360 HD DVD add-on coming to US, Europe in mid-November for $200/?200/£130

I think that's pretty damn cheap, but really, even though it's on a similar level to the PS3 price, it's an OPTION.

I for one don't want the HD-DVD drive. I'm waiting until a 'victor' emerges in this new format war and the movies are cheap, then I'll pick one up. But at least I have the option of getting it if I want it, unlike if I bought a PS3 I'd have to pay a premium for something I wouldn't be taking advantage of.

LOL... the $ony guys in this post are hilarious. People can argue and argure the format war and pricing and blah blah blah... the great thing about this is YOU DON'T HAVE TO BUY IT!

The large majority of people in this country don't have an HDTV. In that instance buying a P$3 means you're paying for technology that you won't even be using.

Also, did anyone see Assasian's Creed demo at X'06 running on the 360? Gonna be on on DVD9...

serbz

i ahve not played halo 2 since i got my 360. i ahve spent hours playing pdz, cal of duty 2, saints row, madden, fight night 3, graw- lots of time on this, pgr3, spades, uno, now doom yes 4v4 and the list goes on. alomst every game that comes out for the 360 hase live enabled. mgs4 won't be out tilllate 2007 at the earliest and we will be playing bioshock, mass effect, GEARS OF WAR ( bgame of the eyar by every press outlet), too human, and possibly halo3 all befor mgs4 and some of those other games u mentioned even hit the market

next explain to me about sony;s online? and details there? none u say since e3. well there u go. i am on live right now chatting with a fellow 2,000 miles from my house while we both play doom single player. u have no clue about the 360 i can tell. if u did u would know nothing is betetr than hours of uno with the vision cam or some spades. if u did u would have never mentioned one game that wonlt be out for soemtime and forget games that ahve been played for sometime on line

pimp my ride anyone, maybe some protect the pimp. screw it lets just play some big ass chains yall. i just bought the pimp jacket

For all the idiots who think blu-ray is slower than DVD, why don't you do some research before you talk out of you ass.

According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

HD DVD: 36.55 Mbit/s (so at 1x they are equal what do you know?
DVD: 16x CAV (avg. ~12x) read speed is max 21.13MB/s(not even close)

DVD-9 is worse than 16x. So as we can see, with a little research you can learn so much.

I am guessing you all are making the foolish mistake of thinking this "Wow, DVD is like 16x and Blu-ray is only 1x, haha stupid fanboys it is so much slower 360 FTW." However since you know very little about anything, you didn't know that each spec has it own 1x = (insert something). This is like saying CD is faster because it is 52x.

And if you were thinking like that, you are even more of an idiot considering the information is right there in your face.

And what is all this "it will have to load 25GB to the hard drive" nonsense? So one level is equal to the size of the whole fucking disk? Ever heard of RAM? Yes I am sure the hard drive will be in play, but not as much as you are thinking. Computer 101 folks.

Jaerock

i know and u think sony would ahve shown off some playable version of ac at tgs but no did they. MS said come on ubisoft montreal come play the game live infront of the press. the guy playing was a noob though lol.

this game looks so good playing. canlt wait to play it. and yes on a dvd9

also some of u ahve no clue. devs have stated sony's compression is at best 2:1. MS has lossless(yes lossless meaning no loss of quality vs uncompressed) 12:1 audio and up to 10:1 model maps and textures. u can see from there that yes sony needs bluray but ms does not. they worled hard on these dev tools which makes sense they are a software company. many of u have no lcue about these thigns and a lil research would show u ms has had this thing planned since the get go and are ready for what ever chaleneg lies ahead

Well Well, I should of expected a bunch of stupid replies from PS3 losers.. I buy consoles for games and when I look at what the PS3 offers and what the 360 offers I much prefer the 360. Do I care how well my game console playes movies? hell no! I'm here to game! Well.. I'm off to go do some High Def gaming, and you sony folks?? oh thats right you're still playing a bunch of old ass titles on that tired 'ol PS2..

