how spending £1k on a 50" TV and AV system will mean they can watch glorious Blu-Ray in high def, and even show them how amazing it is. "Oh, that's nice" they go, and return to their own world of mortgages, kids, pensions and other more important concerns and sit down to watch Celebrity Come Bloody Dancing on their 21" CRT.
The problem is here most people are blinkered to the real world.
The only real way DVDs will be replaced is if either the replacement is blindingly obviously of advantage to the consumer (e.g. like DVD was a smaller and more durable product than VHS, not that it was better quality), or if it is forced on them. You can't force Blu-Ray on people through PS3s and Xboxes.
Anyway, this is why the marketing bods at Microsoft, and it seems Toshiba (and maybe even Samsung), have realised the money isn't in distributing movies on optical discs any more. Neither may even bother much with movies in the long term anyway and concentrate on other more lucrative projects. The people who will make money in movie distribution are the likes of the satellite, cable companies and ISPs.
@ bruceld
'Only ass-kissing Sony lovers with small penises would insist that Blew-ray *IS* the future.'
Any valid points raised in your argument were nullified by the above sentence.
@John H Woods
My PS3 is totally silent, the problem I have, is I leave it on overnight, as I don't hear it being on.
I had a EU launch 60GB PS3, and it was pretty quiet, cashed in on the idiots paying over the odds for "PS2 compatability one upmanship", and bought a brand new UK 80GB (and £120 profit to boot) the latest ones I would call totally silent, as in no noise at all, unless you put your ear right up against it.
Every 360 I have ever heard is as loud as a plane taking off, as a comparison.
@Andy Barber, re LD
Which Oxfam? I still love my LaserDisc player, even though it sits underneath a just-as-dead-format HD-DVD standalone.
Which was bought because the 360 is too noisy to watch films on for my liking. As is the PS3 - while older 360s sounded like jet engines, the current batch of fans is no louder than the ones in Sony's console. So I don't really care whether Microsoft put on in there or not; I'll be buying a Sony BDP-S350 when I get my Blu-ray fix, I suspect. That it's £100 cheaper than a PS3 and can be modded multi-region rather helps sway things, too.
@bruceld
Weird that you get your parents* to pay for a hd satellite service, why not just upscale the standard def service?
(*i'm guessing that its only children who think that name calling is a valid argument)
