Microsoft fires the first shot in the "NEXT" generation.... - Page 138

There will absolutely be movie playback. The only question is if it will be out of the box or behind some kind of pay wall. (Xbox live/remote control purchase)

I think it would be dumb for them to not allow you to play blu-ray movies on the new xbox. Whether they want you to forget it exists or not, if they are trying to make the xbox an all-in-one box, then they need to make sure it plays blu-ray movies next gen.

They resisted making it play divx/xvid for a long time. They put out an HDDVD drive....but never a blu ray drive.

I'd certainly like it to play bluray movies, but I don't think it's a huge selling point for a lot of people. And they have a lot to gain by making piracy more difficult if they use a blu laser drive that's incompatible with blu ray discs.

If there is any one company that's proven they're going to put their interests before the user in the past few years, its MS. They want it to be an all in one box on their terms, not yours.

I guess it all comes around. Are we really having this "discussion" again? Really?

They made the HD-DVD an add-on, so I don't think they could have put a blu-ray drive in any newer 360's because it would have fragmented your community. The developers wouldn't have been able to use it, unless they made it on both blu-ray and DVD and then you would have to worry about consumers being confused.

They are not going to gimp their system. The writing is on the wall. Blu-Ray Movie Playback will be enabled, either out of the box, or in conjunction with an additional purchase such as xbox live or an xbox remote. In this, the consumer interest and the company interest converges. As it stands, there is not a lot of reason to upgrade to nextbox if you already have a 360 (Other than games). Indications are pointing to a side by side launch with PS4 this fall. The nextbox cannot afford to lack features in comparison to PS4. Blu-Ray might not be a selling point, but it is something that can help a customer make a choice when comparing similar items. Anyone who owns Blu-Ray movies is someone who might choose a PS4 over nextbox if they are going to put the machine in their living room.

I think it's pretty obvious that in order for the next gen Xbox to actually be next gen, it would need a larger format for games. It needs at least Blu-Ray sized discs in order to avoid having 5+ disc games whereas the same game on PS4 would be 1 disc.

Unless they move to having some sort of flash storage device for games rather than discs.

I think you meant to say "Sony".

I think all companies put their own interests before it's consumers'. That's what running a business is all about.

Create a product you like and think others can appreciate. Adjust to consumers' taste if needed. Once you have a fairly strong consumer base, adjust to your company's taste to improve profitability.

And besides, in all honesty you should've said Apple. (But they haven't just started doing this)

There are degrees to this though. It's most obvious form is when they use ecosystem lock-in to push overpriced or inferior products, often which lock you in further.

5 years ago, I'd have agreed with you on Sony being the worst, but many of those tactics (pushing BR with the PS3) backfired on them and theyve kind of turned it around. My impression is that MS is increasingly taking their users for granted, and they're setting themselves up for a backlash. I wouldn't put anything past them.

I can agree with this.

all I can agree with is that there are no saints in business. Apple, Google, Microsoft, Sony, Samsung, etc... they're all equally business-oriented. if you think one is better than the other with regards to its customer base, you're not accepting reality.

I'm not making a moral judgement on one company being better or more righteous than another. But they clearly differ currently to the degree with which they feel comfortable taking advantage of their users. Obviously a company trying to build or rebuild their reputation can't screw around. But one with goodwill to spare can get away with a few things, and they know it. The trouble lies with when they miscalculate how much their reputation will let them get away with, and what their competitor's response is.

another one not accepting reality... *sigh*

Wasnt cynical enough for you?

anyone that says, "yes, I understand all companies are evil... but but... my company is less evil" is really doing some double speak. what they're really saying is they feel their company is not really bad compared to others out there. when they're all pretty equally, in different ways but equally bad.

it's like the difference between OCD and OCPD. an OCD person truly recognizes their behavior and feels guilt over it. agonizes over it. an OCPD person uses jokes as a defense for their behavior. "oh, I'm totally OCD". on the surface, they joke about it. but underneath it, the person truly believes their behavior is normal and don't understand why people think their behavior is strange.

I just don't accept the premise that they're all evil. Being business oriented isnt predicated on treating your customers poorly. Sometimes there's some short term gain to be had there, but that's not tenable for a long term without a monopoly, and no one has one. MS still likes to act like as if they are though, and that's what scares me about their current path.

