Gates sez: We might add HD-DVD to the Xbox 360 -- Joystiq

Gates sez: We might add HD-DVD to the Xbox 360

by Peter Rojas { Jun 28th 2005 at 2:20PM }

We tried really hard not read too much into Microsoft and Toshiba's tie-up yesterday over HD-DVD, but apparently Bill G. mentioned during a press conference in Tokyo yesterday that they might consider releasing an updated version of the Xbox 360 with an HD-DVD drive (though to be fair, Gates and other Microsoft execs were quick to point out that the company isn't endorsing HD-DVD over its arch-rival Blu-ray). Slapping in an HD-DVD drive would jibe with what Steve Ballmer hinted at us during his interview with us at E3 last month, especially since the lack of a next-gen optical drive is one of the clearest technical disadvantages the Xbox 360 faces when compared with the PlayStation 3, which will sport a Blu-ray drive.

[Thanks, McVety]

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

jg @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

would they release both one with hd-dvd and one without because if thats the case i'll be waiting for the hd-dvd release. i think making 2 versions would be a big mistake.

Jazzay @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

omg... what is there to say really, this is really really... no i dont know what to say, itll make the market interesting, with MS and all of their marketing backing HD-DVD with PS3 backing Blu-ray

but how would a updated version of x360 with hd-dvd make any sense? so MS is going to make x360 hddvd exclusive games? alright, so i got out and buy an xbox360 and i find out that 2 months later i cant play any of the new games.... id be pretty pissed

pointfour @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

They should do this from the beginning, or not at all. It would be better if they did it from the beginning, even if the cost did go up.

Dralt @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Wow!

They need to come out and clear this mess.

Otherwise, no one is going to buy the initial release of the 360.

What a dumb situation they created for themselves.

ty @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I dont see the point ... publishers are gonna put their stuff out on DVD so that it remains compatible with first gen xboxes and so not to piss off early adopters. So, its only their for hd-dvd movies?

r0Be @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I agree this would be a huge mistake. IMO, it is hard to get people to purchase any new tech device, knowing that an upgraded/enhanced/changedinanyway version is going to be released. Not that with most other technologies people don't expect it, they just can't be aware of it during the purchase, if you still want them to buy. In the videogame world, I don't believe most people like, or appreciate upgrades. I could be wrong.

Being first out of the gate, IMO is a drawback (IMO this is backed up throughout VG history). Being first out and telling people/hinting about a possible upgrade is not good at all. I can't see this adding additional launch support....only taking support away. Maybe not permanently, but definitely delaying support.

Personally, I am going to get a Revolution. Always have bought N...always will (Zelda owns me). That said, I am still seriously looking at both of the other two competitors. I have plenty of disposable income, and could easily justify picking up one or the other (not both...good lord, three consoles and a PC....I have a wife, she would kill me before I got them all unwrapped). IMO Sony's wait and develop an all together solution is currently more appealing to me. MS's big draw is the organized approach to online gaming. I can't say which exclusives I'd rather....most likely Sony's....but Halo is a killer ap.

Ken @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

If Gates' point is to sow FUD and thus hurt the PS3, you would think he'd be concerned about obsolescing the new Xbox before it even ships.

Mashko @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

The PS3 has been more appealing from the beginning. There are diehard X-Box fans that will live or die by the Box. I have the original, played it for a week, haven't touched it since. But like any other tech geek out there, I'll get both, I'll even get the Revolution. Microsoft has to do HD, plain and simple. It makes it more appealing especially since the games won't even look that great compared to the competition.
http://dmashko.typepad.com

domer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

If the 360 isn't released with the drive, then games won't come out in HD DVD format. Since the 360 can't support 1080p, it doesn't really need an HD drive. It would merely serve as a means to play HD DVD movies and (the biggest reason) to please Toshiba, their new partner. I hardly consider it a mistake, since it will have no impact on the gaming aspect of the 360. Here's a good article on the capabilities of the 360 and PS3 to actually render games at 1080p:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453&p=10
Basically, the 360 isn't designed for that much throughput, but is quite ideal for 720p or 1080i. The PS3 theoretically can do it (although forget about 1080p across two screens), but probably won't for most games until a couple of years into the consoles life.

domer @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

If the 360 isn't released with the drive, then games won't come out in HD DVD format. Since the 360 can't support 1080p, it doesn't really need an HD drive. It would merely serve as a means to play HD DVD movies and (the biggest reason) to please Toshiba, their new partner. I hardly consider it a mistake, since it will have no impact on the gaming aspect of the 360. Storage won't be an issue with the compression technology the 360 is employing and the lack of 1080p support.

