It's been a particularly flavorful week of corporate trash talk this week, with Microsoft and Sony each getting their digs in. Now Microsoft has decided to take a steaming dump over Blu-ray, by way of UK boss Stephen McGill. What is this, 2007?
"I think people may have spoken about [Xbox's lack of a Blu-ray drive] originally, but that's long gone," says McGill. "I think people now recognize what a smart decision it was to keep the pricing low, and actually Blu-ray is going to be passed by as a format. People have moved through from DVDs to digital downloads and digital streaming, so we offer full HD 1080p Blu-ray quality streaming instantly, no download, no delay. So, who needs Blu-ray?"
Blu-ray has been one of Sony's more successful format deviations, and has at least managed to stick around for the past few years. Given this industry's obsession with graphics and size, I can't see Blu-ray dying quite as easily as McGill thinks.
What do you reckon. Will Microsoft have to embrace Blu-ray, or is McGill right in thinking nobody needs it?
Interview - Stephen McGill, UK Xbox Boss Talks The Future, Halo, Rare & More [Xbox360Achievements via CVG]
Contest:
8:20 AM on 09.22.2010 | 
Wouldnt mind a wee blu-ray drive for the xbox just to get rid of juddery cutscenes.
Moron.
/thread
When it comes to RENTAL, Streaming is DEFINITELY the future, but for owning, its still all about Blu-ray.
Then again, it's not like Sony's been particularly smart this week, either.
To be fair, he's right.
It's just that it's going to be atleast 10 years and I imagine it'll still be going in 20.
This is the worst smack talk of the bunch so far too, Microsoft, try harder.
Yeah, sure. :)
Yup, that pretty much sums it up. You don't watch news or read newspapers do you? You cut out the boring jazz, find the thing that'll make people go "Z0MG" (for better or worse) and ta-da! News!
It's been like that here in America since the Spanish-American war my dear. Damn Yanks just eat it up too.
Sure, because tabloid/sensationalist journalism isn't a plague in any _other_ country, right? (Looking at you, UK.)
Anyway, I'm not sure why this is a story. Random suit opens their mouth about things they don't know about? This never happens. Ever. Certainly not a hundred times a week.
Get over it, MS. HDDVD lost, BluRay won. Embrace it.
True but I don't consider a 10 year life cycle as being "passed over".
VS
1 full Blu-ray disc wich can be read in ~max 10-15 minutes?
Yeah, Blu-ray is probably a useless inventment...
ps: disc swapping.
However, Nintendo has never supported movie playback with its disc based systems and the Wii isn't exactly struggling. It's anyone's game.
Sterling is a gaming-focused online tabloid writer, it's true. He is british, after all. I've mostly gotten used to it, though, and rarely comment on it anymore.
As far as the article, I like Blu-ray mainly because of the storage capacity advantage. Games are only going to get bigger.
I will say though that a lot of the required installs on the PS3 are because the Blu-ray drive is way slower than a DVD drive. Load times would be ridiculous without it for certain games.
I can't ever see Blu-Ray becoming redundant in the near future, especially with the larger ones coming out.
MS would be dumb to do away with physical storage altogether in the next generation.
Also, the extra space on a blu-ray disc (25gb - 50gb) compared to a DVD (8gb - 16gb) is well worth the price. I still can't believe that some 360 games require 3 - 4 DVDs to play. Seriously, is this 1999?
Microsoft is still a great company and I really like the Xbox 360 but I think they released a system lacking in many features that they're now just making up for (e.g. built-in Wi-fi). Hopefully next generation on the Xbox 720 (or whatever it's called) they use a different format other than just standard DVD. It's becoming more and more outdated (at least in the video game industry) every day.
Games are shorter, content is cut. The HD generation has done nothing but nickel-and-dime gamers on content. And part of problem is actually Sony. See, it turns out the storage goes to waste on "lossless" audio and video, shit that could be compressed to the point where loss on quality was hardly noticeable.
I'm a bit of an audio fetisist, I know where that fine line is. It takes a lot of compression for me to start noticing it and that's only if I'm trying. On Blu Ray, its all left uncompressed consuming more space than it needs to. And its the same for video and other assets, some of which probably could be compressed, but just aren't.
As far as movies go, I couldn't give a damn about Blu Ray, not even to own. Netflix does the job just fine and takes up no shelf space.
You could say that the reason Blu-ray is being poorly used is because Microsoft have no equivalent in their console.
Did I say it isn't in any other country? Sensationalist has been around since the Serpent told Eve that God was trying to be a dick about the Forbidden Fruit. In fact the whole book that story is taken out of is sensationalist.
I was just making a point. No need to be so defensive.
Less being defensive and more of a gentle poke, really. Journalism as a whole is a lost art, and I imagine that's true no matter what country one happens to be in.
The man has never watched a Blu ray movie in his life!! No matter what the numbers they put next to the movie titles, a streaming movie in high def will never look as good as one being played from a disk! There's a difference between PR hyperbole and just plain lies.
And with the games, the developers will want more and more space. Digital downloads still haven't caught on yet and I doubt people will be happy to sit and wait while their 10GB download finished so they can play GTA 5000.
True.
The way I see it every story is just a gateway to go learn more. But you should never take the story for full face value.
It'd be nice though. Investigative journalism in particular both in gaming and in general is just totally dead. It makes me sad.
....DO YOU COME FROM A LAND DOWN UNDER?
....DO YOU COME FROM A LAND DOWN UNDER?