Xbox 360 Finally Getting Blu-ray

Starturtle writes "Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer had admitted that Microsoft had been working on support for Blu-ray under Windows during this year's Mix08 conference. Rumors began to swirl and many began to expect Microsoft to announce a Blu-ray peripheral for the Xbox 360. However, Microsoft came out and denied all rumors, stating that they were not exploring any kind of Blu-ray add-on or in talks with Sony about integrating Blu-ray into the Xbox experience. After months of rumors and denials, the Xbox 360 with a Blu-ray disc drive is due to be manufactured soon and shipped in Q3 of 2008. Pegatron Technology, an OEM subsidiary of Asustek Computer, is reported to have received the winning order from Microsoft for a Blu-ray equipped Xbox 360."

Big Corp Lies

News at 11!

Re:

They were hoping to announce it when they bought Yahoo!, but since someone isn't playing ball they just figured they'd put it on two peoples' blogs.

What's your point?

Did you have the right to know Microsoft's future plans 6 months ago? Does Microsoft have the right to know yours?

Why should they pre-announce a new feature 9-12 months in advance? People might wait to buy an XBox 360 until then. And sales would go down for 360s and fewer games would be made, and Microsoft shareholders would lose, and current 360 owners would lose. I wonder why they might lie?

What would you do? Tell the truth and screw over the 360 owners and the MS shareholders?

Re:

There is a huge difference between not telling the truth and lying. Not telling the truth is declining to comment to keep a secret without being deceptive, in most countries that is always an individual's right outside of court and even inside court when y

Re:What's your point?

Also, saying "we do not comment on unannounced products" pretty much admits that the product in question exists.

Not if your smart enough to reply that way when asked about products that don't exist too...

Hey Microsoft, are you going to realease Windows for the Cell processor?
  "we do not comment on unannounced products"

Are you going to release a universal remote to compete with logitech's harmony?
  "we do not comment on unannounced products"

What did we learn? not much.

corporate denials

the corporate denials were being taken with a very big pinch of salt by everybody... sure, they weren't in talks with *Sony* to put a Bluray drive into it.

phew, at least that dilemma is sorted out. just one big one left...

the next 360 game should be Steve Ballmer on a snow board chasing Jerry Yang, trying to hit him with a chair, called Yamped!

Re:

Thank God. That was a match made in hell. MS doesn't have any strengths in their own company that would be a good match with Yahoo's products and expertise. The move was nothing more than a panic buy to "compete" against Google.

And they're still refusing

to confirm it. All this article is is a claim that a Blu-Ray version of the 360 is being manufactured - which is what rumour sites have been suggesting since the death of HD-DVD. Until Microsoft confirms it, or we see one in the wild, this is still hearsay and speculation.

Re:And they're still refusing

Well, in the mean time we can try to find the original news article. Its from the Chinese-language Economic Daily News. Here's the Chinese original [udn.com] (thanks Kotaku's Dutch!) and the Google translation [google.com]

What is the point exactly?

Why do people want Blu-ray in their 360? Just to watch Blu-ray videos?

Certainly no game manufacturer would do a Blu-ray game since it could not be guaranteed to be in every machine. So what is the point?

If you want to watch Blu-ray videos then you could use some other method, why hook it to a 360?

Re:What is the point exactly?

If you want to watch Blu-ray videos then you could use some other method, why hook it to a 360?

First, why the hell not?

Second, to reduce the clutter of more boxes under your TV (apart from the extra drive of course).

Third, it will also presumably be a lot cheaper than buying either a PS3 or a dedicated blu-ray player. And if you already have a 360 (some people do, for some reason..), why not?

* proud owner of a PS3 >_> currently pissed off that GTAIV isn't playing nicely with PS Network *

Re:

Third, it will also presumably be a lot cheaper than buying either a PS3 or a dedicated blu-ray player.

I dunno. I just got a new 40GB PS3 for $230 using some well known deals/tricks (plus the 50 buck credit that Amazon gave me for buying a $50 360 HDDVD

Re:

The Cell processor is hardly 'standard' computer hardware.. the 360 is a lot more standard, kind of similar to Macs of yesteryear in that it uses a PPC processor. I agree that they are rubbish, but that's mostly just because they're designed by Microsoft r

Re:

I'm not sure why you feel the XBox 360 is dated (from a functional point of view).

It's true that most cross platform ports do look identical, at least when they are not moving. Unfortunately when they are moving, there are issues on the PS3.

GTA, for exampl

Neat!

After the secondary-market price of the original unit goes down as a result of this, I may actually buy a used 360.

What purpose would it serve?

No developer could take advantage of it given all the 360s out there with DVD drives.

And furthermore, you're going to add another new layer of complexity onto an already flaky hardware?

It's like building a beautiful sculpture on top of a condemned building about to collapse.

Re:

The XBox360 architecture was never designed to support anything other than DVDs. Even with the HD-DVD peripheral, XBox360 games could not have taken advantage of the extra space that seems to be in demand nowadays. But I agree, XBox360 is the worst reliab

Re:

The Xbox architecture was never designed to support anything other than DVD's? Nonsense, it was built with extensibility in mind, just like any other console. The fact that there was an HD-DVD add-on proves that. An integrated Blu-Ray (or even an add-on

Re:

that's a warranty, which they promised, presumably, before they knew it was going to fail on such a large scale. they're legally obligated to honor that warranty. if microsoft were to replace it for free, AND give us a half off coupon for the next time our 360s fail (by which time the warranty will be gone), i might consider giving them credit for that.

Actually, they extended the warranty to three years after they found out how high the failure rate was.

Add-on or built in?

All articles seem to point to a new 360 SKU with "built in" Bluray, so are we to believe that they have abandoned the "add-on" idea? It seems to me that an "add-on" would be better as it would prevent the alienation of the early adopters.

Re:

It's a little more complex than that.

20,000 people might be willing to buy them at $500. With that volume, it might cost $350 to manufacture.

If 25,000 people are willing to pay $375, but the manufacturing costs only drop to $300, then it makes sense to ke

What does victory look like?

Actually Blu Ray [gizmodo.com] hasn't been selling better since the death of HD DVD. They have a few theories but I think that for a lot of folks out there(like me) DVD is good enough. DVD is easy to backup,cheap, and with an upscaling player looks good enough on most folks sets.

I have no way of backing this up, but I would guess that I'm fairly typical: I spent so much time waiting for a clear victor in this format war that by the time one appeared, I wasn't sure I even wanted one anymore. I mean, I'm sure I'll wind up with one

Killer Features

There are only a few real killer features that separate one console from another. Integrated Blu-Ray movie support was the PS3's biggest advantage. If the 360 can manage this and beat the PS3 on price, Sony may be screwed.

The 360's killer feature is Xbox Live. They nailed it, and it's going to be a license for them to print money just as Windows has been. Even if Sony comes out with better online support, it's too late. What good does that do when all your friends are on Microsoft's service?

This may be a death blow to the PS3, because it may not have anything left to offer over the 360. Better reliability and the ability to run Linux in a limited environment aren't going to be enough.

Sony will not be screwed

I bet they're getting a handsome licence fee for every Blu-ray reader sold. So Microsoft will be paying them every time they sell a 360.

They've already won the format war, they have little chance of winning the console war (A large chunk of PS3 sales have

Re:

What will the cost be? TFA doesn't say anything. Also, can you hook it up to your 360 simultaneously with your HD-DVD drive?

You can now buy laptops with inbuilt Bluray reader and DVD/CD read/write drive for not much more than that same laptop without the Bluray reader. The reason why it is relatively cheap to do this is the actual Bluray diode is right next to the DVD/CD diode