kevin

sorry dude ur wrong

Blu-ray 2x: 72Mbp / 8MBps
12x DVD: 66 - 132Mbps / 8.2 - 16.5MBps

http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek

yeah u feel that. thats being pwned by lefty

ninja

and 360 costs 400. hd-dvd (optional)
and live is worth every penny of the online. i would not tack on any cent to that cause right now sony devs are dropping online left and right so till u see this free online please don't be a tool. and expect a price drop. its right around the corner

Extra storage on a disc is NOT a drawback in any way. Developers can just use 5 Gb of the thing if they want to make a game just like they would on DVD9. Hell, this will probably happen for a lot of cross-platform games.

Games will never use 25 Gb the way a game currently uses 5. Someone earlier essentiall said "why not have a game 5 times as big as oblivion?" It would be awesome, no doubt, but it would cost $200. Oblivion is long enough. Well done games on DVD9 are long enough. I would actually like a lot of shallower games to be cheaper, not longer and more expensive.

With that said, I see one obvious advantage and one possible advantage of Blu-ray for games.

1) A game like Final Fantasy can just play its cutscenes at 1080p and it can have a whole lot of them on one disc. Developers can also add "the making of" and that kind of crap to a game but who really gives a rip. Final Fantasy in High Def will not work on 360 if they have 20Gb of FMV, unless they have multiple discs, use HD-DVD (arghh), or lower the resolution.

2) If they can somehow gain an advantage from not compressing things as much, thus require less uncompressing by the system. I have no real technical knowledge there, so I'll stop now.

Personally, I have a 360 and am happy there. If the PS3 is reliable, it will be a great system. To be honest, I don't know which I would have gotten if they were both out a year ago. But, I have been enjoying the hell out of my 360 for the last year, and a year of gaming is worth a lot to me.

(I actually had no system, besides N64, when I got my 360 because I moved out of my college house and had been bumming system time off of my roomates for 5 years. I therefore had to buy a system and start a game collection. It was 360 or PS2.)

and kevin the 360 has a 12x dvd rom that reads dvd-9 discs. i poosted the link above and u cna clearly see at the outer edge of the disc a dvd 12 is slower or eaqul to a 2x bluray. but from there on in the dvd 12x blows a bluray 2x out the water. max 72Mbs for bluray 2x. dvd 12x is 66-132Mbs. see its almosst rwice as fast

its easier when u look at MBs 2x bluray constant 8. 12x dvd 8.5(more than constant bluray 2x speed) up to 16 MBs. its clear which is faster. dvd 12x avgs 12MBs vs 2x blurays constant 8.

and the 360's hdd does cacheing when its present just like the ps3 will. so who will have longer load times?

lefty's waiting for that answer

Alright man enough is enough. can someone seriously tell me when microsoft was cool, can someone seriously tell me how things have gotten this far, everyone defends the 360 like its the coolest thing in the world, i remember the blue screen of death and i remember all the choices they gave consumers when they made people use their operating systems for the pc, u people get halo, xboxlive and all of a sudden microsoft is the best, hippest company ever. 600 dollars for the xbox360 hd dvd is ridiculous. no one gives sony any respect at all and its too bad, thats all im going to say, flame away i dont care.

"$200 for an HD-DVD player is fantastic."

yeah, isn't it lovely the kinds of discounts M$ is able to get you for granting them a lifelong monopoly on all things digital?

of course, don't forget the $300+ for the XBox 360 hardware, for which this player is an addon...

g3h

ms got cool when halo 1got launched and live went active

and the hd-dvd is optional. a standalone is 500 bucks so they are offering their users a cheap player if they want. plus from what i know it also works with media cenetr pc's so u wouldnlt even need the 360 but thats still being looked into

the truth is ms is about games and gamers. sony is aboput pushing a format they developed so they controled it. they did nothign for gamers with the ps3 and that upsets me so i am full with my 360 cause at every turn it feels like ms is in my head saying what would lefty want. from live and voice chat tot he vision cam. now we are startign to get the games sony enjoyed last year and eclusives. this is why no console maker ever survives more than 2 cycles on top.