Companies aren't evil, they're simply greedy. Or run by greedy people who hope to improve profit margins to please their greedy stock holders. It's the economy we live in.

But, all companies know that in order to maintain or improve profit margins they have to appeal to the masses. When a company gets so large that they are no longer influenced by actual consumer demand (because consumers are limited with their choices) then they start to become "anti-consumer interests".

It's pretty cyclical. Good companies become great through innovation influenced by popular demand. They become greater and greater until they no longer rely on popular demand for influence and rely on invenstment demands. Any opportunity to make more money off of consumers will be taken. Evil? Not exactly. Greedy? Yep.

No, you simply cannot accept the fact that BR this gen hasn't proven to be better for games as that statement is quite silly to say the least.Better games is highly dependant on the skill of the developement studios, budget size for said games etc.IF it was better than the majority of multiplatform games would've performed and ran better on the PS3 but that isn't the case at all.I do agree that next-gen, BR will finally be truly benefical as game assets get much bigger size which then, a much larger disc capacity format is needed.The only real concern I have for Orbis/Durango is that both will supposedly use 6x BR drives which seems a bit low for a next-generation platform.


On a different note, I wanted to let you guys know that the Crysis 3 multiplayer open Beta is available for download on PC,PS3 and Xbox 360.The demo weighs in at 1.48 gigs..

Bluray has most certainly helped with games. That non scratch coating is the bees knees.

and now your true feelings come out. that's the first step in the process.

I have no idea what you're trying to imply.

Do you want developers to actually make the game, or spend time trying to cram the thing onto 7 gigs? I'll take the former.

I've read accounts over the years of developers releasing games with a few K free (I think Black Ops?), of developers having to cut content due to disc size (PGR4's day/night race modes), etc. No doubt more disc space would've improved some of these games. Believe what you will.

They'd still be supporting them in licensing fee's, just not larger fee's that include movie playback. MS already "supports" them in licensing fees on their DVD drive anyhow, but people don't seem to be up in arms over that.

Companies don't care about this kind of crap, unless they have a dog in the fight like MS did with HDDVD. MS planned to win the next gen format war, and would have included it in this next console. Now that it's dead, if adding a BD drive with movie playback means more revenue than it's costs, they'll do it and be perfectly happy with letting the fanboys find a way to explain it away. Sony did the same with controller rumble, once the lawsuit allowed them. If it makes them money and is a plus to consumers, they'll do it.

Microsoft could have included BR if it was on time and with a done spec. It took a long time for the spec to develop to include the things that HD-DVD had. It took a long time for them to include managed copy which Microsoft wanted. Also, BR was stubborn and refused to allow optional support for iHD and only allowed the use of BD-J.

It worked out for the best. They couldn't wait for BR to be finished and have the 360 release at the same time as the PS3. And they certainly didn't want to release at PS3-esque price points. Prices for BR drives came down. Speeds went up, seek times went down. Now is a better time to support BR for a console.

Excellent point. Look at PC every year (sometimes less) a new video card comes out that is more powerful, I don't want the consoles turning into this because for one thing game devs will have a problem developing for the consoles second reason is that I don't want to shell out another 300$ to play a match of COD. Good code is the most important thing for consoles it's even more important than hardware look what game devs did with this gen of consoles Halo 4 has one of the best graphics imo and it runs a 500MHz GPU and a tri-core cpu which is amazing.

I do agree that having more disc space is great for developers but games having fantastic graphics is very dependant on the capabilities of the gpu and talent of the programmers.More RAM in a console allows the developers to do more stuff graphically etc.Either way, its great that both Orbis/Durango will have high capacity BR drives.It's all good as I enjoy a healthy discussion regardless of agreeing or disagreeing on certain things.It's all good..

Great post and it is so true what you said about having good,clean code that is highly efficient and optimized to get the very best out of these current gen and next-gen consoles.Halo 4 does look amazing and it was wonderful to see 343i take advantage of the 360's Xeno's gpu and it's slew of other features as well.Dead Space 3 looks beautiful, along with God of War 3 and the upcoming The Last of Us etc.

yes, that scratch coating is the best use of BR this gen...