Microsoft announces external HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360

[Tap In]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're trying to say.

Here's my guess:

1) Release the add-on at about the same time you release the new SKU: say Fall '06.
2) Now there are two SKUs: "old" premium is gone. "New" premium is the HD-DVD model with hard drive. Still $400.
3) "Base" SKU is the same, HDD less, DVD based XBox...prolly $250.

Now, if you already own an XBox360, you can either buy the external HD DVD drive, or sell your machine and pick up a new premium.

If you're buying your first 360, you can buy the HD-DVD premium, OR buy the base. Note, there is still a "full upgrade path" from the base to the premium.

pretty solid scenario

 

[scooby_dooby]

it is solid, and the genius of it is they stil have the core which they can drop down in price and use to their advantage.

This way they can have a $200 core by next x-mas, fully upgradeable but very cheap to net that casual gamer.

 

[Carl B]

Well, that makes sense I agree - but why wouldn't MS have mentioned that at all in their blurb rather than just focusing on the promise of an add-on? Seems like it would have been a positive move by them to do, assuming they wanted to talk up 360+HD-DVD. Oh well we'll see. I'm not buying into a full 'nother SKU just yet, but it's a plausible scenario.

 

[AzBat]

/agree

The only way they could add something imo without it looking halfassed is to add a full sidewall (if assume vertical, top if horizontal) to the unit, but I just don't see how it would 'snap' on, unless it would snap to the hdd bay, add a pass through for the hdd and extend down the side of the unit.

See my PCjr photo I posted in the other thread. It shows a PCjr with a 3rd party 2nd drive attachment made by Racore. The drive snapped on the top and then a 2nd piece snapped on the side where sidecars would go. Of all the snap on theories that makes the most sense, but I still don't think Microsoft will do it. Just think of all the nightmares the companies making 3rd party accessories would have trying to support a 2nd chassis format. It only makes sense for a totally seperate add-on connected via a cable of some kind. Especially if Joe is right in his prediction that another SKU will later be released with an integrated HD-DVD drive.

Tommy McClain

 

[Shifty Geezer]

An external HDDVD drive peripheral makes the most sense. Then MS can charge another $15 for HDDVD drive faceplates to match the XB360 faceplates

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Well, that makes sense I agree - but why wouldn't MS have mentioned that at all in their blurb rather than just focusing on the promise of an add-on? Seems like it would have been a positive move by them to do, assuming they wanted to talk up 360+HD-DVD. Oh well we'll see. I'm not buying into a full 'nother SKU just yet, but it's a plausible scenario.

I was asking myself the same thing...here's what I came up with:

If MS advertises that they will have a new built-in SKU model, that may put people off buying the current models as they wait for the built-in version. I know I'd much rather have it built in, than an add-on accessory, and would delay my purchase accordingly.

 

[Tap In]

Well, that makes sense I agree - but why wouldn't MS have mentioned that at all in their blurb rather than just focusing on the promise of an add-on? Seems like it would have been a positive move by them to do, assuming they wanted to talk up 360+HD-DVD. Oh well we'll see. I'm not buying into a full 'nother SKU just yet, but it's a plausible scenario.

true, but after the "spilt SKU hard drive fiasco" I don't think that they thought ANYone was ready for that announcement so soon. :smile:

Edit: and Joe is correct it would also defer a possible new purchase until release time.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Nah I think it has more to do with timing.

What's the point in offering an integrated player in 2006? Adoption of HD-DVD players wil just be off to a crawl, and it will be nowhere near mass awareness. All this would do is not allow them to drop the price on their Premium model.

Much better to simply have the add-on drive for the few buyers that want HD-DVD, for the masses they can drop the premium in price and grow their installed base. So they gain marketshare by having a lower price, but people who want HD-DVD can just upgrade.

Next holiday, they could either have a $300 premium(dvd), or $400 premium (hd-dvd), the question becomes what is a bigger selling point to the target audience in 2006? $100 lower price, or a built-in HD-DVD drive? The obvious answer in 2006 is a $100 lower pricepoint, this will sell many more units than a bundled HD-DVD would.

 

[AzBat]

pretty solid scenario

Agreed. Even pricing seems pretty good. Good job Joe.

Tommy McClain

 

[Joe DeFuria]

Nah I think it has more to do with timing.

What's the point in offering an integrated player in 2006?

Checkbox feature competition ("High-Def Movie Playback") against PS3 which I assume will be priced within $50 or so of Xbox360 premium.

Adoption of HD-DVD players wil just be off to a crawl, and it will be nowhere near mass awareness. All this would do is not allow them to drop the price on their Premium model.

But it would still allow them to drop the price on the core model.

Much better to simply have the add-on drive for the few buyers that want HD-DVD, for the masses they can drop the premium in price and grow their installed base. So they gain marketshare by having a lower price, but people who want HD-DVD can just upgrade.

I certainly don't discount that possibility...though still...having an add-on drive just seems "kludgy" to me...not to mention it will most definitely be more expensive than an integrated unit.

Next holiday, they could either have a $300 premium(dvd), or $400 premium (hd-dvd), the question becomes what is a bigger selling point to the target audience in 2006? $100 lower price, or a built-in HD-DVD drive? The obvious answer in 2006 is a $100 lower pricepoint, this will sell many more units than a bundled HD-DVD would.

