No more Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on players!
Category: Xbox 360, Posted: 02/23/2008 at 11:40PM CST by Billy Wang, Previews Editor
Just a few days after announcing they'd continue to support the HD DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360 during the wake of the HD DVD format's death, Microsoft announced they will no longer manufacture new HD DVD add-on players for the Xbox 360.
The primary reason for ceasing manufacturing is, of course, in response to decisions by Toshiba, Hollywood studios and retailers to withdraw their support for HD DVD. Microsoft will continue to support standard product and warrant support for all current HD DVD add-on players in the market, but that's it folks, no more will be manufactured.
If you're in the market for picking up the HD DVD add-on player for nostalgia purposes, it's expected that the price will drop to $50 next week. Cheap works for me!
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Saw a friend playing their HD DVD last night, I sent him various poop jokes in his X360 mail.
See, if they had used HD DVDs for their games, then things might have gone in a different direction...
I'd say the price of the launch X360 would've been higher, sold less, and we'd be in a different market climate today. I'd also say that the fact the X360 did not have a HD-DVD drive built into the console was one reason why it sold well in the first year of release. I wouldn't have bought a launch console if it was any more expensive than it was (believe it was $720AU at the time)
Maybe Archem, I also think that Microsoft could of pioneered HD-DVD format with it's inclusion. But now we will have to wait for the next Xbox with the inclusion of a Blu-ray player, which is at a proven format.
Ef that, Lazer discs are making a come back!
"I'd say the price of the launch X360 would've been higher, sold less, and we'd be in a different market climate today. I'd also say that the fact the X360 did not have a HD-DVD drive built into the console was one reason why it sold well in the first year of release. I wouldn't have bought a launch console if it was any more expensive than it was (believe it was $720AU at the time)"
Right on the money. MS played it smart. The HD DVD player is a peripheral, and the death of the format doesn't affect the main functionality of the *game* console in any way. Now if the morons would stop asking if the only way to get HD games now is on the PS3, I'd be a happy guy.
And now we have Xbox 360 games on four discs, with more games on more discs to come.
KindGalaxy has it right. People who think that MS should have put the HDDVD player into the original release 360 aren't being realistic. Above and beyond the greatly increased cost of having an HDDVD player built in, there's two other major factors that people ignore.
First, when MS was designing the 360, the HDDVD format wasn't finalized. If MS tried to guess on the format specs and got it wrong, then the 360 might have had a non-compliant player on the market. Guess how many headaches THAT would have caused.
Second, first generation optical media players are SLOW for gaming purposes. Late generation DVD9 players are much faster than first generation HDDVD players, and using HDDVD players to load game content would have lead to greatly increased loading times for games and would have greatly complicated things for developers trying to create a good gaming experience.
MAYBE the HDDVD format would have done better if MS had tried to put an HDDVD player into the 360. But the 360 itself would probably still be struggling for sales and the gaming experience would not have been as good as it is. How many mulitiple DVD games are really out there? You could probably count them on one hand. Would moving those few games to a single disc be worth all the other cost and problems that would have come along with the HDDVD player?
And now we have Xbox 360 games on four discs, with more games on more discs to come.
What 360 games are you buying? After 22 games, I've yet to see a multi-disc game.