360 is 400 if u wnat to game. if u want a hd-dvd buy a 500 standalone or the 200 add on. but u have that option. thats the diff and its a big diff. if u canlt see that than there is no explaining it

oh no i will ne be getting the hd-dvd casue microsft lets us upscale our dvd's and they look stunning. once again i have that choice sony does not give it to me ms does

Slight problem here folks, why are people comparing the $600 PS3 to the $600 XBOX 360? Um you have to compare the $600 XBOX 360 to the $500 PS3. Reason being the hard drives are the same, 20 gigs. If you compare it to the $600 PS3 then you'll have to admit to yourself that you are getting an extra 40 gigs for free, not to mention wifi, memory card reader and lastly HDMI. Which in turn would make the PS3 look better.

Lets recap $400 XBOx 360 + HD DVD = $600
$500 PS3 = $600 XBOX 360

So in reality you pay $100 extra for a PS3. Now I know down with Sony but no one here can deny that math. Of course haters will hate, but it's a fact. If you want to get all technical with it if you add wifi to the 360 that brings it to $700. BUT don't please don't attack me for stating facts, now thank you for choice, because of that I only have to pay $50 more than a Wii and have a next gen console. Lol. Choice lol. You guys kill me. I can't wait untill Microsoft sells you the option to open up the secret cores they have on the cpu.

I mean c'mon now it's all about choice. I see it in the same light as micro-transactions.

I'm debating whether to purchase the HD-DVD drive when it hits the street, and right now I'm leaning more toward yes than no.

I currently own a DLP that accepts 1080p and already own a 360. Obviously the cost for me to go next-gen in movies is much less with the 360 versus the PS3. One of the major influences is the PS3 controller itself. After using the 360 controller for the past ten or eleven months, I'm not too keen on the additional buttons. More is not always better, and I think this is a case that makes a good example of it.

Several people have mentioned that MS should have waited to release the 360 until the HD-DVD drive was ready. Are you serious? Being first to market and establishing market share is a huge deal. I think by MS doing this they not only helped ensure the current and future success of the 360, but the HD-DVD format itself. Excluding the lack of supply at launch, I think MS did an excellent job of thinking how to get out the door first. Sony really lost a lot of ground to MS and probably will lose more as they appear to have supply issues based on what will be available at launch.

As far as HD-DVD movies for rent. I already subscribe to Netflix and can get them there today. I may buy a few select titles, but will mostly get them from Netflix.

some of u seem to missed

HD-DVD ADD ON WILL WORK WITH MEDIA CENETR PC'S

thats means if u just wnat a cheap hd-dvd player bam there u go. as long as u have a media cenetr pc or a xbox 360.

the xbox is not 600 its 300-400 bucks. if u want toe game bam 300-400 bucks and likely to be cheaper soon enough. sony does not give u that option but fanboys love to inflate prices to show more value right. less than 10 eprcent of xbox 360 buyers will get this addon. its that simple. and to get out the store and play ur 360 it will cost a min of 300. to do the same with a ps3 its 500. no matter how u slice it.

And another thing that you people seem to not look at. How hard is it to upscale a DVD? Honestly now they give me the "choice" if I want to watch upscaled DVDs... lol.

And how they convinced the world that DVDs will hold enough data for games in the next 4 years is beyond me. Why should you have to buy the rest of GTA 4 seperate? Why not wait a bit and make it fit on that DVD?

"as long as u have a media cenetr pc or a xbox 360."

read: as long as you keep pumping money up to M$.

great discount!

I'd rather pay for a movie download service. The bandwidth may not be there yet, but I'm getting a nice fios connection soon.... I'm tired of buying movies on disc only to never really get much out of ownership.

