I take it that MS did not announce an Xbox 360 with an internal HD-DVD drive, right?

I looked on the CES schedule and did not see a place for MS.

I would appreciate it if someone could clarify.

I think that was a pretty big rumor. A while back, MS said they had no plans to do that.. they even said a Blu-Ray add-on was a possibility.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12713486&postcount=3497

The CES speech by Bill Gates did not mention HD-DVD at all. It's like rats abandoning a sinking ship. I feel somewhat sorry for Toshiba since from what I have read it was Microsoft that convinced them to go ahead with HD-DVD.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12713486&postcount=3497

The CES speech by Bill Gates did not mention HD-DVD at all. It's like rats abandoning a sinking ship.
Your comments here are starting to have the same tone as you alter ego on the other forum. Which is pretty unfortunate. I liked the Paul who was here better ;).

I feel somewhat sorry for Toshiba since from what I have read it was Microsoft that convinced them to go ahead with HD-DVD.

Shows you that you would be better off reading rumors on the men's room door than whoever told you that. Where on earth is the factory that creates just junk that doesn't even pass the layman smell test, rather than rise up to an argument on AVS....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12713486&postcount=3497

I feel somewhat sorry for Toshiba since from what I have read it was Microsoft that convinced them to go ahead with HD-DVD.


Unless "We'll support your format" = "Do it man, all the other kids are!" I think we can delegate that one to the BS bin. :-)

I used this a a reference:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/29/origins-of-the-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-war/


Bill Hunt of Digital Bits explained to InternetNews that Toshiba was ready to drop HD-DVD and join Blu-ray in 2005 until an unnamed company, which Hunt believes to be Microsoft, “pressured the company to stick with HD DVD since so much time and money had been invested in it.”

Also, I though Microsoft should have stated support of Toshiba if they really wanted to support the HD-DVD format. To me it was like Toshiba being left all alone.

^^ I just went there and found them no problem.

http://www.toshibahddvd.com/

http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/hddvd/

I used this a a reference:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/29/origins-of-the-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-war/
Way to go Paul, quote a known anti-Microsoft website. :rolleyes:

http://www.toshibahddvd.com/

http://www.tacp.toshiba.com/hddvd/

Right, then. Technical glitch. Someone alert the webmaster.

If that is not a technical glitch, it is a white flag.

I can't find em either.


Looks like Toshiba got thrown under the bus.

Edit: Found em.

Your comments here are starting to have the same tone as you alter ego on the other forum. Which is pretty unfortunate. I liked the Paul who was here better ;).
No kidding, since Friday, the constant insults hurled at HD DVD and those that support(ed) it is getting really old, especially when it's the same juvenile one liners from the same people over and over. I think I've added more to the ignore list in 3 days than since I registered.
Shows you that you would be better off reading rumors on the men's room door than whoever told you that. Where on earth is the factory that creates just junk that doesn't even pass the layman smell test, rather than rise up to an argument on AVS....
Don't you love working for MS - The Evil Empire of the World and the sole source of all conspiracies, unfortunate events, mean thoughts, drought, and homeless and hungry children? :rolleyes:

I've had my beefs with MS from time to time, but give me a break people, grow up.

^^ That is their home page they are not on. Do to DVD and then HD DVD....

If that is not a technical glitch, it is a white flag.

The Flash based page is still up. That sort of shoots down your theory.

The Flash based page is still up. That sort of shoots down your theory.

Which one? That it is a TECHNICAL GLITCH?

The Xbox 360 Ultimate was just a rumor and Microsoft actually went out of their way to deny it (http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26140722). Though it might never happen I personally think there is a higher probability of seeing an external Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360 than an Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD drive.

I used this a a reference:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/29/origins-of-the-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-war/

Bill Hunt of Digital Bits explained to InternetNews that Toshiba was ready to drop HD-DVD and join Blu-ray in 2005 until an unnamed company, which Hunt believes to be Microsoft, “pressured the company to stick with HD DVD since so much time and money had been invested in it.”
Sorry to say, Bill didn't know which end was up in that statement. Here is the real situation. I invite Mr. Hunt to come here and challenge me if he thinks otherwise.

The unification talks were between Sony, Panasonic, and Toshiba. Microsoft was not invited to the talk. They spoke, but could not arrive at a conclusion and talks broke down. No company pressured Toshiba to back off, much less Microsoft.

If there is one thing I can't stand is all of these rumors by people who were not withing 5,000 miles of the discussions. Literally.

Here is another bit for you. There was one other company at the meetings. Ask Bill Hunt to see if he knows which company that is. If he does not, there is another proof for you that he is not privy to what went on, but is only going by negative gossip given to him without a shred of truth.

The discussions fell apart because the unification offer was for Toshiba to give up on the physical format of HD DVD and agree to 0.1mm format. Toshiba asked for proof that 0.1mm would work. None was provided so they broke talks.

Putting all of this aside, do you all really believe that Microsoft cared more about HD DVD than Toshiba? This is as preposterous as me saying Philips did the deal with Warner to have them go exclusive. Put your thinking cap on before believing stuff like this….

Also, I though Microsoft should have stated support of Toshiba if they really wanted to support the HD-DVD format. To me it was like Toshiba being left all alone.

I can't make sense out of this statement so have nothing to offer.

I used this a a reference:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/29/origins-of-the-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-war/
Oh and if there is one person more confused that Bill Hunt, is this guy. I have never seen so much fabrication and confused reasoning in my life. And you are talking to a person that has personal, first-hand data, that he has gotten from some random poster who probably wasn't remotely around any of this.

I worked with another AVS member on a full correction of this "article" and the results were posted on Michael Bay's web site since he made the challenge with the same article. You can read every bit of it here: http://www.shootfortheedit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=742

You have more stuff? I am ready for it ;) :)

The discussions fell apart because the unification offer was for Toshiba to give up on the physical format of HD DVD and agree to 0.1mm format. Toshiba asked for proof that 0.1mm would work. None was provided so they broke talks.

I'm actually curious about this, did TDK debut their Durabis hard-coat after these talks broke down? Besides that, once Durabis appeared, why didn't the 3 companies get back together again and resume the talks? If this was the one and only sticking point, which I doubt it was, then once Blu-Ray got the hard coats it should have been a moot point.

Amir , thank you for your response. It's been a hectic few days and things have been a little wacky. At the CES kickoff speech by Mr. Gates I though he should have mentioned support for Toshiba. I was really surprised that no mention was made of HD-DVD especially since Microsoft has been in the forefront of defending Toshiba in the United States up until now. I realize you were closely involved with Toshiba, and my comments were not aimed at you. Let's let's wind this down since the format war is now coming to a hopefully peaceful end.

Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I'm just curious of your opinion, Amir.

In your opinion, can HD-DVD rebound from the recent change in support? If you've already answered this question, I apologize!

Amir, you've been very vocal in the past about Microsoft's (at the time) staunch support of HD DVD as a format.