Here's a good article on the capabilities of the 360 and PS3 to actually render games at 1080p:
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2453&p=10
Basically, the 360 isn't designed for that much throughput, but is quite ideal for 720p or 1080i. The PS3 theoretically can do it (although forget about 1080p across two screens), but probably won't for most games until a couple of years into the consoles life.

Spartacus @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Mashko- Though I respect you opinion, that's all it is. Neither system is out, so you can't say one's graphics will be better than the other. For all intensive purposes, the 360's CPU's are much better suited for gaming and ATI's GPU is no lightweight. Let's forget about the vs war for one freakin' post, shall we?

In regards to the actual topic here, it would behoove Microsoft to include a next-gen optical drive on the 360. Though I doubt NEITHER the 360 or the PS3's games will require that much storage, the platforms have to weather through the next 4-5 years of technological advances, so in order to make them "future proof" they need to include them. If nothing else, if both platforms are HD enabled, I would want to be able to watch High Def movies on them (saves me another purchase).

Carl @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Spartacus... I feel similar to Mashko.. and he wasnt exactly going all caps flaming xbox, I personally prefer sony but if Msoft does this from the start it will be good news, better games, more importantly... or atleast they better... BETTER HALO!

Come on no one can deny that Halo is one of the best Live and LAN party games out there, if not the best, I have xbox, and own 2 games for it.. wanna guess which ones?
The reason I dont buy in theres is simply in MY experience ps2 has been much more reliable... my xbox which doesnt get as much use as ps2 is on its death bed yet my ps2 that I got on a trip to canada during launch week still runs perfectly...

Anyway... more competition = helps the gamers "win"

Still havnt held judgement on this next gen.. but from my last gen experience.. I'll wait and hear some horror stories from both sides before I pick.. but I'll eventually get all 3.

Wes Felter @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

It doesn't matter whether the 360 "needs HD-DVD on day one" or not. The drives probably won't exist in November, so the 360 has to ship without them.

Dave @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

XBOX360 X32 anyone?
Jeez ... Freeze the specifications and leave it at that.

Azalyn @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I think people are missing the idea here.

As someone else mentioned in these comments, it's extremely unlikely that this will be for the games. Rather it will be for HD-DVD *movies* only. The reason Billy boy didn't specify is likely to get all the Microsoft zombies to pee their pants. I imagine the vast majority of people wont use actual logic and will assume that they are talking about games. Thus creating a bunch of unnecessary hype.

It's sad when companies do this, they intentially remain ambiguous to mislead the public.

Personally though, as much as I dislike Microsoft (Linux user here), I have to say that defeating Blu-Ray is more important. And if it takes Microsoft to do it, then fine.

Another example of being misleading is Sony's Blu-Ray as matter fact (since we're on the subject). They keep hyping up the "100GB" factor, but people don't realize that the first blu-ray player will be a 50GB player, more then this would be too expensive (and the 100GB standard isn't even READY yet). Which establishes a precedent, this means movies will never be able to take advantage of more than 50GB of space. Even if PC's end up supporting more in the future. As for PC's, 100GB would only really be necessary for burning discs. Now tell me, do you really think it's easy to create a burner capable of burning FOUR layers!? It took YEARS to come up with a dual-layer (DVD9) burner for DVD! So yeah, I have no idea who will be making use of this 100GB space. It works in 'theory' but in practice they will never make the deadline. HD-DVD is expected to have actual players by the end of the year. With burners to come in spring 2006. Sony will never meet those deadlines. Thankfully it seems that they've lost this war.