I'd pay 35% the price of ownership for a streamed rental any day (although I have on-demand, I hate to give anything to the rotting slime that is Comcast)

la

i explained it befor. if u do any digging u would seen ms has been working on new compression tools for years. those tools are now inplace in the 360. it gice us lossless compresion up to 12:1. it has been shown sony has a compression of 2:1. u see the diff now. for sony they need the xtra space because of lackluster compression. the 360 however does not

and they give u a choice of upscaled dvd's or hd-dvd movies. u pick. its a nice extra. plus the hd-dvd add on will work with any windoows xp media cenetr pc. so the add on is not just for us xbox 360 owners.

u seem like a smart guy. ask urself how good is compression. ms is a software compnay. ur telling me they have no clue about compression or storage space of media? they spent billions developing software tools for devs and new algrothms for procedural synthesis. so the cheaper dvd player can be used for this gen. its not hard to see they did not want to

1. get stuck with a dead format if hd-dvd looses
2. rise the price of the console so ordinary gamers canlt attain it

these are 2 key elemnts to the 360 development and a simple 30 doolar purchase of the book written by one of the xbox 360 designers sheds light into many fo these decisions. it was a great read and i suggest u read it. would realy open ur eyes to what will and wonlt happen this gen

the ps3 may be superior in a few aspects but cmon look at the games sony supports (final fantasy FTW) there all pretty much gay, xbox has some pretty good games (test drive unlimited), but even so i just keep my 360 sittin there while i play real games on my pc until i wanna get drunk and play some multiplayer with my friends, but when the Wii comes out my xbox is goin straight on ebay so i can have some drunken wii gaming (can u say vomit inducing?)

399$ 360 + 200$ HDDVD = 599$ w/ oblivion > 499$ ps3 w/ oblivion?

it's all your opinions guys.. some people may want better AI and more content. & it's funny how many devs say 360 dvd discs can't hold all the info needed for more detailed HD textures... and yet people here say 50gb BD's are useless. hm.

@129. Games have sexual preferences? Or do you just get drunk and have your ps2 give you a blow ***?

chris

xbox 399 plus oblivion < ps3 499 plus oblivion.

i have no need for an hd-dvd drive. u canlt add something into the price that many may not want. seems sony forgot. and with a 360 price drop likley right aroind the corner getting a 360 will be much cheaper

I didn't expect Oblivion to become such a huge issue in the console wars, as great a game as it is.

I don't wanna take sides in this, but I should let you know, as a modder for Oblivion, that unless Bethesda is being very, very sneaky, it doesn't look like it will be released on any other formats than it is on now. They've denied rumors of a PS3 launch at least twice. And if they are working on a PS3 version, I'm going to be pissed because that is likely the reason they have also neglected to make any expansions for the game or at least give us better tools to modify the game with. Holding everything off to work on the PS3 port would mean they're creating content a huge percentage of Oblivion's fanbase will never see, as nearly everybody who wants to play the game will have bought it for the PC/360 by the time the PS3 is released. I don't consider Bethesda evil enough to do that to players.

Also, the modding community was able to create a utility that allowed XBox owners to play console Morrowind with free custom mods (a chipped Xbox, of course) and now we're working on how to do it for the XBox 360. If we can take advantage of the Live marketplace somehow (thank god I'm not working on it myself) then 360 owners should be able to play Oblivion with mods just as PC players can. From what I've heard of PS3's internet, it has no place where we could store such downloads, so that's another disadvantage of Bethesda producing Oblivion for the PS3. Again, not taking sides with consoles, I just don't think it would be a smart move for Bethesda to port Oblivion to the PS3.

And a number of people have mentioned that in order to have a DVD game match the potential size of a BR game, it'd have to come in multiple discs.

What's wrong with that?

I remember when Final Fantasy 8 came out, the thing ran on 5 CDs. I picked it up and thought to myself "Wow, 5 CDs! This is gonna be awesome!" Not innefficient. Not a hassle. Awesome. Because it showed me that the develepors were stepping over their preset boundaries to produce a great game. And sure enough, Final Fantasy 8 was, in my opinion, the best of the entire series (I have no idea why Square is putting so much money into recreating Final Fantasy 7 movies and games when a FF8 movie alone could be Oscar-worthy).
Oh, but what about when it came time to switch CDs?
The first time didn't happen until I was playing the game for about 15 or so hours. Many other games are over in that amount of time. The screen came up asking me to switch the disc. Was my reaction "Oh no, another CD??? Aaagh, I'm gunna die!"? Nah, I just took out one CD and put the next one in. The game started back up immediately, and I didn't have to change the CD again till maybe a week later.