Recent statements like the above, however, indicate that there is indeed a shift in focus at Microsoft away from optical formats, with more emphasis on digital distribution (with Microsoft spearheading on this front with the Xbox Live service).

Regardless, however, most sane observers would recognize that any built-in HD DVD player for an Xbox 360 would suffer a similar build cost differential such as Sony is no doubt incurring on the PlayStation 3, I won't belabor the point of this particular rumor. It's obviously incorrect, and has been repeatedly and consistently denied by Microsoft.

---

Given that you would have had first-hand knowledge of any unification talks which occurred (given your previous post at Microsoft, even if you weren't privy to them at the time), I think we should at least offer you the benefit of the doubt on this topic. If you say Microsoft wasn't physically present, then I believe you.

Truth be told, rumors or innuendo aside, I think most of us can agree that there was enough money riding on that decision for Toshiba not to need any outside nudging to come to a decision on their own. Their yearly royalty income from DVD alone would be a powerful incentive to avoid a compromise, would it not? That's the way I've always assumed things went, since Toshiba's entire marketing strategy of losing-money-now-to-make-money-later always seemed predicated on the fact that they would be losing money irrespectively due to the decline of DVD.

On the other hand, given the approaching battle with Sony over the next generation (now current-generation) consoles, I'm also pretty sure Microsoft didn't shed too many tears over the breakdown of the negotiations, seeing how the net effect would be beneficial to the Xbox franchise as a whole. Would you say that is a correct statement?

Amir,

Always appreciate your sane comments to dampened the lunacy floating around the net.

Sorry if this is a little off-topic, but I'm just curious of your opinion, Amir.

In your opinion, can HD-DVD rebound from the recent change in support? If you've already answered this question, I apologize!

I am sorry but I am not close enough to current discussion/thinking to know one way or the other. And no, you are the first person to ask so it was cool :).

I used this a a reference:
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/29/origins-of-the-blu-ray-vs-hd-dvd-war/





:D

Amir, you've been very vocal in the past about Microsoft's (at the time) staunch support of HD DVD as a format.

Recent statements like the above, however, indicate that there is indeed a shift in focus at Microsoft away from optical formats, with more emphasis on digital distribution (with Microsoft spearheading on this front with the Xbox Live service).
Not at all. There has been no change in Microsoft activity around digital media because of this news, or frankly, because of anything happening to HD DVD vs BD.

People on the outside don't realize that Microsoft is not one company but many. Groups are highly indepdent and drive seperate strategies. Which sometimes are even in conflict, like how we get our VC-1 codec into PS3 which competes with 360.

In this case, there is an entirely seperate group driving digital distribution and they are doing their job whether anything is going on here. Being a core part of Xbox, it also gets a lot attention in events like CES. By the way, last year there was only a 30 second mention of HD DVD and that was it. Bill has a lot to talk about, representing a 70,000 person company with each product group wanting him to talk about their stuff :).

Given that you would have had first-hand knowledge of any unification talks which occurred (given your previous post at Microsoft, even if you weren't privy to them at the time), I think we should at least offer you the benefit of the doubt on this topic. If you say Microsoft wasn't physically present, then I believe you.
Thank you :).

Truth be told, rumors or innuendo aside, I think most of us can agree that there was enough money riding on that decision for Toshiba not to need any outside nudging to come to a decision on their own. Their yearly royalty income from DVD alone would be a powerful incentive to avoid a compromise, would it not?
That and pride is the biggest reason format war existed. We may have had the pride factor too, but not the other factor.

On the other hand, given the approaching battle with Sony over the next generation (now current-generation) consoles, I'm also pretty sure Microsoft didn't shed too many tears over the breakdown of the negotiations, seeing how the net effect would be beneficial to the Xbox franchise as a whole. Would you say that is a correct statement?
No. We would have been perfectly fine with unification too. Indeed, we drove a version of it ourselves. If you see the insider thread, you see a reference from me on Universal drives. Indeed, the term we used was "Purple." Mind you, it was only informal talks but we did our bit.

The other proof point is how much work we did to unify all the other layers in the system. Before we started, BD was a recording format with a proprietary file system, used a custom interface to talk to the host, used a special copy protection owned by Sony+Philips, only supported MPEG-2, and had no interactivity. We drove them to use UDF file system as used by many other storage products, same command interface so that the drives are plug-and-play with Windows, unified around AACS copy protection, and of course, support for all three codecs. I can tell you that Microsoft was behind these changes more than any other company. And here, gossip writers position us as the people who wanted a “war.” How wrong their assumptions are.

Remember, at the time, Dell, HP and Sony were in BDA. They represented our biggest PC OEMs for Windows. And my division was in Windows to boot. With Xbox in a completely separate division. So we had a ton of motivation to make things work. Of course, we did not want compromise the wrong way to get there and hence the reason we eventually took sides. But it came after a ton of effort, and incredible amount of collaboration with BDA and HD DVD companies. There is a reason we know as much about both technologies as we do.

Amir,

Always appreciate your sane comments to dampened the lunacy floating around the net.
Thank you :).

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12713486&postcount=3497

The CES speech by Bill Gates did not mention HD-DVD at all. It's like rats abandoning a sinking ship. I feel somewhat sorry for Toshiba since from what I have read it was Microsoft that convinced them to go ahead with HD-DVD.Since Toshiba is receiving enough money by manufacturing Zune it won't complain much.

The Xbox 360 Ultimate was just a rumor and Microsoft actually went out of their way to deny it (http://www.gamespot.com/news/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=26140722). Though it might never happen I personally think there is a higher probability of seeing an external Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360 than an Xbox 360 with an internal HD DVD drive.

This actually makes me believe that this was in development. Why would MS even bother to respond to a rumor, there's so many of them, but they chose to shoot down this one? That's curious for sure.

I think a HD-DVD set-top box branded under the Toshiba name was coming with a 360 chipset inside. It got canned because of this news.

It's really not that far fetched anyway, the cost of the 360 has dropped over the last year making it more feasible and other consoles have had similar set-top box (Panasonic Q and Sony PSX) iterations. Usually they only come out in Japan though.

Since Toshiba is receiving enough money by manufacturing Zune it won't complain much.

Toshiba is not manufacturing current generation Zunes.

Any other rumors? It is 11:23 and I could probably stay up and set the world straight before midnight :D.

Toshiba is not manufacturing current generation Zunes.

Any other rumors? It is 11:23 and I could probably stay up and set the world straight before midnight :D.Then that's double punches for Toshiba...

Oh I know you can't comment about a Blu-ray add-on :cool:

Not at all. There has been no change in Microsoft activity around digital media because of this news, or frankly, because of anything happening to HD DVD vs BD.

People on the outside don't realize that Microsoft is not one company but many. Groups are highly indepdent and drive seperate strategies. Which sometimes are even in conflict, like how we get our VC-1 codec into PS3 which competes with 360.


Is this sort of decentralization also a potential weakness in some areas. For instance in this case does it make it difficult to pull the entire company together behind a single strategy like promoting hd dvd, esp. if it would require heavy investment and longterm strategy?

