News Xbox 360s with integrated HD-DVD?

How ceditble is that site? I've never heard of it before. For all I know they could be making it up to get hits on their website, which they are doing a very good job of.




-CollinstheClown

 

It's not going to happen, they said they weren't going to do it, and they won't. It would hurt their target market for the next console. Microsoft is not going to pull a Sony on their dedicated fanbase aka the early adopters.

 

UT2007: 27-28 GB.

The point is that consoles are non-upgradeable. There should not be differences in capabilities between two generations of consoles. It's like an early model car that's only able to drive on highways versus a later revision that adds the ability to drive offroad.

 

and i think that just about hits the nail on the head

the idea of a console is a unified platform, by not having 100 models of it everything that works on 1 console will work on another

Suddenly they release 2 different versions, and the ball game changes

 

Isn't this the same MS that swore up one side and down the other they wern't working on a portable music player? Sometimes I wonder if they don't leak this stuff to see if there is any interest by looking at what sort of a buzz it creates? After all, adding a HD-DVD drive is somthing they could do in about 30 seconds. They would have to spend more time and money hyping it than acttually building it

 

No, they aren't going to make games on HD-DVD. If anything they'll make a bigger harddisk as an expansion for loading multiple DVD games on. The cost of printing a DVD is tuppence compared to HD-DVD but including it in the console to make it a movie player is a viable solution to make a new premium model SKU next year. They wont require you to buy a HD-DVD unit for games at all, the USB model will be far too slow and companies will still make a profit on a multiple DVD game that costs £40. To provide something that competes with Sony in the digital home and integrates with the MCE/Zoon is something MS has been after for a while.

The elReg is also suggesting it'll be a DVDRW unit as well so people can backup their downloaded DRMd content from MS marketplace on live.

 

That's the crux of it...

If they release an integrated HD-DVD and HD-DVD games, fans without HD-DVD are going to be very pissed of and Sony is going to have a field day painting MS as greedy and fanbois as idiots ( "See? we said all this time that a next-gen console needed a next-gen drive" ). I can already read the threads at ArsTechnica and Gamespot...

If I were MS, I may release an integrated HD-DVD, but sure as hell wouldn't release HD-DVD games. They assumed that games aren't going to need more than 1-2 DVD for the next years, and they convinced XBox customers of it. A change now would be a slap in the face of their fans.

 

Of course they wont without selling multiple dvd versions of the games as well. The whole point of a platform is that it is a set platform. They wouldn't alienate a massive fraction of their user base that already owns 360s by making HD-DVD only games. It's an absurd business model that offers nothing to MS and will never see the light of day. You're all being cynical for cynicals sake. Ignore the idiots on other forums Think of the business economics and realise that offering a HD-DVD version when HD-DVDs have sufficiently taken to the market and revamping an ailing 360 range with an internal unit makes so much sense. Releasing HD only games doesn't because MS' aim is to take market share away from Sony.

 

I knew they wouldn't, it would be a stupid marketing move.

From the GamerScoreBlog (Official blog of Microsoft's Games Global Marketing team):

Linky




-CollinstheClown

 

It'll still happen

 

Just for the sake of argument, the USB data rate is not too slow -- in fact, it's faster than the read rate for optical media:

As far as I know...the maximum speed of a DVD drive is 16x (I guess that a few 18x drives are available...). That calculates to just about 22 MegaBytes per second. I believe 16x is just about the maximum read speed we will ever see for a DVD disk. Just like CD's maxxed out around 56x, which is still under 10 MegaBytes per second.

HiSpeed USB 2.0 is 480 Megabits per second, which is 60 MegaBytes per second. Nearly 3 times faster than the fastest DVD readers. The limit should not necessarily be on the USB cable, but rather on the drive it's attached to at this stage of the game.

 

Although it is a shared bus and having 4 wireless controllers and whatever else on it will nowhere near gurantee your 60meg. Ok, the HD-DVD drive will probably be 4x max but the read speed will be faster at 4x than DVD at 4x.

 

My dvd player isn't progressive scan & doesn't have optical audio, so the 360 makes an excellent DVD player.

 

It won't be put into a box, simple enough. They want to stay cheaper than Sony, not at the same price, not to mention keeping HD-DVD as an option. O and where is the HDMI out that you guys were saying was coming? This site leaks a lot of bs rumors as of late.