By the way, I want to address two things before ending this post.

First off, I know that Sony is apparently forcing HD support down our throats, I'm wondering what is the 'mandatory' resolution. I imagine it's 720p (and/or 1080i), since making 1080p mandatory would be insane. But doesn't this really mean that you end up wasting processing power on that? Say a competing console like the Revolution doesn't make HD mandatory, they could squeeze more processing power simply by making a 480p game instead. Just an interesting thing to ponder about.

Now, the second thing... Some people seem to look down on people who only go for one console. Now I admit that it definitely gives the impression of closed-mindedness when people only like one system. I've seen people get labeled fanboys or fangirls even when they cite more down-to-earth reasons for prefering the console. Certainly not all of these people are crazy.

I think a lot of us remember what the war was like back in the old days between Nintendo and SEGA. See, that's what I would call "good competition". But things have changed today. In the old days a medicore title couldn't sell regardless of what license or franchise it had stamped on it, these days, we've got games like "Enter the Matrix" outselling titles like Xenosaga (I remember reading such a headline). I mean really, don't you guys think the game market is in trouble here? Sony and Microsoft have essentially turned it into some crazy pissing contest about who is cooler and hipper. Back in the old days I could see myself supporting both Nintendo and SEGA, and even other companies from the era like 3DO or NEC. But today, I just can't stand what Sony and Microsoft have been trying to do to this market. I'm all for competition, but not when the competitor is more monopolistic and greedy than the previous company. I've seen people over the last few years praise Microsoft. I mean, I can understand praising of Sony, it's not like we know much about them, we've only now in the past few years learned what their way of business is, since it's much harder to tell a company's attitude from just looking at consumer electronics. But Microsoft!? I mean come on... I come from a community of users that are VERY familiar with Microsoft's business model, the OpenSource community. In the past few years Microsoft has launched FUD campaigns to discredit Linux, they've paid SCO to sue IBM for allegedly putting Unix code into Linux (a frivolous claim), and they continue lying to the masses about many things. Why are people trusting them? Do you think Microsoft will leave their Xbox live service free (the xbox360 will have a free mode I hear) if they take the lead and crush the opposition? Of course not! Even the current Live service is costing them billions along with all the other losses, they simply CANNOT maintain that kind of loss. Whats that you say? Nonesense? Well, why don't you look around. Microsoft is the company that suggested we should 'rent' our software rather than pay a flat fee for it, do you see yourself renting MS Word? And Microsoft is the company that suggested we should pay to send emails to reduce spam. Thankfully, they have limited control over the PC market, they can control the desktop, but they have no power when it comes to the internet itself. Since too many other OS's and companies would have to agree to support this, and they likely wont. However, with a game console, they have all the control, and you can bet that if Microsoft reaches any significant level of power, they WILL take advantage of it. If any of you think Sony is bad with lying (PS2 to push 66 million polygons? yeah right, more like 7) and their alienation of developers (ask any developer if they would rather develop on the PS2's hardware or the GameCube's if the marketshare for each were equal, they'll likely tell you that the PS2 is suicide-inducing in it's complexity), then you've seen nothing yet.

I know my statements will obviously be seen as fangirlish, but please, read it with a level head, and you'll see that I'm simply a very concerned geek/gamer. Nintendo has never given me any reason to not trust their statements, often times their results actually exceed many statements (the GameCube was supposed to push 9 million polygons, and it can actually push 14 or even 18 in some cases). I was raised on Nintendo and SEGA, and I was sad to see SEGA end up a third party. And although I know there's no chance this can happen to Nintendo, I don't want to see companies like Sony in the lead anymore. Sony has had their fun, they've had two generations of leadership. I think enough is enough. I don't want gaming to be a "feature" of my console, I want it to be the very reason for the console's existance. This multimedia crap was okay when it was just CD's and DVD's, but they're taking it too far. Now Sony is trying to involve *us* in their stupid format war, and making their system support all these different media formats (SD, MemoryStick, Flash) which raises the cost to astronomical levels. You know that the blu-ray drive alone is likely going to be 1/4th of the whole price right? That's freakin' insane for a feature that isn't standard at all! When th PS2 came out, DVD was at least already a standard!

