Blu-ray has long been a thorn in Microsoft’s side. The high definition format wars did not fall in the company’s favor with competitor Sony’s format winning over HD-DVD. Microsoft’s Xbox & Entertainment Director Stephen McGill told Xbox360Achievements.org that embracing Blu-ray now would be a waste of time for the company.
When asked about the possibility of adding a Blu-ray drive to the 360, McGill said, “I think people may have spoken about that originally, but that's long gone. I think people now recognize what a smart decision it was to keep the pricing low, and actually Blu-ray is going to be passed by as a format. People have moved through from DVDs to digital downloads and digital streaming, so we offer full HD 1080p Blu-ray quality streaming instantly, no download, no delay. So, who needs Blu-ray?”
Ultimately, Blu-ray is proving to be a pretty strong format at the moment, and it's helped game developers fit more content onto a single disc, but there is a prevalence of digital download services and streaming media available now too. Was Microsoft right to skip the wave?
[Via CVG]
8 Comments
September 22, 2010
Yes. My DVDs work just fine.
September 22, 2010
Bluray may be the next generation of home videos(rather movies, tv or other content) but I don't think dvd is in any danger of retiring anytime soon.
September 22, 2010
It's kind of what Microsoft has to say that this point in the cycle, but the fact that the PS3 has it and the Xbox 360 doesn't is a major bulletpoint for Sony. Also, some developers have been grumbling about the space on Xbox 360 DVDs - it'll be interesting to see if this becomes more of an issue as this generation rolls on.
September 22, 2010
Yeah that's what I want. Instead of being told i'm buying a license and not a product now I can not own anything at all or store it some on a device where it's easily deleted or where I can lose all info in an instant. Microsoft didn't skip the wave they simply wiped out on their boogie board of choice. I seriously doubt you can download blu-ray quality movies at this point (at least for the majority) and while I was interested in digital downloads, much like blu-ray they have huge brick walls for me.
Those being, I don't want to have to ever update anything for my movies to play. Blu-ray doesn't look much better than my dvd on a standard tv, graininess (i don't want to hear about how it retains detail, it looks terrible).
As for digital downloads, I don't like DRM nonsense as i've stored movies i've bought on a separate drive to restore the c drive to factory settings just for them to no longer work due to drm. I think if it does go heavy digital then the entertainment industry will try to do a starzplay thing where it deletes movies from your pc after a certain time. Going digital will help make it easier for the industry to keep telling you it's a license and not a sold product. I can see them trying to take tv to online but with subscriptions only so you won't own the dvd and will be giving them a continuous revenue stream. Then there's storage, quality, download time and file size. It's good to have the option but I see even more headaches if it's abused.
September 22, 2010
I think physical storage will be around for a while. For one thing, they make much better gifts. I also don't like the idea of regularly downloading full sized, blu-ray quality movies, but then I'm not huge on video quality anyways, so DVD quality is fine by me. If everyone's going to be downloading everything in the future though, they really need to improve the infrastructure.
September 25, 2010
MS seems pissy about losing the hd vs bluray war
September 28, 2010
@Blaiyan That's because you aren't watching it on an HD TV. You will see the difference if you can't then you need to see an eye doctor.
September 28, 2010
I would much rather have Blu-Ray over a standard DVD, but i highly doubt digital downloads will be coming anytime soon with how the net infrastructure is, and other issues regarding speed for areas and download size.
You would need everyone to have a high speed connection that can download uncompressed Blu-Ray quality until Digital downloads becomes concrete. It might be here already but, people like physical media not digital.