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Report: Microsoft's Bach's Three Reasons For No Blu-ray On Xbox 360
by David Jenkins [Console/PC, Exclusive]
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January 9, 2009
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Microsoft still has no plans to create a Blu-ray add-on for the Xbox 360, says Entertainment & Devices boss Robbie Bach, talking to tech site TechFlash at the ongoing Consumer Electronics Show.
When asked about plans to add Blu-ray tech to the Xbox 360, Bach simply said, "We have no plan to do that." Pressed further on the subject, he said there are "a lot of reasons" for the decision.
"It’s not a feature we get a ton of requests for. We really don’t," said Bach. "When you ask people the list of things they want to see us spending time creating in Xbox, Blu-ray is way, way down on the list."
Speculation that Microsoft would create a Blu-ray add-on disc drive for the Xbox 360, or a model of the console featuring a standard Blu-ray drive, has persisted ever since the collapse of the Microsoft-supported HD-DVD format last year.
"The second thing is, from a technical perspective, it doesn’t help us in the core of what Xbox does, which is in gaming," Bach continued.
"We can’t have publishers produce games on Blu-ray disc. Because then they won’t play on the 28 million Xboxes we’ve already shipped. So it doesn’t help us in the core gaming space."
"The third thing, and this maps to all three of those, is that it costs a lot of money," added Bach. "And so the scenario is, OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it."
Bach said that Microsoft's partnership with Netflix and other video on demand initiatives for the Xbox 360 were an existing solution for consumers seeking high-definition video via their consoles.
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(Oh, and of course people aren't asking for Bluray in the 360. If they want to play a Bluray, they just use their PS3!
Oh snap!)
If Microsoft is smart they lose the drives entirely on the next gen and commit to digital distribution (which in 3 or 4 years will be hitting the sweet spot of momentum already).
On the other hand, episodic content such as the add-ons for Half-Life 2 are prime for that sort of distribution.
I'm dying to see a "comic book" type of game.
Not in style, mind you, as that's been done to death, but in that it isn't as long as a normal title and comes around every three or four months.
The idea of a studio spending millions (and sometimes millions and millions) of dollars for something that'll wind up being unprofitable isn't the best scenario.
It makes it harder to justify the go-ahead on a more, er, experimental project.
If you cut that into smaller chunks and delivered it on avenues like Steam, Xbox Live, Sony's online service, etc incrementally, you could maybe better measure the success of a title without as much investment.
Then the capital from the first episode could be allocated for the second and so on.
I think eventually it will all come down to digital distribution.
The bottom line is you have to pay too much for a physical medium that eventually becomes waste and is expensive to produce.
I already got rid of DirectTV for PlayOn with Hulu & Netflix and have bought over a dozen titles on all three of the aforementioned networks with outstanding results.
Come to think of it, I only buy music if it's digital as well.
No need for an expensive blue drive.