The web has been ablaze lately regarding the adoption of an external Blu-Ray player by Microsoft for the Xbox 360. Here is a posting of what Microsoft has to say as of today:

After the obvious abandoning of HD DVD, Microsoft was said to be in talks with Sony to get a Blu-ray drive for Xbox 360. As we reported last week, Sony boss Stan Glasgow said in an interview with Financial Times that they were negotiating about a Blu-ray drive with Microsoft. At the same time Microsoft's Steve Ballmer gave Blu-ray the green light, but that was only for Windows, not Xbox 360.

According to Microsoft's group product manager for Xbox 360 Aaron Greenberg, their console is not ready to go Blu, "Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," he said. In the near future Microsoft will be building their Xbox Live as an entertainment Channel rather than adopting the Blu-ray technology.

In the same article Greenberg said that Xbox 360 trailing PS3 in sales for the second month straight was not a surprise, but the supply problems are expected to be a thing of the past by April -- just in time for GTA IV.

Tags : Blu-ray : External Blu-Ray : microsoft : PlayStation 3 : Sony : Steve Ballmer : Xbox 360 : xbox live

Comments

By: Dragonfly On: 05:57 Mar 13th, 2008 Offline	As I've stated in the past, it was obvious there was no way that an Xbox 360 Blu-ray player would be manufactured; it's Sony's format, and they're not going to give their direct competition a share of their money. This doesn't surprise me at all.

By: ApplesauceNinja On: 06:21 Mar 13th, 2008 Offline	Oh well, I wouldn't have bought it anyway. I never had any interest in the HD DVD drive, for that matter. I've no desire to pay $200 bucks for something that should have been an internal feature to begin with, imo.

By: Evren On: 08:36 Mar 14th, 2008 Offline	I wasnt going to pay for the HDDVD drive, but if MS doesnt think about using something new for their games, or possibly using a better compression with the same quality, the 360 is going to trail.

By: SwitchxA On: 09:59 Mar 14th, 2008 Offline	I guess we are reverting back to old PS1 days of most games having multiple discs. :P I don't find it surprising the 360 isn't going Blu. I take it from the opposite side of Michael though. I don't think the 360 was ever considered to go Blu or be HD-DVD for that matter. The drive was an add-on that had no integration into the Microsoft network of devices and Windows software. I could easily make the jump to say it was Microsoft taking a stab at Sony's disc format profit. I fully expected the answer they gave. The only problem is how they are going to execute it. It's kind of dumb to have a size requirement for XBLA games so they can fit on a arcade system memory card, but then say you want to distribute media content over the network. It is nice to finally hear word from someone at Microsoft who hopefully knows what they are talking about. I have heard so much back and forth about Microsofts position on this even before Warner went Blu.