If the MS hd dvd unit has to justify it's own expenses from quarter to quarter and 'turn a profit' so to speak then how could it hope to compete with a approach like Sony's that is ready to take heavy financial losses in the short term for a longer term objective?

[QUOTE=amirm;12716594]The discussions fell apart because the unification offer was for Toshiba to give up on the physical format of HD DVD and agree to 0.1mm format. Toshiba asked for proof that 0.1mm would work. None was provided so they broke talks.[QUOTE]


Why was no proof provided? :)

Why was no proof provided? :)
Perhaps because there was not anyone who could make BD-50s then, even though that was the punch-line for BDA....

Recall that BD-50s did not show up until after the launch of the format. Put another way, folks wanted Toshiba to give up a working system for a hypothetical one....

Perhaps because there was not anyone who could make BD-50s then, even though that was the punch-line for BDA....

Recall that BD-50s did not show up until after the launch of the format. Put another way, folks wanted Toshiba to give up a working system for a hypothetical one....


I was asking thinking they were trying to protect their investment and technology, because having to show proof would open up too much of the very thing they wanted to protect.

Is this sort of decentralization also a potential weakness in some areas. For instance in this case does it make it difficult to pull the entire company together behind a single strategy like promoting hd dvd, esp. if it would require heavy investment and longterm strategy?
Well, yes and no. The decentralization gives us tremendous speed and agility for a big company. A group can make decisions and act on them without going through many layers of management to get there.

To the extent the company as whole wants to get something done, then it rallies hard. I am sure you remember how fast the company jumped on the Internet (before my time but I remember it being impressive).

Read the insider thread on the last part of your question.

If the MS hd dvd unit has to justify it's own expenses from quarter to quarter and 'turn a profit' so to speak then how could it hope to compete with a approach like Sony's that is ready to take heavy financial losses in the short term for a longer term objective?
We couldn't and wouldn't. For Sony, BD and PS3 are their entire strategy. So they would sacrifice anything to get there. Microsoft has many businesses and bets. You just can't compare the two of us that way.

Think of this way. How many of you if you were Sony's CEO and were sitting on success of PS2, would do what they did with PS3 and put a BD drive in there? I bet a lot of you would think twice about spending billions to win here. How would you get that money back? BD format may not yet make it against DVD. What then? So this gamble needs to be evaluated sometime later, not now.

amirm, looking forward to the book you or other insiders will write about the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of this HD war (assuming it has any fight left in it after the Warner bomb). The bloody backroom deals between Toshiba/Sony/the studios/etc. are the type of cold, backstabbing stuff that makes "Barbarians At the Gate" or "The Late Shift" look like a chick flick! Hopefully Larry Gelbart will still be alive when the book rights are sold so that he can write the screenplay. :D

Amir, I'd also like to add my thanks for your participation and responses in this and other forum threads. It is unusual to see this level of open communication from a corporate presence, especially when presented in an erudite manner.

Not at all. There has been no change in Microsoft activity around digital media because of this news, or frankly, because of anything happening to HD DVD vs BD.
Fair enough.

My only comment to this is that, from outside appearances, it seems that Microsoft is at least trying to put some conceptual distance between the company's efforts on optical media, versus other forms of digital delivery, especially as they relate to Toshiba and/or HD DVD (not surprising given the recent news, which I will assume you knew about - or at least strongly suspected might happen - ahead of time). If there has been such a philosophy change, recent or not, I certainly can't fault it, as it makes emminent sense to steer clear of bad press, regardless of the origins or reasoning.

People on the outside don't realize that Microsoft is not one company but many. Groups are highly indepdent and drive seperate strategies. Which sometimes are even in conflict, like how we get our VC-1 codec into PS3 which competes with 360.

In this case, there is an entirely seperate group driving digital distribution and they are doing their job whether anything is going on here. Being a core part of Xbox, it also gets a lot attention in events like CES. By the way, last year there was only a 30 second mention of HD DVD and that was it. Bill has a lot to talk about, representing a 70,000 person company with each product group wanting him to talk about their stuff :).

...

No. We would have been perfectly fine with unification too. Indeed, we drove a version of it ourselves. If you see the insider thread, you see a reference from me on Universal drives. Indeed, the term we used was "Purple." Mind you, it was only informal talks but we did our bit.

The other proof point is how much work we did to unify all the other layers in the system. Before we started, BD was a recording format with a proprietary file system, used a custom interface to talk to the host, used a special copy protection owned by Sony+Philips, only supported MPEG-2, and had no interactivity. We drove them to use UDF file system as used by many other storage products, same command interface so that the drives are plug-and-play with Windows, unified around AACS copy protection, and of course, support for all three codecs. I can tell you that Microsoft was behind these changes more than any other company. And here, gossip writers position us as the people who wanted a “war.” How wrong their assumptions are.

Remember, at the time, Dell, HP and Sony were in BDA. They represented our biggest PC OEMs for Windows. And my division was in Windows to boot. With Xbox in a completely separate division. So we had a ton of motivation to make things work. Of course, we did not want compromise the wrong way to get there and hence the reason we eventually took sides. But it came after a ton of effort, and incredible amount of collaboration with BDA and HD DVD companies. There is a reason we know as much about both technologies as we do.
In the above statements, is the boldfaced "We" referring to your own group that you had control of at the time, rather than the Xbox "group" though? I can certainly see a case where referring to Microsoft Corp. as a whole in this context works, too.

I can understand and appreciate the effort that Microsoft (and particularly your division) put in to unifying the standards behind both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Some of it was no doubt necessary to ensure that forthcoming optical drives of both types would be compatible with Microsoft's flagship product - Windows, but I'm also sure that much effort was spent on optimizing and improving both products above and beyond simple functionality. It is the nature of engineering, and I understand that well. :)

On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft's gaming division ("they") weren't at least somewhat relieved to hear that their perceived main competition would be getting a serious challenge on a second, putatively unrelated front. I know I would have been, were I in their shoes at the time, and the performance on the market of the PlayStation 3 was doubtlessly affected by the uncertainty of the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war. Had Blu-ray been the de facto new standard, it would certainly have added more perceived value to the PS3 at launch - and it may yet do so now that an end to the format war seems likely.

Is that a more correct interpretation of events?

Well, yes and no. The decentralization gives us tremendous speed and agility for a big company. A group can make decisions and act on them without going through many layers of management to get there.

To the extent the company as whole wants to get something done, then it rallies hard. I am sure you remember how fast the company jumped on the Internet (before my time but I remember it being impressive).

Read the insider thread on the last part of your question.


We couldn't and wouldn't. For Sony, BD and PS3 are their entire strategy. So they would sacrifice anything to get there. Microsoft has many businesses and bets. You just can't compare the two of us that way.

Think of this way. How many of you if you were Sony's CEO and were sitting on success of PS2, would do what they did with PS3 and put a BD drive in there? I bet a lot of you would think twice about spending billions to win here. How would you get that money back? BD format may not yet make it against DVD. What then? So this gamble needs to be evaluated sometime later, not now.

