256 replies to this topic 1 votes

[threetonesun]

giantpotato, on 12 June 2012 - 13:53, said:

Flash is incredibly expensive compared to optical discs. It costs a few pennies to press a disc, it costs several dollars for flash memory. Even with the royalties for Blu-Ray is would be way cheaper than flash. I don't think Microsoft would want to lose out on all that profit considering games are where they make their money.

Xbox live is where MS makes their money. I don't see flash memory costs being an issue. $70 at the store, $60 to download and the cost is covered (or $60 and $50).

[Emon]

So they have to pay royalties to Sony to get blu-ray support, correct? In that case I think the answer is no, they won't put blu-ray drive or next xbox.

[+articuno1au]

M_Lyons10, on 12 June 2012 - 14:02, said:

Proprietary media really isn't Microsoft's thing. I just can't imagine them doing that. Particularly considering they want this to be an entertainment device, and in order to be that, it would need to be able to play Blurays... Doing so on a proprietary drive would be unnecessarily complex when they could just go with Bluray (And take advantage of all of the R&D that has already gone into that format)...

I really don't see a way around Microsoft having a Bluray drive in the next XBox. They didn't have a Bluray drive in the 360 because they were betting on HDDVD. Bluray won. Now that's the format that they are just going to need to support. Not to mention they have pushed the XBox as an HD experience. To do so they need to support HD Movies (Bluray). They are pushing it as an entertainment device that they want in the living room. To do that they need to be able to play movies in the currently used format (Bluray). They are going to need more space for games, something Bluray would provide at a much more economical cost to developing a proprietary format. Disc creation would be much more economical if Bluray was used as opposed to something they whipped up as well... All roads lead to Bluray... LOL

Yeah, they didn't put a HD-DVD player in the XBox either..

Might help to know the technology.

Emon, on 12 June 2012 - 14:11, said:

So they have to pay royalties to Sony to get blu-ray support, correct? In that case I think the answer is no, they won't put blu-ray drive or next xbox.

They will indeed. That's the entire reason that they will work to avoid it.

[giantpotato]

articuno1au, on 12 June 2012 - 14:14, said:

They will indeed. That's the entire reason that they will work to avoid it.

Do people seriously believe this? Microsoft isn't a fanboy that will avoid Sony at all costs, they will do what is best for business. Also, contrary to popular belief Blu-Ray isn't licensed entirely by Sony, It's licensed by the Blu-Ray Disc Association, which comprises a dozen companies.

Microsoft is currently licencing technology from tons of companies for things like Dolby audio and MPEG-4 Support, why would Blu-Ray be any different?

[Vykranth]

Microsoft could use a proprietary hybrid drive: a drive that can read Blu-Rays but can also read a different format for the games (HD-DVD). That would be an anti-piracy feature since there are no HD-DVD media and burners around and that would be a good entertainment device.
Microsoft and Sony are two businesses; they know to put their differences aside and swallow their prides when they need each others.

As far as digital/cloud vs physical discs, I have a very slow connection: 2 Mb/s and only on windy days. Another ISP is proposing 2.6 Mb/s (Woohoo!). That does not prevent me from playing online but blu-ray streaming and VOD are just inaccessible to me.
It is actually faster for me to go to a shop, rent or buy a Blu-Ray and watch the movie because the download is taking longer.

[compl3x]

ahhell, on 12 June 2012 - 13:53, said:

Zero chance.

Because?...

giantpotato, on 12 June 2012 - 14:28, said:

Do people seriously believe this? Microsoft isn't a fanboy that will avoid Sony at all costs, they will do what is best for business. Also, contrary to popular belief Blu-Ray isn't licensed entirely by Sony, It's licensed by the Blu-Ray Disc Association, which comprises a dozen companies.

Microsoft is currently licencing technology from tons of companies for things like Dolby audio and MPEG-4 Support, why would Blu-Ray be any different?

Agreed. I doubt MS would be petty about using blu-ray just because Sony advocated it in the HD-DVD v. Blu-Ray war. It doesn't affect their ability to sell games or convince consumer to use their product over a competitor.

If there is an obvious benefit to using it, a profitable benefit, then they'd do it.

