Microsoft announces external HD-DVD drive for Xbox 360

I think MS has done everything to be able to price the 360 low and drop it quickly. I dont know what will be priced when but thats been the plan for 360 from the beginning. The PS3 price is the big mystery now because will Sony choose to lose a lot of money on the hardware and price it competitive or lose less and be higher priced.

I know a lot of peopel on this forum have already decided the format war already but youd be surprised consumers still have no idea which studios are aligned with what format etc. Regardless of the outcome theres still some ways to go.

 

My guess is that someone at MS said "Hey if we offer rebates in this manner is it illegal?" to the legal department. OFfering rebates is not in and of itself misusing any power and im pretty sure they would ahve asked themselves that question before doing it.

 

Sony is not a monopoly to begin with. There are also anti-competitive regulations (name escapes me) governing fair partner contracts and relationships. It really depends on how MS does it. I have no insider info. I'm not an expert in this area although I did work in related projects before.

EDIT: Just saw expletive's post. It's a gray area, depends on your perspective and interpretations. The professor I worked with didn't explain in-depth (long story).

EDIT 2: Actually there is another possibility, Blu-Ray Association may have approached MS for the same out-of-the-box Vista support on equal terms as HD-DVD but MS refused/played punk.

Now I remember why I was always wary about Microsoft.

 

What do you like

So maybe PS3 not $150 more than Xbox360 no? Maybe even same price. We cannot know..

Consumers do not know but when the PS3 is available then everyone knows because PS3 is regular consumer product. Since millions will buy PS3, most content will be for Blu-Ray. How long will HD-DVD last with so little hardware sales we cannot know, so we can only guess. But for HD-DVD to compete with Blu-Ray it must have atleast half PS3 hardware unit sale no? Xbox360 has no HD-DVD, stand-alone HD-DVD is expensive, maybe more than PS3, and also HD-DVD is inferior format, so many hi-fi buyers will not like it. So question is how will HD-DVD have enough hard-ware unit sales?

Also, what format player would you like for your home?

 

More links:

http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3146681

http://news.teamxbox.com/xbox/9995/Bill-Gates-Announces-External-HD-DVD-Drive-for-Xbox-360/

 

It seems that everyone has already decided that BR will win because it is in the PS3 which will sell millions upon millions which will make the BR the leading format. But does that not depend on the price?

If the PS3 launches at $300 and comes down in price at the same time as has happened before I can see it being truth, but if the launch at a price of $400-500 and mentain that price for a long time with less frequent and smaller price drops as they have hinted before maybe the adoption of the PS3 will not be as fast as for PS2, lets not forget that the absolut most PS2 consoles have been sold at a price lower than $200...

 

XBox360

Xbox360 was real market price of $700+ at launch no? What is price of Xbox360 on ebay? Maybe $600? So we see that even $400 or $500 PS3 is no problem for maxmimum sales. PS2 had great sales at all prices.

 

This is how HD-DVD will have enough sales:
1)MS is heavily promoting it with their new OS giving "incentives" for buying PCs with HD-DVD.Judging by the fact that BD for the PC will cost 1000$,that will make most new PC owners get a HD-DVD-equiped PC

2)Stand alone HD-DVDs cost half the price of BD and will be out before the ps3(which will probably not come out before the end of 2006).That could give HD-DVD a headstart

3)An add-on for the 360 costing,probaly,much less than a standalone unit.It al depends on the price,if the add-on cost 150$$ i could see it being a big hit.Add to that that MS can lower the price of the 360(and you can bet that the early start and the deals MS has with the 360 part-manfacturers will give MS enough room for a really bloody price war) at the time that the ps3 will launch and everything suddenly seems pretty equal to me.

Thiis CES seems to have REALLY raised the chances of HD-DVD with the cheapness of the standalone units,the MS heavy support against the insane BD prices.Oh and on top of that it seems that BD discs are also insanely expensive.

As for the quality difference of the formats,it's not nearlly as big as sony fans are trying to convince everybody else and betamax(another Sony ....masterpiece) was better than VHS.

I think that Blue Ray is still the favourite to win but i believe that the chances for HD-DVD(much to the horror of diahard sony fans) greatly increased.

As for me,if the MS add-on has a price tag of 150$ i'll buy it and hold off a ps3 buy until it has a price cut.If the add on is over 150$ then...ps3 at launch day for me.

 

Sony definitely has more potential in the console arena, but it's hard to ignore the reach and weight that the Wintel machine has in the PC market. The upcoming Vista and Viiv media campaigns will definitely have an effect.

I currently own a X360, but I'm not sure I will buy this add-on. At least not right away. If there is a good amount of content available then it might actually be worth it for those that own HDTVs. The PS3 seems like it'll be a more "complete package", but it might be hard to find one at launch. I definitely want to get one too...

I'll go where the movies go...

 

Yep, but I am talking about 100+ million sales, not the fanatic early adopters that will give anything to have the consoles as soon as it is out on the market. Ofcourse they will be able to sell the PS3 initially at what ever price more or less even up to $1000 but I doubt that it would sell anywhere close to 100 million at that price range.

And I feel that Sony has some balancing to do, selling the PS3 too cheap might piss of all those that are trying to sell BD player for $1000+, I wonder how those companies will feel when they sell nothing since the PS3 will be making all the sales...

 

Well if this thing is cheap enough, why not. I feel it's a last act of desperation on MS's part to be honest, but if it's cheap, why not.
Personally i rather have a standalone player, or a 360 with a HDDVD drive instead of the standard DVD drive... Double drive X360?! Sounds naff...
I mean if the 360 HDDVD drive only lets you play HDDVDs through 360, what's the difference with buying a standalone player apart from price?