I see your point on the decentralized approach, speed and agility. Makes sense.

I do think there is a cost to decentralization though when the company as a whole needs to be get behind something. By the time the decision to act is made the cost of action may have risen significantly. As in your internet example, when MS committed to it the result was impressive indeed, at the same time look at how long it took MS to decide to get into it. I'm sure companies like Google appreciate that delay in action.

Your point about MS approach vs. Sony's is well taken. No one can argue with difference in balance sheets between the 2 companies, so in that sense I suppose the proof is in the pudding.

Thanks for your honest replies, as always.

The discussions fell apart because the unification offer was for Toshiba to give up on the physical format of HD DVD and agree to 0.1mm format. Toshiba asked for proof that 0.1mm would work. None was provided so they broke talks.

...

Perhaps because there was not anyone who could make BD-50s then, even though that was the punch-line for BDA....

Recall that BD-50s did not show up until after the launch of the format. Put another way, folks wanted Toshiba to give up a working system for a hypothetical one....

I guess I'm a little confused here. Both BD25 and BD50 have data layers that reside at 0.1 mm don't they? Sony & Panasonic must have had BD25 to show. (Then again, I guess if they couldn't demonstrate that BD50 was workable, it's not much of an argument for abandoning HD30.)

In any case though... is this basically saying that had Toshiba accepted the 0.1mm format, then we might have never had a war, and had a product with HD DVD interactivity and specifications, but Blu-ray capacity and bandwidth? That seems like it would have been the best of both worlds.

To me these comments by Mr. Gates do not represent support of HD-DVD but an emphasis on digital transmission of HD media.

http://blogs.reuters.com/mediafile/2008/01/07/bill-gates-unplugged/

Bill Gates has been pushing for the download method of information sharing since the late 90's and even wrote a book about it around 2002 I believe. I dont think he snubbed HD-DVD since the world wide media concept has been his baby for a long time. He truly believes that physical media will not be relevant in the near future.

No. We would have been perfectly fine with unification too. Indeed, we drove a version of it ourselves. If you see the insider thread, you see a reference from me on Universal drives. Indeed, the term we used was "Purple." Mind you, it was only informal talks but we did our bit.

The other proof point is how much work we did to unify all the other layers in the system. Before we started, BD was a recording format with a proprietary file system, used a custom interface to talk to the host, used a special copy protection owned by Sony+Philips, only supported MPEG-2, and had no interactivity. We drove them to use UDF file system as used by many other storage products, same command interface so that the drives are plug-and-play with Windows, unified around AACS copy protection, and of course, support for all three codecs. I can tell you that Microsoft was behind these changes more than any other company. And here, gossip writers position us as the people who wanted a “war.” How wrong their assumptions are.

Remember, at the time, Dell, HP and Sony were in BDA. They represented our biggest PC OEMs for Windows. And my division was in Windows to boot. With Xbox in a completely separate division. So we had a ton of motivation to make things work. Of course, we did not want compromise the wrong way to get there and hence the reason we eventually took sides. But it came after a ton of effort, and incredible amount of collaboration with BDA and HD DVD companies. There is a reason we know as much about both technologies as we do.

This is one of the most interesting posts I've ever read on this forum. It's cool to hear what goes on behind the scenes for something like this. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

all very enlightening

This is one of the most interesting posts I've ever read on this forum. It's cool to hear what goes on behind the scenes for something like this. Thanks so much for sharing this with us.

Although I may not agree with some of the things he says, I do appreciate him sharing his thoughts about what happened. I find that his perspective on these events to be very interesting.

To anyone who has followed Microsoft's statements of the idea of integrating a HD DVD disc or Blu-ray drive for that matter into the 360 the rumors implying this would happen were laughable.

By leaving HD DVD outside of the internal build Microsoft has given advantages that it's main competition, Sony/PS3 just doesn't have, the most important of which is manufacturing costs:msrp.

I was interested in seeing if the rumors had anything valid to them, but not surprised to see otherwise.

Amir, I'd also like to add my thanks for your participation and responses in this and other forum threads. It is unusual to see this level of open communication from a corporate presence, especially when presented in an erudite manner.


Fair enough.

My only comment to this is that, from outside appearances, it seems that Microsoft is at least trying to put some conceptual distance between the company's efforts on optical media, versus other forms of digital delivery, especially as they relate to Toshiba and/or HD DVD (not surprising given the recent news, which I will assume you knew about - or at least strongly suspected might happen - ahead of time). If there has been such a philosophy change, recent or not, I certainly can't fault it, as it makes emminent sense to steer clear of bad press, regardless of the origins or reasoning.


In the above statements, is the boldfaced "We" referring to your own group that you had control of at the time, rather than the Xbox "group" though? I can certainly see a case where referring to Microsoft Corp. as a whole in this context works, too.

I can understand and appreciate the effort that Microsoft (and particularly your division) put in to unifying the standards behind both Blu-ray and HD DVD. Some of it was no doubt necessary to ensure that forthcoming optical drives of both types would be compatible with Microsoft's flagship product - Windows, but I'm also sure that much effort was spent on optimizing and improving both products above and beyond simple functionality. It is the nature of engineering, and I understand that well. :)

On the other hand, I find it hard to believe that Microsoft's gaming division ("they") weren't at least somewhat relieved to hear that their perceived main competition would be getting a serious challenge on a second, putatively unrelated front. I know I would have been, were I in their shoes at the time, and the performance on the market of the PlayStation 3 was doubtlessly affected by the uncertainty of the HD DVD/Blu-ray format war. Had Blu-ray been the de facto new standard, it would certainly have added more perceived value to the PS3 at launch - and it may yet do so now that an end to the format war seems likely.

Is that a more correct interpretation of events?

This goes back to the assumption that death of HD DVD somehow means death for the 360.

The reason the PS3 is currently behind the 360 and Wii has nothing to do with the format war and everything to do with games. The PS3 has few must have games compared to the libraries of it competition and is still perceived at high cost and low value overall. Not to mention Live has become the online gaming offering of choice by many gamers and that trend doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Could the PS3 still sell good numbers as a Blu-ray player? Certainly. It's place as a game console in the current console war has been pretty much determined though.

I wonder what this means for box 720?

Would they really use a blu-ray device?
Or will games come on multiple dvds for large hard drive install?

I wonder what this means for box 720?

Would they really use a blu-ray device?
Or will games come on multiple dvds for large hard drive install?

Almost certainly it'll use a larger capacity drive - either Blu-ray, or maybe they'll use HD DVD just because. It doesn't have to play movie discs.

Almost certainly it'll use a larger capacity drive - either Blu-ray, or maybe they'll use HD DVD just because. It doesn't have to play movie discs.

Guess we'll see. Hell UMD is still around right? And it has flopped big time as a movie format. So HD DVD can still serve a purpose.

No one has even brought up the HD DVD could still win as a back up format.
It has to be far cheaper than burning blu ray discs.

