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Maybe no Blu-ray drive for 360

by on17 March 2008

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It seems now they are not considering it

Well, after Sony execs and even some Microsoft execs were telling people that they were thinking Blu, now Microsoft is telling just about everyone who will listen that this is, indeed, false. At least for the time being they are saying that they are not in talks with Sony about adding a Blu-ray drive to the Xbox360 either in an internal or external version.

Microsoft claims now that they are happy just being able to provide HD content via the Xbox Live service and right now that is more than enough HD digital content to keep gamers happy. They don’t say “never,” and they do leave the door open a crack, but it just a small crack.

We look at this as more damage and spin control than anything else. Since Blu-ray is the established standard moving forward, for Microsoft not to even be considering the support of Blu-ray on the Xbox 360 would be a foolish move on their part. Besides, although Microsoft does indeed offer a lot of HD content via the Xbox Live service, most Xbox 360 users are stuck with 20GB hard drives which are hardly big enough to hold a great deal of HD content, and those who have upgrades to the 120GB drive are not really that much better off, either.

Our take on this is simple…while they may not be offering it anytime soon, it is likely bound to happen because it will be necessary in order to continue to lengthen the longevity of the platform when competing with the PlayStation 3. The PlayStation 3 is fully upgradeable to support Blu-ray Profile 2.0, and once that hits and if it gains some momentum, it will be hard for Microsoft to not offer a Blu-ray solution and continue to remain competitive by only offering HD content over Xbox Live.

Although we have not really heard more than whispers about it, we do expect Microsoft to offer either a 250GB or 320GB hard drive upgrade before the end of the year; there is just too much to download and not enough room to store it all.

Last modified on 17 March 2008
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