Microsoft denies latest round of Blu-ray for Xbox 360 rumors

i haven;t heard about the red ring of death in a long time, seems to e they fixed it.

i have 2 360's, and never have i had any, in the 2 years i have had them had a red ring.

I'm sorry, but I'm the only one that sees MS missing out on a brilliant opportunity to undercut PS3 sales.

At this point, the only thing the PS3 unquestionably has on the 360 is its HD media capabilities.

MS can take that away with an external blu ray player. Then their slogan would be "The PS3 offers nothing we don't. But we can offer choice and a lower price."

Personally, I prefer the PS3 for blu ray...I'm one of few (around here) that enjoy that aspect. If microsoft would quit being so god damn stubborn, they could take my (and others) interest away from Sony.

Since it is Sony's BluRay maybe Sony isn't letting Microsoft use the hardware. I don't know much about the legalities about that stuff. But that may be holding it up.

2 completely different branches of sony, i don't think that sony not allowing ms to get a hold of blu-ray is a prob.

i mean, you can either deny 20 million people the chance of buying blu-ray, hence lowering profits, or you can open up a whole new market.

3 reasons why MS will NOT go to Blu-ray:

Supporting Blu-ray = supporting Sony
Supporting Blu-ray = supporting Java
Supporting Blu-ray = undercuting direct download movies sales

Simply MS wants as big as possible market of direct movie download as possible.

Helping Sony to propagate Blu-ray is counerproductive to what MS wants.

@ NEGATIVECOOL

Dude, I don't think MS should jump right in to blu-ray just yet.. sure you enjoy that but most of us are not into blue-ray 1, it cost a lot.. 2, we play games hardly watch movies.. and with netflix on the rising it be pointless to expend money on blu-ray movies.. But everyone is differetn and live different. so it all comes to if you could affort it. specially in this times
lol

Netflix is the way to go

Wonder if gamefly could to something similar like netflix. They could but you would need a T1 speed lol..

@ anonim1979

Yep. The only thing MS probably hates more than Sony is Sun and JAVA.

Oh, and as a disclaimer, I was just poking fun at RROD. Not trying to start a mini-war. I know Microsoft is working on 100% elimination of it, and it's done well so far.

Just thought I'd put that there since my inbox is being spammed :P

I assumed it was false yesterday. It's not going to happen this generation.

Agreed. We've seen this BS rumor in so many forms. It really behooves joystiq to stop publishing them.

Essentially, there's no useful purpose to publishing the stories again without an actual good source backing them up.

Joystiq: No, seriously, when?

If upscaling is HD, why is there HD content in the first place? Why do DVDs have a wasteful 720x480 pixels if we could just have upscaled 240x300 (or so) VHS tapes to look like DVD?

Why do I need 6mbit/sec DSL if I could just send 1.5mbits/sec and recreate 6mbit/sec of data from it?

Answer: upscaling is BS. You cannot remake information that was lost.

Yeah Upscaling is shit dude.

My father-in-law has a Pioneer 1080p Upscaling DVD player and the latest model LG 47" 100HZ 1080p LCD. Watching Transformers in 1080p upscaled glory may not be as amazing as HD-DVD native, but it's very close, and far better than standard DVD.

Most likely the scaler in that TV is better than the upscaling that his DVD player does. Im sure it would look the same with any progressive scan DVD player.

You're sorely mistaken if you think upscaled content equals Blu-ray/full uncompressed 1080p. Or have your head in the sand.

@ LS7
good job

@ shag
good job

@ foetoid
you either have bad eyes, or never did a good comparison. i GUARANTEE you that unless you have an elite upscaling player, the scaler in your tv is probably better than the one in that player

@ desi_d
good job

Seriously, i have a 1080p samsung monitor (pretty good, 24 incher), but watching batman begings on it (dvd, upscaled through PS3) is absolute SHIT. i'm def gonna get rid of that dvd and buy it on blu ray. there is simply no way that any dvd player can take information that isn't there, interpolate or make an algorithm for it, and make it look like the real deal hollyfield. even toshiba stupid DVD+ technology wont do it.