[DirtyLarry]

The people who are so convinced it will not happen are really showing their true colors, plus have zero concept how business in the real world works. Do you really think MS runs their business based on some console war that was created by the gaming media? No. Competitors license technology from other competitors all of the time.

The other fact of the matter is the people who think we are somehow ready as a world to go fully digital need to burst that bubble they obviously live in. Just because you have a great internet connection with no limits, does not mean the rest of the world does. Not including an option for physical media would literally exclude so many potential sales. They would simply just not do it. Perhaps they will offer a version of their next console without a drive for the people who want to go all digital, but not including any kind of drive at all? No way in hell will that happen.

So keeping the two pretty much facts in mind above, I would say the chance is extremely good they will include a BluRay player. If not a DVD player, than just as the 360 right now, it would then just be a regular old DVD player. As games are going to get continue getting larger in size.

[+articuno1au]

How's that high horse feeling gents?

When I was working for Microsoft, we asked if we would be seeing a blu-ray extension to the console like the HD-DVD drive. Whilst I don't believe all of the answer can be given, I do think I can say that licensing costs were observed as being greater than the cost of sticking with a proprietary format.

Whether this remains true or not is a completely different matter. It's also worth noting that clearly Microsoft couldn't move their games to blu-ray disks as it would mean that you would need to buy an external drive to play an XBox game. So it might have changed there as well.

That said any suggestion, like that of our esteemed moderate above, that people dissenting from his point of view are doing so for purely egotistic or fanyboyish reasons are just plain wrong.

EDIT::
To extend: Microsoft are a business. They make the decision that makes the most financial sense. When I was there, blu-ray play back was not considered a noteworthy feature of the 360 in terms of our marketing material. Thus it holds that Microsoft will not pay significantly extra just to add this feature to their console, especially if this significant extra adds to their competition. I might well be wrong, but my opinion is not baseless.

EDIT2::

giantpotato, on 12 June 2012 - 14:28, said:

Do people seriously believe this? Microsoft isn't a fanboy that will avoid Sony at all costs, they will do what is best for business. Also, contrary to popular belief Blu-Ray isn't licensed entirely by Sony, It's licensed by the Blu-Ray Disc Association, which comprises a dozen companies.

Microsoft is currently licencing technology from tons of companies for things like Dolby audio and MPEG-4 Support, why would Blu-Ray be any different?

No, it's not fanboyism. It's purely an economical decision. The licensing of the disks was an enormous cost for Microsoft. That's why they will work to avoid it.

EDIT3::

Vykranth, on 12 June 2012 - 14:39, said:

Microsoft could use a proprietary hybrid drive: a drive that can read Blu-Rays but can also read a different format for the games (HD-DVD). That would be an anti-piracy feature since there are no HD-DVD media and burners around and that would be a good entertainment device.
Microsoft and Sony are two businesses; they know to put their differences aside and swallow their prides when they need each others.

As far as digital/cloud vs physical discs, I have a very slow connection: 2 Mb/s and only on windy days. Another ISP is proposing 2.6 Mb/s (Woohoo!). That does not prevent me from playing online but blu-ray streaming and VOD are just inaccessible to me.
It is actually faster for me to go to a shop, rent or buy a Blu-Ray and watch the movie because the download is taking longer.

Unfortunately the technologies involved with the disks does not give itself to this use. It would, however, be an outstanding idea

You are in the same position as me. I'm on 8mbps with a faulty DSLAM at the end of my line that my ISP's upstream provider refuses to fix. Microsoft are very aware of how much of the market they would lose to a pure digital distribution system. That said, they will certainly work towards it

I like your post. It's constructive and well thought out.

[giantpotato]

articuno1au, on 12 June 2012 - 15:10, said:

How's that high horse feeling gents?

When I was working for Microsoft, we asked if we would be seeing a blu-ray extension to the console like the HD-DVD drive. Whilst I don't believe all of the answer can be given, I do think I can say that licensing costs were observed as being greater than the cost of sticking with a proprietary format.

Whether this remains true or not is a completely different matter. It's also worth noting that clearly Microsoft couldn't move their games to blu-ray disks as it would mean that you would need to buy an external drive to play an XBox game. So it might have changed there as well.

