Peter Moore says that Xbox360 could possibly adopt a Blu Ray addon

[Phil]

Of course they will, not the point.

If BR Fails: Pople who bought a ps3 are left in the dust, if they're gaming tails off, they no longer have a HD movie player. They need to start looking for a standalone...

This is no different than to those people that bought the HD-DVD add-on and dies later on. The key difference is: While on the PS3 no added costs was required to get that Blu-Ray as a movie player extra, the HD-DVD add-on for Xbox360 is limited to that usage which is gone if HD-DVD dies.

IF HD-DVD Fails: People who buy a 360 (in 2008, 2009, 2010) can upgrade to BR for a fraction of the price of a standalone.

That fraction of the cost is no more than that fraction of the cost Sony could offer a HD-DVD add on AND make a profit (just as Microsoft will be selling theirs to make an added profit).

So in both scenarios MS comes out pretty clean with no real losses, and it's more futureproof in the sense that no matter what happens, it will support the winning format. So no big losses either way, and a true marketing advantage if HD-DVD wins

I disagree. By actually saying that they'll support Blu-Ray if HD-DVD looses out doesn't exactly much confidence into the product that they supporting. On the other hand, Sony's strategy is clear and simple: Buy a PS3, you get a free Blu-Ray movie player with it. If Blu-Ray doesn't win, no big deal for the consumer - he never payed for an add-on and can still benefit from the usage of games using the Blu-Ray medium and its advantages. In fact, I'm betting 3 years down the road, no one will care much about having a Blu-Ray player in PS3 regardless which format wins, since the standalone players will be already sold at a cheaper price while being more convinient. Within the first years though while the format war is undecided, Sony's clear marketing strategy is an advantage as it's sending out the message "Blu-Ray is the future, there's no format war".

(Sony could create a external hd-dvd drive, but there's just no way they ever will, so it's a pretty meaningless statement)

Why wouldn't they? If Blu-Ray is dead and they can make more money by selling an add-on, there's no reason they wouldn't offer such a thing if the demand is there. However, this point is futile since I, as noted above, don't think they'll be much demand 3 years down the road since the minority will still be using their PS3/Xbox360 as movie players when standalone players will be sold at a lower price.

On the other hand, if BR wins then sony has a huge cost AND marketng advantage so I really doubt the BR addition is going to be much of a sales driver for 360 in that scenario.

Exactly.

At the most it will probably give people one less reason NOT to buy the 360 if they were leaning towards it, they can trust that it's futureproof at least.

That's a very flawed argument. It's not as if the PS3 will stop working if Blu-Ray fails. Reality check: PS3 will live on and games will still be using the format and its advantages. Since people didn't pay for a costly add-on in the first place, it isn't really a loss. Sony will have less of an advantage to push, that's about the only drawback I can think of. As I noted above though, this drawback won't be a big one 3 years down the road since stand-alone players will be sold cheaper by then (and to the consumers convinience).

 

[Magnum PI]

Well if BR loses ...

that's purely rethorical as BR won't lose.

 

[Magnum PI]

HDDVD/Bluray Thread No. 9834/b

*YAWN*

Wake me up when i can play HD movies in the UK either through HDDVD, Blufuckingray or *GASP**HERESY!!* HD broadcasts....

I suggest a new LCD vs CRT vs Plasma thread
Who is for it ?

 

[Magnum PI]

if peter moore really said that he's a fool

 

[London Geezer]

I suggest a new LCD vs CRT vs Plasma thread
Who is for it ?

Well now it would be a LCD vs CRT vs SED vs OLED vs Plasma vs LCOS vs GETALIFE thread...

I mean, i'm the first to jump in when it comes to this kind of thing, but really, enough is enough!! I rather watch Celebrity Big Brother. And that's saying something.

 

[one]

Do you all consider this a good thing due to flexibility or a bad (worrisome) thing due to lack of vision on Microsoft's part?

The vision of Microsoft is clear from the beginning, as in the Xbox 360 face plate J. Allard glorified as the symbol of "remix culture"

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I mean, i'm the first to jump in when it comes to this kind of thing, but really, enough is enough!! I rather watch Celebrity Big Brother. And that's saying something.