Lol...he thinks upscaling can compete with Blu-ray.

well, if microsoft denies something you know it isn't coming.

only when they refuse to comment is it for real.

Except for the fact that no matter what you did, Blu-Ray is going to win the quality war VS. Streaming HD Video ANYTIME. Not to mention the fact that Netflix's streaming library is NOWHERE near as big as their actual DVD library.

The online Netflix catalog isnt all that bad. I just watched heroes season 2 on it. There are some gems in there.

As far as streaming HD not being the same quality.... no shit, the point is that its relatively inexpensive and I can start watching without having to go anywhere.

I'm the New Xbox Experience and I'm a PC.

I really doubt MS and Apple will get iTunes onto the 360 ever.

I mean yeah u guys r right....But Blu Ray is 40 dollars a fucking disc and that shit is unnecessary....I just bought Iron man it killed my pockets(Drop those prices SONY pleze)...Hopefully MS can get the Zune player software on the 360 or sumthin...That would be great

Unfortunately, your absolutely right. As bad as I want a Blu-Ray drive, MS is probably making a killing on XBL Video Rentals, and a Blu-Ray drive would only hurt those sales.

sure MS is making money from xbox live rentals, but how much? to be honest, if you were to take all the fence sitters that were thinking about getting a ps3 for blu ray, and show them that you can get an arcade w/ a drive for $50 bucks less...it may not make them more money at that point, but down the line maybe. 1) as microsofts console starts to becoming more profitable, they would make a profit on every console and add on sold 2) though it may cut into xbl downloads, it surely wouldn't erase them entirely, so they would still get a decent revenue from those downloads. 3) if any of those same people who are using it simply for media purposes (cheap blu ray/media streaming server) decided to pick up any games for the console, that would instantly bring more money in terms of licensing fees from games. Knowing that ballmer loves to make money, i think it would really be in MS's best interests to look at the models to see exactly how they would break financially.

And, for all you that say MS would be shooting themselves in the foot by 1) supporting java 2) supporting an alternate route to downloads (which really isn't a viable option yet) all you would have to do it discontinue the drive once the new download push rolls. it's probably some years away, might as well rake in some cash in the meantime.

I not sure how Microsoft makes money off of a blu-ray drive option. The HD DVD drive was subsidized by Toshiba, who is a partner with Microsoft, a customer of Microsoft, and a supplier of other equipment to Microsoft. Each company sells to one another in a mutually beneficial agreement.

I'm not sure if anyone would want to subsized a blu-ray drive for Microsoft, and I can't see Microsoft wanting to subsidize the unit themselves. So it's unclear that a hardware option would be profitable. I'm not so sure the HD DVD add-on was ever profitable. And it sold in relatively low quanities, compared to the overall base of 360 owners. It was more than likely a huge loss to Toshiba, who also sold their stand alone HD DVD players at a loss.

So then you have blu-ray software [ie movies]. Microsoft's cut of blu-ray software is nill. Whereas, if you download a movie off of Live, Microsoft gets a cut of the sale.

So Microsoft doesn't make money off of hardware, which is probably going to be a minimal seller anyway, and they don't get of a cut of blu-ray disc sales. The only benefit, I guess would be to appease customers who want to play blu-ray movies and generate sales for your competitors. There's really no benefit to Microsoft. And, I can't stress this enough, Microsoft would end up having to support JAVA, which is not in Microsoft's best interest and another competitor. It would be truly bizarre.

Just get one, i would much prefer an actual player for my home theatre system than an addon for my 360.

besides, by 360 is connected to a hdtv downstairs, my theatre is upstairs.

You, my friend Get yourself a proper home theater setup if you think BD doesn't offer significant improvement.

Maybe MS can also convince ISPs to stop capping download limits.