That said any suggestion, like that of our esteemed moderate above, that people dissenting from his point of view are doing so for purely egotistic or fanyboyish reasons are just plain wrong.

EDIT::
To extend: Microsoft are a business. They make the decision that makes the most financial sense. When I was there, blu-ray play back was not considered a noteworthy feature of the 360 in terms of our marketing material. Thus it holds that Microsoft will not pay significantly extra just to add this feature to their console, especially if this significant extra adds to their competition. I might well be wrong, but my opinion is not baseless.

EDIT2::

No, it's not fanboyism. It's purely an economical decision. The licensing of the disks was an enormous cost for Microsoft. That's why they will work to avoid it.

EDIT3::

Unfortunately the technologies involved with the disks does not give itself to this use. It would, however, be an outstanding idea

You are in the same position as me. I'm on 8mbps with a faulty DSLAM at the end of my line that my ISP's upstream provider refuses to fix. Microsoft are very aware of how much of the market they would lose to a pure digital distribution system. That said, they will certainly work towards it

I like your post. It's constructive and well thought out.

Your post only takes into account the facts from Microsoft's decision 6 years ago. Between then and now the cost of manufacturing a Blu-Ray drive has dropped significantly, Blu-Ray as a movie format has doubled in popularity several times over and games have grown beyond the capacity of a DVD. At the time a standalone Blu-Ray add-on player would not make financial sense because it could only be used for the small catalog of movies available.

[+articuno1au]

If only I didn't want to continue to work for large corporations..

[webdev511]

Blu-ray? Zero chance because as many have said here, movies and TV will be download only.

Games is a bit harder to do via download only. I think that HD DVD-ROM (sorry folks there is no dash between those two Ds.) could be likely. Right before Warner went Blu only, Toshiba had all but finalized both 17GB per layer and triple layer discs. So blue laser ROM drives (now much cheaper than six years ago) reading 51GB optical discs that no one can burn at home, would give both the capacity and anti-piracy in one fell swoop. The equipment to press HD DVD-ROMs is still out there, so bringing them back online isn't total crazy talk. Maybe a little bit, but not complete.

The other likely option is SDXC, but media prices have to drop some more before that becomes feasable. $50 just for the media doesn't leave much room for making money on anything else.

What they won't do is pull a Sony and create a propriatary flash memory form factor, or at least I hope they don't.

[pickypg]

Crisps, on 12 June 2012 - 13:41, said:

Blu-ray is just as dead as DVD.

Digital / Cloud is the way forward.

Streaming and physical mediums are not mutually exclusive things for a console. By using Blu-ray, they can have 40+ GB discs in the short term, and when broadband finally catches up with serving such enormous amounts of data in the future, then they can become to offer downloading of games over the internet.

People running on cable with ~250 GB data caps are not going to enjoy having to download 40+ GB games, which will take the majority of a day on most people's connections anyway. Until our ISPs pull their heads out of their butts, then we cannot really successfully have purely digital game downloads given the massive size of modern games.

[ndoggfromhell]

I've often thought they should just use thumbdrives for the games. Make it a proprietary connector, game has to be inserted to load even if installed to HD. It only needs to be Read Only flash... not rewritable. I'm sure the cost is more than physical disc media... but should have a higher storage capacity.

[Shadrack]

I suspect that it will probably come with a bluray drive. Game consoles target a very large audience and I doubt they want to lose out on sells because their device is download only. Also, brick and mortar places like Gamestop and Best Buy would throw an a fit because that will mean they are squeezed out of the equation.

[Shadrack]

ndoggfromhell, on 12 June 2012 - 17:12, said:

I've often thought they should just use thumbdrives for the games. Make it a proprietary connector, game has to be inserted to load even if installed to HD. It only needs to be Read Only flash... not rewritable. I'm sure the cost is more than physical disc media... but should have a higher storage capacity.

Oh..that would be nice. I would love it if the new XBox goes back to cartridge based ROMs. Don't think it would happen though because they will probably want backwards compatibility and they probably don't mind it at all if you scratch the disc up and need to buy a new one.