Microsoft Still Passes On Blu-ray
Published by wes213 on Monday, January 12, 2009
Tagged: Hardware, Xbox 360,
This has been a topic here at the HQ for some time on more then one occasion so i think this will be a good read for all the 360 fans out there that are still trying to figure out why Microsoft will have nothing to do with the Blu-ray format.
In an interview with TechFlash.com Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division had this to say:
Bach: We don’t have anything specific to announce. We do what we always do, which is make sure we’re investing our dollars and our people, talent, in the right places. Every year, independent of the economy, we go through a strategy review process where we look at the whole strategy and we say, OK, do we have our resources deployed in the right way. We’re doing that again this year, and we’ll go forward from there.
There’s a gentle balance. You have to balance between the short-term challenges of the economy and the economics that creates, and the long-term need to continue to drive innovation.
Q: To ask this specifically, in the short term, do you expect to need to make layoffs?
Bach: Well, we just made a decision that, because there’s so many random rumors, we’re just not going to comment.
Q: It’s been a year now since Blu-ray won the next-generation DVD format wars. When are you guys going to drop the “digital download” line and say, “Let’s just put the technology in the Xbox.”
Bach: We have no plan to do that.
Q: Why not?
Bach: A lot of reasons. It’s not a feature we get a ton of requests for. We really don’t. When you ask people the list of things they want to see us spending time creating in Xbox, Blu-ray is way, way down on the list.
The second thing is, from a technical perspective, it doesn’t help us in the core of what Xbox does, which is in gaming. We can’t have publishers produce games on Blu-ray disc. Because then they won’t play on the 28 million Xboxes we’ve already shipped. So it doesn’t help us in the core gaming space.
The third thing, and this maps to all three of those, is that it costs a lot of money. And so the scenario is, OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it.
Oh, and by the way, I have an even better way for you to get high-definition content straight to your TV, between the combination of what we’re doing with Netflix, what we’re doing with (video on demand), we have a great Xbox Live solution. In a way it’s a little bit of a technology looking for an answer. We just have no plans in that space.
So there you have it guys it might be a new year but it looks like Microsoft will be keeping the same agenda.
News-Source:
techflash.com
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