Anyways, that's my rant. I ended up saying more than I set out to say. Maybe I should post this in a more permenant location, hehe...

Anyways, I imagine I'll just be written off as an upitty fangirl upset that her console is losing, even after offering up different arguments. But I just needed to say this stuff somewhere.

For those who actually took the time to read, thank you.

Abiel Perez @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I think that they should add HD-DVD player
to XBOX 360 because then PlayStation 3 would beat XBOX 360 and that is not good because
Microsoft has always ber a better brand than Sony is suck compared to Microsoft.

BoNeZ @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Personally I don't think that Microsoft would be stupid enough to release an inferior version of their console at launch with no chance of consumers getting an upgrade. I'm guessing that MS may fit the Xbox 360 with an optical drive port similar to those seen on some laptops. Thereby allowing optical drives to simply be swapped around and easily upgraded.

Although this may bring the Xbox 360 one step closer to becoming a PC, something which Microsoft is clearly trying to avoid, this may be the better option for them. On the other hand they could handle countless customers complaints and requests for a free upgrade to the HD-DVD ready Xbox 360.

Also for those who say that HD content will be available over Xbox Live, this of course will be true, but with the exception of movies. Complete movies in 1080i HD quality would be far too large to download, and a single 1080i movie would almost fill up the entire 20GB hard drive! So now you see why a HD-DVD drive is crucial for HD quality movies.

I really believe that the removable optical drive would be the best way to go for Microsoft. It shouldn't be too hard for them to implement into the design, it wouldn't damage the consoles looks (it would be covered by the removable faceplate), and it wouldn't be very expensive to implement.

It is very possible that Microsoft have already had this idea, and have already incorporated a removable optical drive into the Xbox 360, only time will tell.

NoK610 @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

I think this could be MS's big bang attack. What if they do sneak in that HD-DVD drive at the last minute just to shove something down Sony's throat, or maybe not. I'm not too concerned really for I don't have an HDTV. No HDTV, no HD-DVDs... no loss here. Just give me a damn release date and flippin' price so I can pre-order it, gosh!

Mashko @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

FYI, heard somewhere that MS will release Halo 3 the same day PS3 is realeased, probably just a rumor.
http://dmashko.typepad.com

haloman @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

Mashko, Bill Gates said in Time magazine back in May that Bungie would release Halo 3 around the same time that PS3 is released. The people at Bungie were not too happy about that and said that Halo 3 would ship when it was done. I'm guessing that Bungie was thinking November of next year for Halo 3 and maybe late summer at best. So, if the PS3 doesn't release until late summer or November in the US (which is possible), then Bill might be right. If the PS3 actually does release in the spring, I wouldn't expect Halo 3 until November (like the other Halo games) after the Halo movie has been released which I think is summer or early fall next year.

Jake @ Dec 18th 2005 9:51PM

The addition of an HD-DVD drive isn't that big a deal. As is, XBOX360 will be able to play all of its games in high-definition on standard DVD discs as well as playing current DVD movies. People who have bought HDTV sets most likely enjoy watching movies on them to their fullest potential. Using an XBOX360 as a hd dvd player is not the purpose of the console, and I'm sure there will be several other hd-dvd players that have much more features (changing aspect ratio, zoom, edge-enhancement)

I currently have an HDTV with a PS2 (which has a built in dvd player that can play movies at 480i), but when I watch dvds, I use my high-end Sony progressive-scan dvd player. I use the PS2 for what it was meant to be used for: to play games.

People should want an XBOX360 to play awesome games, mp3s, and stream files from your PC. Why would Microsoft want to put an EXPENSIVE hd-dvd drive that will play a video format that could still possibly be extinct in a few years?

However, like mentioned before, the option to swap out the dvd drive for an hd-dvd drive would be nice to the users who MUST use their XBOX360 to play hd movies. Microsoft has already thought of all of these options.