It's not THAT bad! It'll never be THAT bad!

 

[London Geezer]

It's not THAT bad! It'll never be THAT bad!

You mean you're not enjoying the absolute freak show this year's Celebrity Big Brother is giving us? Just Pete Burns alone is worth the ticket for Azkaban to let my brain and memories be sucked off...

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Do you all consider this a good thing due to flexibility or a bad (worrisome) thing due to lack of vision on Microsoft's part?

I consider all this 360 HD-DVD/BRD stuff to be just "meh." I never thought that HD optical format capacity was necessary or particularly useful for the 360. I feel the same regarding the PS3. On the consumer end, I'd rather just have a standalone player when the prices are reasonable, so what HD format either console can play is really of no concern to me. As I've said before, these HD drives are much more important to the backers of the media as pawns in the format war than they are to end users. IMO, anyone who thinks the majority of PS3 games will need BRD is fooling himself.

 

[London Geezer]

Well if MS start releasing "add-ons" like this, the X360 will just be your living room PC with upgradeable hardware. Like a PC will have all sorts of HDDVD and Bluray drives, so will the X360... Don't see the point to be honest... But if you wanted it to make sense, it kinda does...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

IMO, anyone who thinks the majority of PS3 games will need BRD is fooling himself.

Areas where all that capacity are needed seems few and far between, but something I'm wondering about is algorithmically generated levels. CON on PS2 used a dual-layer DVD for the data needed to create procedural maps, basically with lots of tile-sets. If you were to do the same next-gen, with loads of different highres multitextured 'tiles' storage should go well beyond 9 GB I imagine. Random maps is something I love, and contributes a lot to replayability IMO. I'd like ot see them used more, and I don't know that DVD9 would be up to the job. Though having said that, I expect it's highly unlikely developers will take up the challenge of procedurally generated levels. I also don't know what alternative methods there are with the extra power of these machines. Could less data be needed on disk if various transformations and light-calculations could be applied during loading? Would that make loading times too long, even if possible?

 

[expletive]

It seems that people are arguing that MS and the XBOX 360 are now worse off then they were before the announcement of an external HD-DVD drive. Is that really the case? I think the responses should range from 'no better off' to "FTW' but how can they be worse off then they were by having no solution?

 

[London Geezer]

I think the only option that would REALLY catapult them into heaven would be to get Samsung to finish those hybrid drives soon, and release a HDDVD+Bluray add-on for X360. Now THAT would be hot.

Not sure why they have to tie themselves to Toshiba and one format when we all know that the 2 formats will coexist alongside one another.

 

[mckmas8808]

I consider all this 360 HD-DVD/BRD stuff to be just "meh." I never thought that HD optical format capacity was necessary or particularly useful for the 360. I feel the same regarding the PS3. As I've said before, these HD drives are much more important to the backers of the media as pawns in the format war than they are to end users. IMO, anyone who thinks the majority of PS3 games will need BRD is fooling himself.

Well Kaz (President and CEO of SCEA) himself said that years later most PS3 games will be on Blu-ray. Is it possible that he is seeing or knows something that we don't? PR? Or the truth?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Well Kaz (President and CEO of SCEA) himself said that years later most PS3 games will be on Blu-ray. Is it possible that he is seeing or knows something that we don't? PR? Or the truth?

You're going to have to spend a LOT of money to fill up >9 GB of data, unless you ditch compression which would cripple load times. I imagine the only way most PS3 games will need BluRay is if most developers go bust and we only get a few games a year, all costing the earth to make.

 

[expletive]

Not sure why they have to tie themselves to Toshiba and one format when we all know that the 2 formats will coexist alongside one another.

Just to ensure that the war goes on longer. Whether or not this add-on proves relevant in the practical or adoption sense, i htink the diea is that its marketing and mindshare impact will have customers not see BR as an advantage and/or feel that the current format war is a dead heat. With the timetables MS has given though, i could see this being one of those peripherals that never sees the light of day.

EDIT: P.S. agreed on the universal player! Though at that time having a seperate stand alone becomes much easier to swallow.