Guess we'll see. Hell UMD is still around right? And it has flopped big time as a movie format. So HD DVD can still serve a purpose.

No one has even brought up the HD DVD could still win as a back up format.
It has to be far cheaper than burning blu ray discs.

If you can find a burner.

BD has had the authoring and burning game going since day one. This is one place Toshiba really missed the boat.

No one has even brought up the HD DVD could still win as a back up format.


For home Perhaps but in an Enterprise class environment. Not happening. HDDVD no Bluray are nowhere near as fast as Archaic Magnetic Media. Even though Archaic it still pulls a ton of information.

See LTO, S-DLT etc.

For home Perhaps but in an Enterprise class environment. Not happening. HDDVD no Bluray are nowhere near as fast as Archaic Magnetic Media. Even though Archaic it still pulls a ton of information.

See LTO, S-DLT etc.

yes I meant for home :)
home pcs, lap tops, and dvrs.

Why would they put a dying format into the 360 now? A BD drive would be the only option now and I doubt that will happen.

It is obvious that Microsoft sees downloading as the future. I would bet on more advanced Zunes, and a Xbox with a large Hard Drive in the future. DRM has to be worked out. Miscrosoft believes that Optical Storage is nearly at the end of its lifspan.
The home server is the future.

It is obvious that Microsoft sees downloading as the future. I would bet on more advanced Zunes, and a Xbox with a large Hard Drive in the future. DRM has to be worked out. Miscrosoft believes that Optical Storage is nearly at the end of its lifspan.
The home server is the future.

I hope it's flash media. A few TB in a CF card sized package would be a killer UHDM format.

I really don't want to store multiple TB movies on servers.

It is obvious that Microsoft sees downloading as the future. I would bet on more advanced Zunes, and a Xbox with a large Hard Drive in the future. DRM has to be worked out. Miscrosoft believes that Optical Storage is nearly at the end of its lifspan.
The home server is the future.

i agree! especially with everything that bill talks about and believes. why would the next xbox have any optical drive? imagine a central home server where movies, music, games, tv could be stored and accessed. microsoft already has a uk company using the 360 as a stb.

hell, microsoft's servers could store the games and then your xbox would just access it depending on what license is purchased; trial, everytime you play, or ownership (anytime you wanna play). this is where these things are going. game devs/pubs would love to save time and money by doing it this way. they could even store their own games on their own servers, or pass the infrastructure part to microsoft.

add compression to make things smaller and this will fly. no more disks, smaller xbox system, less heat. easily change software as new things come along. movies, music, tv (iptv,directv), games when you want it. wow...can't wait. shoot, next step after that is virtual reality.

Shows you that you would be better off reading rumors on the men's room door than whoever told you that.


Interesting, that's how I feel about all of your posts.

Interesting, that's how I feel about all of your posts.

nice contribution, like many of your other pro-sony quips.

This goes back to the assumption that death of HD DVD somehow means death for the 360.
I'm sorry, where did I assume anything of the sort? I said a widespread public perception of Blu-ray becoming the de facto winner of the high definition disc format wars would benefit the PS3 (in much the same way that the built in DVD drive on the PlayStation 2 lifted its early sales). I made no allusion to the 360 failing on this account.

I won't address the rest of your post since that firmly belongs in the console discussion area rather in in HDTV Software.

Why would they put a dying format into the 360 now? A BD drive would be the only option now and I doubt that will happen.

Yep. Didn't MS berate sony for "forcing" Blu-ray onto people with it's inclusion in the PS3?

That's the thing about how this format war started that many veterans should be scratching their heads over. After the lessons of Betamax and VHS, why did this happen again?

At the point of that reported matsushita, sony, toshiba mtg, it wasn't clear to me if Toshiba realized that all of japan CEMs were already sewn up (sorry, Sanyo and NEC don't qualify, they've not done any DVD players for a long time).

If Toshiba knew then that besides Sony & Matsushita, Pioneer, Hitachi, Sharp, Philips, Samsung, LG, JVC (owned by Matsushita back then) already said they are building BD, how can any sane person decide to go ahead and launch a 2nd format.

Suppose some in that list didn't announce at that point, but even with just pioneer, sharp and hitachi, that is already a formidable list of companies. How can Toshiba go ahead and launch HD DVD/AOD knowing that pretty much all of japanese CE already picked BD?

For the talks to break down when people in the press already were publishing headlines like "Format War Averted", that is so illogical that people have to guess at why it happened.

Suppose the breakdown was ONLY because Sony & Matsushita did not produce the proof that 0.1mm layer for readable pits works (presumably outside of the cartridge, because the cartridge version was already working), then it makes even less sense the TDK Durabis coating and other similar offerings are not big secrets. If that's the case, a simple phone call from sony/matsushita to toshiba for a quick demo would have been enough.

So is it because the people in the room wanted a format war to erupt?

Since noone can make heads and tails of why these three industry leaders could not work out a simple problem, we can only speculate.

I for one really want to understand why this format war happened when every one knew the consequences and amount of money that was going to be wasted. Did these three negotiators from the three companies just happen to have centuries old blood feuds?

And then there's this.

Everywhere we look during the launch of HD DVD, we see MSFT people sitting at the table, getting all the press, driving buses, exhorting people to buy HD DVD titles from europe to get around local BD owned titles, commenting on the intricacies of ROI using VC-1 encoders for HD DVD, jointly announcing a development effort with Broadcomm for HD DVD.

I mean, what are people supposed to think when the only publicly accessible faces to the format war in N.A. were not Toshiba people, but MSFT employees not only talking up HD DVD strengths, but actually talking down BD perceived weaknesses as well? How many here recall the "violation of physical laws" tribute to BD50?

From 2006 and 2007, how many Toshiba people did we hear from talking about their format?

Bill Hunt's assertion was credible precisely because noone can figure out why MSFT was so deeply involved in HD DVD. Heck, any logical person would start to wonder why MSFT is not only sitting at the HD DVD table, but for all intents and purposes leading the charge.

If these comparison shots of the BDA and HD DVD booths at CES right now are any indication, likely not.



Yeah, only in that photo only 3 people actually sits at the booth, others are just walking by. Nice try.

The fact that your angle of the shot is completely misleading and the booth for Blu-Ray is positioned in the middle of everything that of course BDA had to pay crapload of money for. I'm sickened by your flaming. Seriously.

Reminds me of the ngage booths at e3!

Regarding the format war:

http://www.dvdforum.org/about-charter.htm

Article 1. Name
The purpose of this charter (hereinafter, the “Charter”) is to provide the structure and rules for governance and operation of the DVD Forum (hereinafter, the “Forum”).
Article 2. Period of Duration
The Forum commenced as of August 7, 1997 and shall continue in existence for a period of ten (10) years from such date. The duration of the Forum may be reviewed and terminated earlier or extended at the option of the Steering Committee by a vote pursuant to Article 8(4) of this Charter.
Note: On February 28, 2007, the Steering Committee extended the duration of the Forum for an additional ten years, commencing on August 7, 2007.
Article 3. Purpose
The Forum is a voluntary association of hardware manufacturers, software firms and other users of digital versatile disc (“DVD”) formats (such formats defined as the “DVD Formats”), created for the following purposes:
(1) to establish the single DVD Format for each of the DVD application products, including revisions, improvements and enhancements, that would be in the best interests of consumers and users, and
(2) to encourage the broad acceptance of DVD Formats on a worldwide basis among members of the Forum, related industries and the public.

