Xbox 360 with built-in blu-ray coming soon!

What is the source?

And hasnt this been debunked already?

lies

Yeah, right, and I'm Bill Gates.

hmmmm...

http://www.engadget.com/2008/04/01/n...oming-in-2008/

http://www.engadget.com/2008/05/02/x...-by-september/

I would say no it will never happen. Unless Xbox can offer the system at no extra cost or slightly higher it isn't going to sell. As games won't utlize the blu-ray drive. It would just be used for movies.

What would they call it the elite extreme or somthing. Xbox 361

This will never happen. The ONLY reason that Microsoft backed HD-DVD was to slow down Sony and Blu-ray to give them time to develop their online distribution program. Microsoft threw away hundreds of millions of dollars knowing full well that HD-DVD was going to fail because they want to be the leader in digital distribution.

With that said, until they offer a way to purchase (instead of renting with a very limited amount of time to watch) the movie and be able to watch it wherever and whenever I want, they will not be getting any of my money.

No again!!!!!

Xbox 360 Blu-bawls edition? It would cost as much as an Elite, but only have a 20 GB hard drive.


Seriously though, this isn't going to happen. There is no money in it for them to try to compete against the $399 PS3, and until they drop in price, they won't be selling that many more console units. The only way they will go blu is with an add-on drive to get existing 360 customers to go that route instead of buying a PS3. It just wouldn't make any sense for them to produce a built-in Blu-ray drive.

I'm not sure about that.......I know quite a few people that have been discussing getting a console now because of all the GTA4 hype and now that Madden 2009 has online leagues- most want a Xbox 360 but are considering getting a PS3 because of it having blu-ray support. I still think Microsoft is going to lose some sales because the Xbox doesn't have blu-ray.

Blu-ray players are not selling to expectations so there is still a huge market out there without blu-ray. I think Microsoft is smart to add blu-ray- you'd think they would want to steal the thunder away from Sony. My only concern is the sound sitiuation with the 360- will they just stick to DTS and DD or will they modify the 360 to be able to decode the advanced sound that blu-ray has to offer.

Who knows, but it was funny that the one article cited the "new" Blu-Ray console to go from 200 something to 170 watts. They already went from 203 to 175 so that is certainly nothing to do with a Blu-Ray version.

I am wondering about that as well. IMHO that was a big problem with the hdmi versions of the 360 w/ the HD DVD add-on.

I really think that should be a priority, especially if they are making a new sku specifically for BD playback.

Not that it really matters to me as I already have a BD playing game console attached to my only display and receiver.

just tagging this thread so i can find it in September...

As far as I know, the xbox add on hd-dvd was also only for movies.

I see no reason why they would not offer a blu-ray add-on for those who have an xbox and want cheap access to a blueray player.

I know there are doubters about this happening but it wouldn't be surprising if it did. Right now the PS3 can claim that they are fully compatible with DVD's and the new High Def disk format. The XBOX cannot make that claim. If this comes to pass then they can get those people that are on the fence to possibly go there way if blu ray play back is a major factor in them making there final decision. XBOX could claim there exclusive games and blu ray playback like Sony does now with the PS3. The thing is will they offer the full blu ray experience or will they skimp on the audio portion. It will be interesting if there is two consoles driving HDM into the mainstream. It would probably give more time for Microsoft to nurture there little Frankenstein(known to us as VOD) They can tide over the media devotees until the infrastructure is in place that is needed to really get a full HD experience instead of the lite HD being offered up by several outlets at this time.

As Amir mentioned, it took the Microsoft development team something like 4.7 million lines of code to implement HD-DVD on the 360. If a Blu-ray implementation takes a similar amount of coding, it may be a while before Blu-ray comes out on the XBox.

+1
Everyone who believes this will happen please send me a personal note in September saying "I told you so" because... this absolutely will not happen, in fact I will predict MS will never release Blu-ray on Xbox 360. MS will be ready to release their next generation console beyond the 360 before Blu-ray has a hope of being a significant enough market presence to consider including a BD drive.

I can't figure out if this rumor came from a BD drive manufacturer trying gerenate some news and drum up business or some BD fans wishful thinking.

Note: It is possible that some 3rd party could develop a BD add on however this seems unlikely as the market would be so small.