 

[Berak]

Two years from now virtually NO ONE is really going to care which player supports HD movie playback, inexpensive dedicated players will be prevelant and offer better features along with ease of use.

Even if somehow HD-DVD wins the movie format war, Blu-ray will be used on nearly all future PS3 games and offer a great capacity advantage over DVD (which will ALWAYS be the game format for XBOX360). It's no different than when NIntendo comes up with some console specific format, it will always be used for at least that, and it's an advantage to the PS3.

However, with the almost unanomous support for Blu-ray from movie studios, it's hard to imagine anything other than complete industry wide domination of Blu-ray and the subsequent extinction of HD-DVD. The "free" Blu-ray player in the PS3 will ensure heavy market penetration at a very early and very critical stage of any format war.

Sony cannot lose the format war because "losing" it has no effect on them. They can only benefit.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Even if somehow HD-DVD wins the movie format war, Blu-ray will be used on nearly all future PS3 games and offer a great capacity advantage over DVD (which will ALWAYS be the game format for XBOX360). It's no different than when NIntendo comes up with some console specific format, it will always be used for at least that, and it's an advantage to the PS3.

it remains to be seen however if the games will actually be any better because they have more the 8gb of available space. And if some developers can split their games across multiple discs, that further reduces the 'advantage' of BR.

I just don't think BR is going to make a lick of difference in teh games, for at least the forst few years. And even after that, it will be few and far between, mainly RPG's which could probably be done with split discs, hell PS1 had tons of split disc games and it wasn't that big of a deal...

I think it's more a marketing advantage than a true advantage that we'll see resuklts from in game.

Sony cannot lose the format war because "losing" it has no effect on them. They can only benefit.

No but they can lose a whole shitload of money. If BR loses, it will not go into mass production around the world, and will not be cost reduced nearly as fast as it would have otherwise. It will stay expensive for sony for much longer, and will have been a wast of money in the forst place as well.

 

[London Geezer]

Two years from now virtually NO ONE is really going to care which player supports HD movie playback, inexpensive dedicated players will be prevelant and offer better features along with ease of use.

Even if somehow HD-DVD wins the movie format war, Blu-ray will be used on nearly all future PS3 games and offer a great capacity advantage over DVD (which will ALWAYS be the game format for XBOX360). It's no different than when NIntendo comes up with some console specific format, it will always be used for at least that, and it's an advantage to the PS3.

However, with the almost unanomous support for Blu-ray from movie studios, it's hard to imagine anything other than complete industry wide domination of Blu-ray and the subsequent extinction of HD-DVD. The "free" Blu-ray player in the PS3 will ensure heavy market penetration at a very early and very critical stage of any format war.

Sony cannot lose the format war because "losing" it has no effect on them. They can only benefit.

I kinda agree. It's almost like saying UMD has failed/will fail. It just CAN'T. It will always be used for PSP games and UMD Movie salales so far seem to be fine. Even without the movies, the UMD will always be used for PSP games and therefore cannot "fail". And so far only a few titles have been released.

Bluray on the other hand will have 100% of the movies studios supporting it, it already has more movies than HDDVD, and Sony/MGM/Disney will keep releasing titles on it whether we want them or not. Even IF a meteor strike destroys all of Sony's bluray facilities and ALL movies on Bluray will just stop production, the format will still be used for PS3 games.

Just thinking about Bluray somehow "failing" in the movie section, given the support it has from lots of companies much bigger than Sony, is beyond me. And if for some unexplicable reason it did fail, Bluray as a format will stil live in the form of PS3 games, at least the first party ones, some of which will sell millions.


HDDVD and Bluray will live alongside one another and i'm not even sure one will "die". Surely one will take the bigger market share compared to the other, and i think it will be Bluray just because of Ps3, but i don't think any of them will actually "die" a painful sudden death. Especially if MS stubbornly continues to support HDDVD for no apparent reason except trying to get into the main format's (the one supported by 100% of hollywood in this case) way.

 

[Berak]

I'll go on the record and say that I'd be very surprised if HD-DVD survives into 2008. I predict a summer 2007 end. The main reason being it doesnt have one single advantage over Blu-ray that is very relevant in long term production.