Both sides in the format war failed consumers. Three times- DVD Audio/SACD, DVD+/- media, DVD Ram and now this.

One more thing. I sure hope that image of HD DVD you posted was not taken before the exhibits opened. I don't see anyone walking in the hallways which seems to indicate that was the case. And it appears the booth personnel working on equipment setup.

Do you have the original non-split image file?

Hmmm. I'm reading reports that the HD-DVD booth is not nearly as busy as the other one - and this info is from a person I know who is actually in attendance.

*shrug*

No one has even brought up the HD DVD could still win as a back up format.
It has to be far cheaper than burning blu ray discs.

You cannot find any HD-DVD burners except on certain Toshiba laptop models at this moment.

Also, a review on cdrlabs.com (or is it cdrinfo.com?) shows that HD-DVD-R burn quality is not very good right now. By the standards of the CD/DVD/BD burning enthusiast site, they consider it poor.
BD25 burnable media is available for as low as $8 US. I don't recall how much HD-DVD-Rs cost.

EDIT: Looking for the URL to the review - I will update when I find it.

The September 19, 2007 post of this thread has the HD-DVD-R media test results, using the Toshiba SD-L902A slimline notebook burner drive:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=21949

Frankly, this drive is less than impressive- slow, expensive, poor quality burns and hard to get. And this more than a year after BluRay burners became readily available!

Unless something drastic happens, HD-DVD burners are dead.

BTW, that burner is a 1X burner. As far as I know, there is no 2X burner available (yet).

HD-DVD burnable media prices for Europe (from November 2007):

http://www.cdrlabs.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=23923

The SVP prices seem to have gone up? It's now £5.99 for a SL disc and £9.99 for a DL disc.

Hi Amir,

While I can understand MS not wanting to risk the 360 for its first year or so by including an expensive HD DVD drive it would have seemed to make sense to build one in this fall, assuming the drive prices were reasonable. Considering the declining role that PCs play as other devices, like cell phones, become more capable it would seem that MS’s overall corporate goal would be to increase its presence in other areas such as in the living room. Having a key piece of that living room puzzle (HD physical media, in this case blu-ray ) in the hands of a major competitor, Sony, would seem to place MS at a long-term disadvantage in offering a living room entertainment solution.

Thank you for all your insight.

I expect PS3 sales to rebound with the death of HDDVD. The Xbox 360 is going to lose this war in the end. I hope MS leaves the videogame industry like Sega did.

HiDef4Life, somehow, with the brisk sales of the 360, I don't think that will happen. :)

Wow, I thought this thread would be a very quick and locked thread. Guess not.

HiDef4Life, somehow, with the brisk sales of the 360, I don't think that will happen. :)

Brisk only in America. In Japan, Xbox 360 was DOA. Anyways as games get more complex, DVD9 is going to prove to be a limiting factor for developers.

I expect PS3 sales to rebound with the death of HDDVD. The Xbox 360 is going to lose this war in the end. I hope MS leaves the videogame industry like Sega did.

No one has bought a 360 to watch movies, they've bought them to play games and that's why they've been so successful with gamers. The 360 and Wii have firm momentum, full attention and priority status in the game industry among developers and consumers.

Microsoft has developed a close relationship with third party developers by continuously giving them what they need to get great games on the system, and with Live allows quite a few developers to get additional money and life out of their games with downloadable extras on live.

That's not going to reverse simply because HD DVD didn't succeed.

And as far as the Sega comment goes, MS has been responsible for revolutionizing gaming as we know it with the Live service, integration of a hard drive to eliminate costly memory cards and raised the bar on graphics.

As a gamer, I for one hope MS has a long run in the industry.

Brisk only in America. In Japan, Xbox 360 was DOA. Anyways as games get more complex, DVD9 is going to prove to be a limiting factor for developers.

America is a larger market than Japan, and the 360 has good support in Europe.

DVD9 hasn't proven to be a problem yet, as no single third party developer yet has refused to bring a AAA title to the 360 because of disc space. Add to that the fact that Blu-ray storage capacity hasn't helped the PS3 deliver a serious system moving title yet and over 95% of 360 titles have been delivered successfully on a single disc.

It just isn't life ending problem for the console.

If you actually ask developers, most will tell you that they're looking for ways to cut game development costs instead of run them up. DVD9 allows them some measure of keeping costs down.

The fact that your angle of the shot is completely misleading and the booth for Blu-Ray is positioned in the middle of everything that of course BDA had to pay crapload of money for.The HD DVD and Blu-ray booths are adjacent and roughly the same size. The HD DVD booth is in a better position, as it's higher and closer to the front entrance.

Attendance has been heavy at the BDA booth, I've seen far fewer people in the HD DVD booth.

DVD9 hasn't proven to be a problem yet, as no single third party developer yet has refused to bring a AAA title to the 360 because of disc space. Add to that the fact that Blu-ray storage capacity hasn't helped the PS3 deliver a serious system moving title yet and over 95% of 360 titles have been delivered successfully on a single disc.Have you ever thought that games are fitting fine on DVD9 fine cause the developers are creating the games that way? A few developers, Ubisoft and Rockstar have already said how they had to work around DVD9's limitations. Just like the PS2 held back the Xbox in multiplatform games, developers have had to work with the lowest common denominator again. The 360.

LA Noire is only coming out to PC and PS3 cause of 360's disc space. Unlike RPG's on the 360 which are spanning 3-4 DVD's, L.A Noire is a large sandbox game that cant allow disc swapping.
Oblivion GOTY Edition is one disc on the PS3, 2 on the 360.
Also MGS4 is rumoured to be on a 50gb Blu Ray seeing as how Hideo Kojima has been very vocal on how 25gb isnt even enough for him.
And Im sure youve also heard of 4D graphics.. or procedural texturing, which involves textures changing over time. Again, not possible with DVD.

America is a larger market than Japan, and the 360 has good support in Europe.

DVD9 hasn't proven to be a problem yet, as no single third party developer yet has refused to bring a AAA title to the 360 because of disc space. Add to that the fact that Blu-ray storage capacity hasn't helped the PS3 deliver a serious system moving title yet and over 95% of 360 titles have been delivered successfully on a single disc.

It just isn't life ending problem for the console.

If you actually ask developers, most will tell you that they're looking for ways to cut game development costs instead of run them up. DVD9 allows them some measure of keeping costs down.


If you actually ask developers as you say. No comment other than what a silly statement considering I seriously doubt you have talked to developers. :rolleyes: If you have could you provide some proof so we can all see and read?