So why would it be so impossible for a DVD game to be as big as a Blu-Ray game when we can just get multiple discs? I understand if the game is open-ended and has you backtrack between certain areas again and again like in Traitor's Gate (Having to backtrack so much isn't fun even if you don't have to change discs) But for linear titles like FF13 and such, what's the problem? It'd only stop your gaming for 20 seconds, and likely after a lengthy FMV sequence that will already have stopped your gameplay.

To be honest, I have a nostalgic desire to open an Xbox case and see 5 DVDs that tell me "This is gonna be awesome!"

ok, F' this sh*t. I'll just buy both. ps3 & the HDDVD addon.

@58. Petey

um, what was the point of your post? who cares if Kotaku editors are excited about videogame developments? why the rage, brother?

LMAO not hours after I write that post, GameDaily reports that Oblivion has been announced for the PS3. Guess I jinxed it, heh. I still say a PS3 release isn't a smart move for Bethesda, but the PSP version could be interesting.

It's starting to bother me, this whole 1080p/1080i debate. Would watching a game through 1080i make you inferior as some viscious comments suggest? And would 1080i be a blurry, horrible mess compared to 1080p? If you ask me, HD is HD, and any kind is well out of my price range. 1080p seems like a way for rich kids to say "I'm better than you." and it's getting annoying even from a neutral point of view.

LMAO - and how much will the PC cost you ?? 3 times the price of a console. Then the PC will be obsolete in a year. Neverending cycle

45. And you want to talk about old tech? Did you hear that Intel will have at market in 2008, a greater than 4 core processor.
Not 10, not 20, not 30 but 80 freakin cores!!! by 2008!!! PS3 will be obsolete in 2 years, and its not even out yet.
So much for the 10 year lifespan of PS3.

"CANT WAIT
THE REAL POINT HERE IS THAT IF YOU HAVE THE PREMIUM XBOX CONSOLE, YOU COULD HAVE JUST WAITED FOR THE PS3 AND SPENT LESS MONEY FOR ALL OF THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY."

And you could have just waited ten years for the PS4, where at a similar price point you'd get more advanced technology and HD will be replaced by something that makes PS3 look like dogshit. I can't believe you're buying into the hype when you know something better is just going to come along!

We all know it's about the hardware... that's why PS2 was so popular... oh wait, it was the more technically inferior out of that generation even though it was the most popular... whoops.

Hey Sony Fans Like eveyone is saying who cares about 25gigs and if a game was 25 50 gigs that means more cash. and lastly PS3 fans can u say Halo Wars, Halo 3< an Gears of War. Period end of story.

Money is no object for me so right now while I'm enjoying all the perks of the 360, Sony die-hards are twiddling their thumbs. But when the PS3 comes out, I'll get that too. It's all good!

#24.......

You ever heard about texture compression technologies, Ya they exist look them up retard. Games don't need to be large at all to have true HD, unless you wanna have a bunch of HD clips inside that consume massive space and studies show that most people absolutely hate. Would you really want to spend all that money so you can play 1/2 a HD game and then watch the other half...

True HD games dont have to be HUGE like sony claims, Advancements in texture compression show that clearly, Dont listen to the lies, HD texs are not large when compressed and can be decompressed on the fly

Why is everyone tripping over 1080p and hdmi. I bet my paycheck no one could tell the difference between 1080i and 1080p on a calibrated hdtv. Blue ray will die just like all the other sony backed formats. 1080p wasn't even in the atsc hdtv format list when they signed off on it. And don't get me started on hdmi. digital signal? Yeah right, just a way for them to limit content. All you need is a coaxial cable that has been around forever to recieve atsc hdtv with dolby digital, I've got rabbit ears picking up hdtv 1080i signal with a coax cable...