Blu-ray on Xbox 360? Don't Hold Your Breath!

[admin]

Just days after Microsoft exec Steve Ballmer alluded to a Blu-ray device for Xbox 360, the rumor was quashed. Yesterday Aaron Greenberg, group product manager of Xbox 360 reaffirmed his team’s commitment to high-def movie downloads instead of a high-def disc format.


Discuss "Blu-ray on Xbox 360? Don't Hold Your Breath!" here. Read the article.

[GlocksRock]

What are their plans for the XBOX 720 or whatever the next gen MS console is called? Do they not plan to put an optical drive in it, if so, are they dumb enough to stay with DVD and not go to Blu Ray? At some point they are going to have to come to the realization that they need to implement a blu ray drive into their console.

[mikeyj92]

I agree GlocksRock. Eventually, MS will HAVE to implement a BD drive, either in a 360 Add-on (I highly doubt this will happen), or in the next console they come out with.

They are already running into space issues as I believe MLB 2K7 on the 360 had some things put on the marketplace to DL for free that came on the PS3 version of the disc...I have not confirmed this, only read it on a few boards.

I called it a while ago...the PS3 will be enjoying it's "prime" and MS will be coming out with yet another console. I severely question the immediate future of the 360 once the RRoD 3-yr warranty coverage ends. This is sneaking up on us all. What will MS do? Extend the coverage, pissing off investors even more or will they just charge us all to get them fixed? Neither answer is good...and since they still can't put a reliable 360 out for consumers, the end is becoming more clear for the 360, imo.

[GlocksRock]

I am hearing that MGS4 for the PS3 is using a 50 gig Blu ray disc, and they are already running out of room on it. If games continue at this pace, there is no way MS will be able to not put one in their next console, they need the space.

[Pyrrho]

Those of you who say that they need to eventually add Blu-Ray capability are simply wrong. If they need additional information beyond DVD's capability on an optical disc for their gaming system, they can use another format. My guess is that they could probably get the rights to use something akin to HD-DVD very cheaply. Or they could put in an entirely new system. Or, since they are interested in downloading HD movies, they could have it such that the extra data is online, not on the disc itself. Blu-Ray is absolutely not necessary in their gaming system.

And, as mentioned in the article, they might add Blu-Ray at some point in the future, if they think it is a good idea at the time. So, it may or may not be a part of a future version of their system.

[j_garcia]

Isn't necessary, but it would make things a lot easier on them.... Plus we are talking about the 360, not the next generation. They WILL have to do something for the next gen, but it doesn't necessarily have to be BD.

They CAN do it with DVD, they will just have to include more discs

[Alamar]

I see no current talks with the Blu group to add a Blu player to the 360 to be no great loss.

Movie playback on the XBox systems has historically been pretty bad so there's no reason to expect it would get better with Blu.

As far as data capacity for games I don't think that they should just change the spec ... they are stuck as far as this generation of consoles goes.

As far as the future goes MS didn't indicate that they'd never talk to the Blu people ... they just aren't doing it right now.

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As for the 720 device it's likely too early to start worrying too much about it.

[Thunder18]

I agree GlocksRock. Eventually, MS will HAVE to implement a BD drive, either in a 360 Add-on (I highly doubt this will happen), or in the next console they come out with.

They are already running into space issues as I believe MLB 2K7 on the 360 had some things put on the marketplace to DL for free that came on the PS3 version of the disc...I have not confirmed this, only read it on a few boards.

I posted it somewhere but one of the heads at Rockstar mentioned that because A: dvd's have less capacity and B: not all 360's have hard drives, they were actually having some serious hold-ups in developing the Xbox360 version of GTA IV.