If what you say is true than how come many games for the 360 costs as much as the PS3 games? :confused: if they keep costs down then 360 games should be cheaper.

If you actually ask developers as you say. No comment other than what a silly statement considering I seriously doubt you have talked to developers. :rolleyes: If you have could you provide some proof so we can all see and read?
http://www.destructoid.com/bizarre-creations-no-wait-we-love-dvd-we-want-to-marry-dvd-37313.phtml

Bizarre Creations, the studio behind the Xbox 360 racing game Project Gotham Racing 4, hit some small snags over DVD. They worked around them - but the fact that they DID have to work around them is part of the issue.

If what you say is true than how come many games for the 360 costs as much as the PS3 games? :confused: if they keep costs down then 360 games should be cheaper.
How come HD DVD movies have cost as much as Blu-ray movies? Supposedly they cost less to manufacture. :)

The fact is, it's the cost of creating the content that pushes up the price tag on any software - it has virtually nothing to do with the medium on which that software is delivered.

Where is this comparison photo from dobyblue everybody is talking about?

Did it get "disappeared"?

Lame.

I prefer to judge for myself!

Oh and if there is one person more confused that Bill Hunt, is this guy. I have never seen so much fabrication and confused reasoning in my life. And you are talking to a person that has personal, first-hand data, that he has gotten from some random poster who probably wasn't remotely around any of this.

I worked with another AVS member on a full correction of this "article" and the results were posted on Michael Bay's web site since he made the challenge with the same article. You can read every bit of it here: http://www.shootfortheedit.com/forum/showthread.php?t=742

You have more stuff? I am ready for it ;) :)

I emailed all your comments to Bill Hunt in his first response to my he came up with a detailed rebuttal, but then he sent me another e-mail stating he wanted this to be his response:

Amir spends too much time on the newsgroups.

Brisk only in America. In Japan, Xbox 360 was DOA. Anyways as games get more complex, DVD9 is going to prove to be a limiting factor for developers.

http://www.theodoresworld.net/pcfreezone/huhImage2.jpg

The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360. Or else they will hit capacity constraints for their games pretty soon. Ha ha. Way to go Bill Gates for supporting the next Betamax! Then again, he was never good at predicting the next technology, only in stealing or buying it.

The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360. Or else they will hit capacity constraints for their games pretty soon. Ha ha. Way to go Bill Gates for supporting the next Betamax! Then again, he was never good at predicting the next technology, only in stealing or buying it.

They could never use a Blu-ray or a HD-DVD player for games since it is an add-on that only a few would have. They are stuck with the DVD format.

The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360. Or else they will hit capacity constraints for their games pretty soon.

(Assuming you are talking about the Next Xbox, not the 360 which only uses DVD for games)

Not necessarily, I'm sure they could use HD DVD for games even if the format folds for movie delivery.

As Nintendo has shown, consoles don't HAVE to be movie players to sell, and lack of other options could encourage more users to download movies from Xbox Live.

As Nintendo has shown, consoles don't HAVE to be movie players to sell, and lack of other options could encourage more users to download movies from Xbox Live.

Great post, I totally agree. Also, xbox games (and games in general) aren't going to require more space than DVD any time soon, they're just not that large.

The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360. Or else they will hit capacity constraints for their games pretty soon. Ha ha. Way to go Bill Gates for supporting the next Betamax! Then again, he was never good at predicting the next technology, only in stealing or buying it.

yep thats helped the gaming division for sony...

I expect PS3 sales to rebound with the death of HDDVD. The Xbox 360 is going to lose this war in the end. I hope MS leaves the videogame industry like Sega did.
Far better if Sony left..............go back to whatever the hell it is they do well :D

Personally I'd prefer to have more than one choice, but hey whatever.

If you actually ask developers as you say. No comment other than what a silly statement considering I seriously doubt you have talked to developers. :rolleyes: If you have could you provide some proof so we can all see and read?

If what you say is true than how come many games for the 360 costs as much as the PS3 games? :confused: if they keep costs down then 360 games should be cheaper.

Production costs are production costs. The graphics and programming for both next gen systems are costly. My comment had nothing to do with that. I was referencing the cost or disc replication.

Are you saying there is no difference in the replication costs of DVD9 and Blu-ray discs?

That would be news to me.

[QUOTE=jcc;12734996]The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360.[QUOTE]

Why would MS have to beg? I am sure, seriously, Sony would be happy to see BD in the Xbox 360 or future iterations. AFAIK, MS already works with BD in some compacity.

By the way, I doubt the next will have a physical drive for games. Just my guess and off topic.

http://www.destructoid.com/bizarre-creations-no-wait-we-love-dvd-we-want-to-marry-dvd-37313.phtml

Bizarre Creations, the studio behind the Xbox 360 racing game Project Gotham Racing 4, hit some small snags over DVD. They worked around them - but the fact that they DID have to work around them is part of the issue.


How come HD DVD movies have cost as much as Blu-ray movies? Supposedly they cost less to manufacture. :)

The fact is, it's the cost of creating the content that pushes up the price tag on any software - it has virtually nothing to do with the medium on which that software is delivered.

Profit margin hungry studios are responsible for HD DVD movies costing the same as Blu-ray. Not replicating costs.

Have you ever thought that games are fitting fine on DVD9 fine cause the developers are creating the games that way? A few developers, Ubisoft and Rockstar have already said how they had to work around DVD9's limitations. Just like the PS2 held back the Xbox in multiplatform games, developers have had to work with the lowest common denominator again. The 360.

LA Noire is only coming out to PC and PS3 cause of 360's disc space. Unlike RPG's on the 360 which are spanning 3-4 DVD's, L.A Noire is a large sandbox game that cant allow disc swapping.
Oblivion GOTY Edition is one disc on the PS3, 2 on the 360.
Also MGS4 is rumoured to be on a 50gb Blu Ray seeing as how Hideo Kojima has been very vocal on how 25gb isnt even enough for him.
And Im sure youve also heard of 4D graphics.. or procedural texturing, which involves textures changing over time. Again, not possible with DVD.

On the kool-aid a bit hard are we?

First of all, there is one RPG on the 360 that has been longer than a single disc (Blue Dragon) and that was because the director saw fit to include hours on end of FMV. That same director was responsible for the multidisc Final Fantasy games on the first PS, a trend we haven't seen on a FF game since.

Oblivion released on a single disc for the 360. The only reason Game of the Year Edition used more than one was to include addition content which was already available on download for those who already owned the game. You didn't mention the fact that GTA4 would be getting exclusive downloadable episodes either did you?

Kojima has been vocal and a disc hog since the MGS on the PS1. If I remember right, I believe he actually commented that he was using the 50gb and was worried IT wouldn't be enough. That sounds like his vision is a bit much for the technology he's working on. I think Konami will make sure the final product fits within the media, whether the game stays exclusive to the PS3 or not.