Besides, as someone said, i go where the movies go, and at the moment Bluray has double the potential library than HDDVD...

What a mess.. Why can't we all get along.. and stick to VideoCD...

 

That's exactly my thinking."If it's cheap ,why not??".It gives us(us being xbox360 owners) a chance to try high-definition movies at a very low cost.If blue ray succeds and HD-DVD fails then we'll just have to buy a stabdalone BR drive that will be much cheaper at that time(or a ps3).

Anyway both the ps3 and this add-on when judged as high-definition video players are tmporary solutions until the dedicated players become cheap so in essence this is just another choice for the consumer.

 

Bd

This is probably very illegal and also makes serious problems for MS with Dell and HP.

Even at $500 consumer price, do you really think many consumers will buy? What is important is not a few silly buyers but average consumer shopping at Best Buy type store or Walmart no? These are buyers who will buy PS3 for many millions of sales of Blu-ray player.

$150 add-on unit is good for stand-alone price but not for Xbox360 accessory. Maybe some Xbox360 buyers will buy this but many many more will buy PS3 with built-in Blu-ray.

CES price of HD-DVD player is still same or more, maybe much more than PS3 with much superior Blu-ray.

Also price difference in disc is almost zero. Only real diference is cost of master equipement. For HD-DVD master equipment is upgrade to DVD equipment but BD master equipment must be bought new. But, BD master equipment is much smaller and less complicated so cost of disc is not so different for DVD. Advantage of HD-DVD cost is not because BD more expensive than DVD but because HD-DVD can be even cheaper than DVD because of no new equipment purchase. When DVD is started new equipment was needed just like Blu-Ray so Blu-Ray about equal to DVD cost, HD-DVD maybe little cheaper than DVD and Blu-Ray.

Actually difference is very large because better resolution and higher frame-rate is supported by much larger capacity of Blu-ray.

I think Blu-ray needs Sony than Sony needs Blu-ray. Sony will sell PS3 with or without Blu-ray so I dont think Sony fans should care if Blu-ray win or lose. But Blu-ray fans will care if PS3 win or lose. Problem for HD-DVD is people will pay $500 (some people even $2000) for PS3 at release time but how many will pay $500 for inferior HD-DVD format standalone or even $500 Blu-ray standalone? Not many.

That is sensible. So if no HD-DVD add-on is available you will prefer PS3 to HD-DVD standalone?

 

Sorry if this has already been raised in this thread, but I posed a question about 6 months ago on this site - why didn't MS just make the media drive removeable?

This unit must have been planned from the start (or at the very least, been considered) and have been in the pipeline ever since MS decided not to include a HD drive as standard.

Is there a technical reason why they wouldn't want to make it a user swapable part like countless laptops? It would be neater, probably cheaper to manufacture (with no external casing, power supply?) and - in my mind - better received by end users?

I seem to remember 'bus security' was raised as a possible issue but I cannot see any real benefit from making the drive internal - dismantling instructions were available within days of the 360 being released and the data connector is easily accessable.

 

What 100 million PS3s are people talking about here? As much as we know at this point, there might be less then 20 million in the next two years... It will indeed be a considerable force in the favor of BR, but just not that big. By the time Sony sells a 100 million PS3s, this whole format war would probably be over for years...

 

And believe you me, there will be a lot of HDTV owners who will buy "the first thing they can play Matrix and LOTR in HD first"... Surely not millions, but that's because HDTV is still not the norm. By the time it is, Bluray will also be established, at which point this argument will not be valid anymore so i'll just stop writing now.

Well if X360+HDDVD will be priced the same as PS3, the only problem i see the 360 solution have is the fact that you'll have 2 bloody drives, it will occupy more space, time to set up, and that there wont be as many HDDVD movies as BDROM.
Other than that, why not if it's a cheapo.

Excuse me??? Both HDDVD and Bluray can have movies encoded at 1080p. Framerate will always be the same, 24fps like every movie on the planet has.

Ps3 will definately be the easier option for many. Or a X360 with a HDDVD player straight in, instead of silly add-ons.

 

I agree. The way it's going, there might not even be 20M units PRODUCED in the next 2 years!!

 

The benefit of 1080p is 60fps, while 1080i can do 30fps just fine. So the real benifit comes from BluRay offering 1080p@60fps.

 

There's always a large enough market for standalone players, even if they were more expensive than the PS3.
Some people just don't care for the videogames and will buy the more expensive standalone player for their HT.

If MS had the "choice for consumer" (great! I don't have to buy that vacuum cleaner with my xbox360 if I don't need/want it!! instead I'll buy new shoes) in their mind from the beginning, why didn't they make the disc drive detachable in the xbox360?
A slot where you would have been able to slide in the new HD-DVD drive to replace the old DVD drive would have been much more elegant solution than a "double drive" xbox360, that totally destroys the design of the unit. Already the bulging HD looks a bit off, add to that another disc drive and it's power brick and together with the big xbox360 power unit we have a motley family of units cluttering your space.

Edit: Oh, seems FireGoblin was faster with the same question
Edit 2: Seems like everybody was faster, my post serves no purpose anymore

 

I think Sony will make price drops like for PS2 so this is no problem for Blu-ray.

I dont think this matters because PS3 will not reduce hifi product market. Actually I am surprised BD player is so cheap. I thought some one will have $10,000 or $20,000 item at CES. I can buy TEAC DVD player for $13,000.