When Peter More, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President of Interactive Entertainment Business commented about Microsoft possibly taking on Blu-ray support in its Xbox 360 if HD DVD lost the battle, it looked like Microsoft was finally going to follow the flow. Unfortunately, this will not be the case as Microsoft has now issued an official statement to make it clear that they are 100% behind Toshiba's HD DVD format.
According to the statement, Microsoft believes the HD DVD format is the best choice for its consumer and thus is the reason behind planning to launch an external HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 later this year. It also mentions that Microsoft has absolutely no plans to take on support for any other optical format on its Xbox 360, however they do mention that the console is a future proof system in that they can adopt its functionality to suit its customer's needs. For example, while Microsoft makes it clear that they will not offer Blu-ray support, it may still be possible to add such support if they decided to change their mind later on.
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"Microsoft firmly stands behind the HD-DVD format as the best choice for our consumers. As we've said before, we're confident that HD-DVD will bring the excitement of high definition movies to the consumer faster and at a greater value. We believe that consumers have signaled what format they want to enjoy high definition DVD and we're going to follow them down that path. The question of whether Xbox 360 has the flexibility to adapt to consumers' needs is a different issue entirely. Xbox 360 is a future-proofed system -- one that allows us to add features as consumers demand them -- as evidenced by our offering of the HD DVD drive as an accessory," reads the official line. The statement concludes, "Current reports indicating that we have a back-up plan, which includes Blu-Ray support are incorrect. At this point, we're fully committed to HD-DVD and have absolutely no plans to support other optical formats." |
It looks like Microsoft is confident that it can help make HD DVD lead the market as well as take a risky move by confirming their refusal to take on Blu-ray. When Apple's iTunes and iPod products first lead the market, Microsoft was very confident that even that time, that they could lead this market when they introduced their WMA Janus DRM technology. To them, it looked like a major advance in digital music download technology as consumers could now fill their (Janus compatible) players with an unlimited songs for a flat monthly fee instead of paying out dearly on individual songs. Unfortunately, as Apple's iTunes still accounts for 83% of the US music download service market at this time, over a year after its launch, it looks like Microsoft had little
success with this, at
least so far.
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Source: GameDaily BIZ
