Rumortoid: Microsoft to launch Xbox 360 Blu-ray player as early as May 2008

Quick...start an online petition to keep Talladega nights ps3 exclusive

If Microsoft put a Blu-Ray in the 360, it's price will be higher than a PS3, Sony will benifit from this and also has royalties on the Blu-Ray player so it wins.

I don't see this happening. MS wants to push their downloadable stuff a la Apple TV. They don't want discs. They're happy with their DVDs.

They will never "put a Blu-Ray in the 360." Ever.

And yes, I realize that this is referring to an add-on drive like the HD-DVD drive.

Contrary to what Lightthrower believes, I think Microft, if they did this, would be intelligent enough to make the price competitive if not cheaper than buying a PS3 outright. In this way they would be adopting one of Sony's biggest touted bullet points on their corporate PowerPoint slides AND make consumers happy.

Plus, with the (arguably) stronger list of games coming out for the 360 versus the PS3, this would honestly make buying a PS3 a decision based solely on the games. And, according to all the NPD attach rate data, would mean that a lot more people would go the way of the 360.

This could potentially be a huge DETRIMENT to Sony. Let's hope Microsoft is ballsy and business savvy enough to do it. The irony of Sony winning the format war only to lose the console generation to the 360 BECAUSE of Blu Ray would make me piss myself with glee (only as an early adopter of HD DVD, not as a console fanboy... come on, I hafta look for the silver lining SOMEWHERE at this point... my HD DVD collection is begging me, haha).

It's a good move by the 'Soft. They planned for this possibility all along, I'm sure.

"a 360 with built-in Blu-ray capability."

may not be the best idea, as Lightthrower suggested, as EVERYONE would have to buy a new console if games were being made on Blu-ray, well it would be good for MS. An add on movie player would be the smartest move.

THE PICTURE IS A WINNER! Talledega Nights and 360 FOREVER!

:)

@ F Whipple

comment of the week,

good one

I doubt it.

That would be a great move for M-soft, but I think could potentially hurt Pstriple's sales figures.

screw digital distribution. im not waiting a day to download the same game everyone else is trying to download at the same time. think if lost odyssey was only downloadable. how long would that take? also the space being used on he HDD. and if something happens to the data. corrupted some how. you have to re-download it. instead of just putting in a disk. hard copies are here to stay. leave the downloading to music and porn.

I doubt we'll see a 360 with built-in Blu-ray, since that would go against the 360's marketing plan of allowing consumers choice in what components they want in their system. Otherwise, we would have seen the death of the core/arcade units by now. At best, there might be another add-on, which I'd have to think about buying. I plan to get a PS3, and the 360 is so loud when it's on compared to that.

Oh please be true. Microsoft, I want to give you more of my money. Make this thing for me. I will buy it.

SubOrbital, wake up. Blu-ray IS DVD. They're physically the same discs. They aren't completely incompatible formats like VHS and DVD. In a couple years the price of Blu-ray hardware will have come down to the point that most "DVD players" will be Blu-ray players as well. It won't make any sense for CE companies to continue to make DVD-only machines because Blu-ray players will play standard DVD's anyway.

After that, it's only a matter of time before DVD movies are phased out too. Retailers aren't going to want to stock both Blu-ray and DVD movies any more than they wanted to stock BR and HD-DVD.

Besides, prices on Blu-ray movies can only come down so much before they are going to be the same price as standard DVD's. Then there will really be no reason to continue to distribute regular DVD's. It'll cost the studios more money than they'll take in from them.

This idea that Blu-ray has an uphill battle to supplant regular DVD is just silly. It's going to happen quicker than DVD supplanted VHS.

Sounds both good and likely. They'd be fools not to make such a device available. I'm glad this nonsense format war is coming to a close. Now I can get back to ignoring one format, instead of two.

@FinalFist: Yes, Microsoft and everyone else is welcome to use Blu-ray and join the BDA (Blu-ray Disc Association). Even Toshiba can join and start making BD players.

Sony uses Windows Vista in its laptops, Microsoft can use Blu-ray in their game systems if they wanted to, too.

probably, hd-dvd is dead.

I'd rather get that then that HD-DVD-player to be honest :-)

way more bluray available here in europe because there are so many sony-whores around...

I seriously doubt that we’ll see a new 360 SKU with a built-in Blu-ray drive, but I would be surprised if we didn’t eventually see an add-on Blu-ray drive.

Can we get a Captain Obvious??

They need to go BR to stay competitive. Built-in would be smart if they can keep the price similar to what it is now, and as an add-on if it's going to be more expensive.

BR games may be a less intelligent idea, unless they release on both DVD and BR.

Not everyone has the highspeed internet connections to make downloading HD worthwhile, and as Mix said, there will always be people who want to own a hard copy of the movie rather than a digital copy.

@Quest

I use my consoles to play games not to play dvd/hdvd/blu-ray. I think Microsoft did the right thing in being non-committal on having an in-console HD player. If the price does not increase then sure, throw one in, but it won't make a difference to me.

For those that believe that digital downloads are coming soon keep dreaming. While they might become standard eventually, the broadband infrastructure in this country is just not there to allow that and it will not be for some time, I'd say at least a decade. Think I'm lying? Think again, I work for AT&T, and I've got first hand experience on how many people can get our broadband. And there are still people out there that don't own a pc, and even more that don't use the internet or still use dial-up, and you are going to force them to download a movie digitally? Keep dreaming. Not to mention the hard drive capacity is also not there at the moment but will probably be ready before the broadband is.

This new format will be around for at least 5 years, and at the time we'll see what will be next.