Lastly, it think texturing has been just fine on the 360 as Gears of War pretty much remains the best looking next gen title we've seen so far on either system. Alot of that is more due to the art direction behind it more than the ability to stream textures.

Point is, that good art direction and deep gameplay mechanics mean alot more than tech specs or disc capacity. I have owned almost every major console produced in the last 20 years, including the PS1 and PS2 mind you and I've seen powerhouse consoles turn out horrible games and more modest consoles turn out gems.

What the 360 doesn't have in disc storage space, the PS3 doesn't have in available dedicated graphics RAM and online infrastucture.

Good game developers can make great games work with what they have available.

By my count, quite a number of good game developers have made games work on the 360, and there's even more on the way. The PS3 hasn't killed it yet and won't kill it this generation.

wtf...so this is an xbox 360 thread and blu-ray idiots comment. go back to your insiders thread and drag that one down, again and again, not this one. talkstraight, it seems you don't even follow your name since most everything you say is rah rah for bd/sony. gimme a break.

paulgo, you never seem to follow your name either. if bill wants to reply, tell him to come here himself and be a man. why is he hiding behind your skirt? and that is as if we are supposed to believe you. he gets called out on all that nonsense, fictional, crap, that you quote as gospel, and he says "amir spends too much time on newsgroups". lmfao! what newsgroup here?

take your crap back to your own insiders' thread. whoopity f-ing doo about booths at ces. after the announcement, what did you expect? the hd-dvd had a big crowd from other pics that i saw. all this fud is crazy and needs to stop.

On the kool-aid a bit hard are we?

First of all, there is one RPG on the 360 that has been longer than a single disc (Blue Dragon) and that was because the director saw fit to include hours on end of FMV. That same director was responsible for the multidisc Final Fantasy games on the first PS, a trend we haven't seen on a FF game since.Lost Odyssey will also be using multiple discs. And FF games on the PS2 didnt need multiple discs because it was using a next gen format at the time(DVD).

Oblivion released on a single disc for the 360. The only reason Game of the Year Edition used more than one was to include addition content which was already available on download for those who already owned the game.Duh
You didn't mention the fact that GTA4 would be getting exclusive downloadable episodes either did you?And what does that have to do with disc space?

Kojima has been vocal and a disc hog since the MGS on the PS1. If I remember right, I believe he actually commented that he was using the 50gb and was worried IT wouldn't be enough.Nope.
That sounds like his vision is a bit much for the technology he's working on. I think Konami will make sure the final product fits within the media, whether the game stays exclusive to the PS3 or not.So you do admit developers are having to limit themselves. If theyre doing it to some extent with the PS3, imagine how much theyre limiting themselves with the 360.

Lastly, it think texturing has been just fine on the 360 as Gears of War pretty much remains the best looking next gen title we've seen so far on either system. Alot of that is more due to the art direction behind it more than the ability to stream textures.GoW isnt a large game. One developer even said that epic had limit the number of levels in the Xbox version, which is why the PC version has 3-4 more levels.

The rest of your post is fluff.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showpost.php?p=12713486&postcount=3497

The CES speech by Bill Gates did not mention HD-DVD at all. It's like rats abandoning a sinking ship. I feel somewhat sorry for Toshiba since from what I have read it was Microsoft that convinced them to go ahead with HD-DVD.

To support this - from an insider at Blu-ray.com:

"I'm told the Gates keynote was going to be 30% HD DVD related. Some quick editing was certainly required..."

Profit margin hungry studios are responsible for HD DVD movies costing the same as Blu-ray. Not replicating costs.
And the same isn't true for game developers, who are selling their discs for two to three times as much as those "profit margin hungry studios", yet publishing on similar physical media? :)

Toshiba should work out a cheap HD-DVD player to work with the Wii, and then with Xbox and Wii gamers on board Sony would be in DS, and BD would be for history!

Toshiba should work out a cheap HD-DVD player to work with the Wii, and then with Xbox and Wii gamers on board Sony would be in DS, and BD would be for history!

Unlike the Xbox360 the Wii does not have the graphics or computing power to handle HD.

[QUOTE=jcc;12734996]The irony here is that MSFT will now have to go beg Sony to let them have Blu-ray for their 360.[QUOTE]

Why would MS have to beg? I am sure, seriously, Sony would be happy to see BD in the Xbox 360 or future iterations. AFAIK, MS already works with BD in some compacity.

By the way, I doubt the next will have a physical drive for games. Just my guess and off topic.

+1

On the kool-aid a bit hard are we?

First of all, there is one RPG on the 360 that has been longer than a single disc (Blue Dragon) and that was because the director saw fit to include hours on end of FMV. That same director was responsible for the multidisc Final Fantasy games on the first PS, a trend we haven't seen on a FF game since.

Oblivion released on a single disc for the 360. The only reason Game of the Year Edition used more than one was to include addition content which was already available on download for those who already owned the game. You didn't mention the fact that GTA4 would be getting exclusive downloadable episodes either did you?

Kojima has been vocal and a disc hog since the MGS on the PS1. If I remember right, I believe he actually commented that he was using the 50gb and was worried IT wouldn't be enough. That sounds like his vision is a bit much for the technology he's working on. I think Konami will make sure the final product fits within the media, whether the game stays exclusive to the PS3 or not.

Lastly, it think texturing has been just fine on the 360 as Gears of War pretty much remains the best looking next gen title we've seen so far on either system. Alot of that is more due to the art direction behind it more than the ability to stream textures.

Point is, that good art direction and deep gameplay mechanics mean alot more than tech specs or disc capacity. I have owned almost every major console produced in the last 20 years, including the PS1 and PS2 mind you and I've seen powerhouse consoles turn out horrible games and more modest consoles turn out gems.

What the 360 doesn't have in disc storage space, the PS3 doesn't have in available dedicated graphics RAM and online infrastucture.

Good game developers can make great games work with what they have available.

By my count, quite a number of good game developers have made games work on the 360, and there's even more on the way. The PS3 hasn't killed it yet and won't kill it this generation.


Can't the PS3 use borrow memory from the main system?

Have you ever thought that games are fitting fine on DVD9 fine cause the developers are creating the games that way? A few developers, Ubisoft and Rockstar have already said how they had to work around DVD9's limitations. Just like the PS2 held back the Xbox in multiplatform games, developers have had to work with the lowest common denominator again. The 360.

LA Noire is only coming out to PC and PS3 cause of 360's disc space. Unlike RPG's on the 360 which are spanning 3-4 DVD's, L.A Noire is a large sandbox game that cant allow disc swapping.
Oblivion GOTY Edition is one disc on the PS3, 2 on the 360.
Also MGS4 is rumoured to be on a 50gb Blu Ray seeing as how Hideo Kojima has been very vocal on how 25gb isnt even enough for him.
And Im sure youve also heard of 4D graphics.. or procedural texturing, which involves textures changing over time. Again, not possible with DVD.

So if all these baseless claims you make are true, why is it that the software attachment rate and software sales for ps3 games are nonexistent??