That is a good point...but whether or not they would sell more premium units with or without HD-DVD depends largely on what the market perceives the value of High def movie playback to be, particularly in the face of competition with PS3.

 

[RobertR1]

It was stated in the past that the Sony BR DVD player in the PS3 will only support MPEG2 formart so that it doesn't directly compete against stand alone BR DVD players which will support multiple formats. Isn't a lot of the next gen HD content suppose to be H.264 or MPEG 4? If it can't support those formats, what good is it?

Between, blu ray and hd-dvd's, I want the cheaper one. A rather swap out a DVD than pay twice as much. I'm not that lazy.

 

[Carl B]

Well I'm signing up with Scooby, but Joe I readily grant the wisdom of your vision as well.

By the way - *totally* off topic - but Scooby since I know you're the Media Center man, do Windows games play on Media Center no prob? I know some devices have driver issues, which in a way I find strange, but wanted to know what was up XP-->MCE sfotware compatability-wise.

 

[mckmas8808]

It was stated in the past that the Sony BR DVD player in the PS3 will only support MPEG2 formart so that it doesn't directly compete against stand alone BR DVD players which will support multiple formats. Isn't a lot of the next gen HD content suppose to be H.264 or MPEG 4? If it can't support those formats, what good is it?

I never heard that. I think someone told you a lie.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

It was stated in the past that the Sony BR DVD player in the PS3 will only support MPEG2 formart...

I don't think so. IIRC, what was stated was that Sony BR movies would (at least initially) only be encoded with Mpeg-2. If PS3 only decoded Mpeg-2, it likely couldn't be labeled a blu-ray player. It must support all the formats...or at least I assume so.

 

[Carl B]

It was stated in the past that the Sony BR DVD player in the PS3 will only support MPEG2 formart so that it doesn't directly compete against stand alone BR DVD players which will support multiple formats. Isn't a lot of the next gen HD content suppose to be H.264 or MPEG 4? If it can't support those formats, what good is it?

Between, blu ray and hd-dvd's, I want the cheaper one. A rather swap out a DVD than pay twice as much. I'm not that lazy.

Whoa whoa, when was that MPEG2 thing ever stated for PS3's BD drive?? Doesn't sound right nor reasonable nor sensible to me. You may be confusing it with the Sony movies guy that said at first, Sony-owned studios would be releasing the Blu-ray movies using MPEG-2 as compression method.

 

[Pozer]

Either way you lose the ability for HD-dvd based games. They've already dug that hole. Hd-DVDs only chance of winning a format war was to launch with the 360. Now it will end up being the PC data format and BR will be the living room movie format. Hd-dvd would have made an excellent game format though.

Also I haven't done the math but i don't see how usb2.0 has the bandwidth to support Hd-dvd throughput. Even if it does we're talking significant CPU overhead. let's suppose Hd-dvd based games become a reality on the 360. I wonder what the overhead of streaming engine would be over the usb thru an external Hd-dvd drive.

The point is MS can't make it a worthwhile feature without screwing over a million early adopters.

Also, why do I keep thinking about TurboGrafx CD when I try picturing this.

 

[Guden Oden]

it is solid, and the genius of it is

If you call it genious to have two optical drives for one console that is. I'm not so sure about that! Still, I'll prolly still buy it to play those movies that won't come out on HDDVD, provided it'll do HD video through component of course.

Just hoping they don't try to bake it together with the current console, there's just no way it'd look anything other than asstastic. I'd prefer they make it a concave-design standalone box that follows the same general design scheme as the main unit that can either sit vertical or horizontal.

 

[RobertR1]

Whoa whoa, when was that MPEG2 thing ever stated for PS3's BD drive?? Doesn't sound right nor reasonable nor sensible to me. You may be confusing it with the Sony movies guy that said at first, Sony-owned studios would be releasing the Blu-ray movies using MPEG-2 as compression method.

Ah! I think you're right. I got confused from that.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I certainly don't discount that possibility...though still...having an add-on drive just seems "kludgy" to me...not to mention it will most definitely be more expensive than an integrated unit.

Totally agree. My feeling though is the users looking for HD-DVD in 2006 will not mind the 'kludge', and your average consumer will not even really care about HD-DVD, so for 2006 it just makes more sense to drop the pricepoint and keep the drive external.

When the casual mums and dads start looking at hd-dvd playback devices in 2007 and 2008, these people will be concerned with elegance and I would expect an integrated unit at that point.

I guess what I'm saying is, they will make an integrated unit when the HD-DVD has become a compelling enough selling feature that it outweighs the benefit of cost reduction. As 360 price drops and drops, and HD-DVD becomes more and more desirable, they wil hit a certain point when it makes sense to integrate the unit.

I think that will be when the premium has dropped to the $150 or $200 range, they will introduce a full HD-DVD sku when everyone really starts to get onboard with the HD-DVD thing, and they are at a sub-$200 pricepoint so that pricing is no longer a major issue, 2007 or 2008 would be my guess. For now, the external drive is completely sufficiant for the relatively small/geeky audience that wants one.

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The point is MS can't make it a worthwhile feature without screwing over a million early adopters.

And you're exactly the type of person I was talking about...ones who feel "screwed" because....they got hardware they were promised. Nothing more or less.

Moral of the story: Just because people are irrational, doesn't mean they don't present real issues to market around.