Is is very unlikely that this will happen...
1- This is the at least the third time this rumor has been passed around, with no result.
2- If you think 4.7 million lines of code is a lot for the HD-DVD addon consider what MS would have to do to support BR:
-Vista/MCE/360 would have to add support for BD-J which runs on the Java API platform. MS hates Java and most likely won't support it. This eliminates NATIVE BR support (hence launching an external player to watch BR movies on Windows PC).
-BD+ requires addtional DRM information to keep a coherent DRM chain. HD-DVD used AACS, which is already native in the 360 (and Vista)
-The 360 decodes all advanced codecs into LPCM and then Re-encodes them in DD, DTS, or WMA pro and sends it out over TOSLINK or HDMI. The BDA standard requires all players support LPCM out.
-The 360 lacks the ability to bitstream advanced audio codecs.

3. MS only sold HD-DVD drives to about 2% of owners...Why go through all the effort now, instead of just including it on the next machine.

FYI: I have two 360's and the HD-DVD drive; I'm not bashing MS; I use my 360's to play GAMES and as Media Center extenders

yeah digitimes...real reliable...they seem bent on pushing this rumor:
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080331PD214.html
http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080401PD216.html

Responses to the rumors:
http://www.jasonunger.com/2008/02/18...lu-ray-rumors/ (CE-Pro)
http://www.reuters.com/article/reute...24707720080313 (Reuters)
http://www.techradar.com/news/gaming...y-drive-298480 (TechRadar)
http://www.mcvuk.com/news/29926/Micr...-trump-Blu-Ray (MCV UK)

Show me an article that addresses any of the issues listed in my previous post for native Vista/360 BR support.

I don't think it will happen either nor do I want it to, but show me or us something in the last week or even two that refutes this latest rumour. Your most recent link is a month old.

I agree...it takes MS and others a few days to refute these so we shall see.

However, I still point to my earlier post and say that the Blu-ray association hasn't changed the spec to allow recoding of PCM to lossy formats. Nor do I suspect that MS has made plans to add native Java to Vista or the 360 when we weren't looking.

seems inevitable to me!

Actually it's likely to be an optional add-on just like the HD-DVD player was.

I definitely wouldn't buy another 360 (My elite works fine), but i would definitely purchase an add on for roughly 180 (same as original add on ).

They said the new xbox be slightly smaller too.
So maybe it will fit into stereo racks better.

That's what I'm thinking as well. It seems inevitable to me that all of these consoles are going to have a redesign somewhere along the line, in order to keep sales momentum up and possibly drive down costs. Think the PS1 --> PSOne redesign, or the PS2 --> slimline release. I don't think there's a question as to if the 360 will see a similar redesign, but the question is when.

Note that we are already 3 years into the 360's lifetime (out of a usual console cycle of 4 years). The time for them to make some new SKUs is getting closer (and I'm not talking about "silent" additions like HDMI on the premiums).

So, anyway, let me look more onto the feasibility of adding blu-ray:

It's cheap (relatively). Much of the cost of blu-ray players comes in with the processing demands, not the drive itself. Indeed, Lite-on (the company allegedly manufacturing these drives for Microsoft) have internal drives that retail for $129. The cost-to-produce (excluding markup, distribution, support, packaging costs, etc) would be significantly lower, especially if it's stripped down to a barebones OEM for a console release.

Here's the link here in anyone is interested in buying one of those drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16827106227

The other thing is that it's also available. There isn't the shortage of that plagued early Blu-ray releases, and economies of scale are starting to ramp up.

The software/processing end of things isn't that much of a barrier, considering they got HD-DVD to work (despite the face it shoehorned on with an add-on.. any new SKU revision would likely have hardware features to assist in processing).

So here I go... my predictions:

Somewhere between now and the end of 2009:
-New 360 SKU with is physically smaller and quieter
-Likely cheaper
-Includes Blu-ray built-in, along with a real HDMI chip (for lossless audio)

That's it. You can quote me on that.

---
I don't see a blu-ray add-on coming, ever. There isn't much point to it from a sales perspective. It might keep current customers from purchasing a PS3, but it does very little to attract new customers. At this stage in the game, Microsoft needs to grow their own userbase, and an add-on drive doesn't do that.

I just picked up a second PS3 for its' BR capabilities yesterday and I would have preferred it had been a second 360 since all my games are in that format..

MS lost out on that sale and I lost out because I can only play my games in one place..

Consoles are loss leaders. You did Microsoft a FAVOR by not buying a 2nd console. You are one person. You wouldn't have bought 2 copies of each game for the 360 had you purchased a second 360.

You actually hurt Sony, lol.

I wouldn't be too surprised to see a Blu-ray add-on, like the HD DVD add-on, but I highly doubt they'll ever release an X-Box 360 with a built-in Blu-ray drive.