http://www.digitimes.com/news/a20080331PD214.html
April Fools? Perhaps.
Speculation and rumor at this time…
I can’t see why they wouldn’t. I mean, MS wants to tout this thing as the ultimate set top box to play movies with, stream movies over the internet with and, oh yeah, play games with too.
Seems like a dumb idea to make it built in. 360 games won’t be able to use it since a 360 game has to work on any 360 console. So basically you just drive up the price of your top of the line model for a feature (bd movie player) that a lot of gamers won’t even care about.
I never played a DVD on my PS2, my 360, and when I’m ready to make the jump into Blu I’ll buy a nice standalone player instead of trying to make my 360 into a movie machine.
I’ll wait until after the 1st to get my hopes up. But I’d consider it, oddly I’m the opposite of the above. I bought a PS2 because it could play DVDs, and considered a PS3 because of the fact it has some solid titles on the way and blu-ray playing capabilities.
The big problem I see with using an expensive game system as a DVD player is you wear out the drive. How many people with PS2’s did you know who had drive issues? My brother in law burned his up constantly playing movies on it when he could have picked up a $30 dvd player and saved his PS2 for gaming.
BD players will come down in price within a year, but the top of the line game systems will always remain expensive.
I liked the idea of the external HD-DVD drive because it was a standalone drive just for movies. Of course, with the heat issues the xbox has I doubt I’d want it running every time I watched a movie.
I’ve left my xbox run 15+ hours tons of times over the past year and it still works perfect.
I’ll make sure to bump this when you post your RRoD thread. 
Of all the problems people have with the 360, the CD-drive motor wearing out is probably at the bottom of the list.
Now granted, YOU might want to seperate your game system from your movie player but a lot of folks want to buy just one and not clutter up their entertainment center. Who knows when the prices will come down on the BD players, it’s one of the primary reasons the PS3 was so successful because it was (and still is) the cheapest BD player on the market.
smart move, no point in delyaing the inevitable…
That’s because people use the 360 drive to play games, and not watch dvds. If they used it to play movies it would put a more constant load on the drives. Games only use the drive when it is loading.
The difference with the PS3 is Sony can eat the cost of putting a BD drive in there, and even sell the system at a loss, because it’s their technology. It was a great gamble on Sony’s part because there is no doubt that the PS3 was the weapon that won the format war. Having THE format for the next 5+ years will bring Sony tons of profit even if the initial PS3 sales actually cost them money.
MS on the other hand has to pay for the licensing to include the player and need the console to be profitable since they have no stake in seeing to format succeed. Because of this I doubt you’re going to see 300-400 Xbox360’s with BD drives. Think $500+.
As for room, I doubt that’s a big deal for most people. I haven’t seen too many entertainment centers, especially ones people with 1000’s of dollars in equipment own, that didn’t have more than enough room for a game system, dvd player, sat/cable receiver and audio receiver.
Games are probably going to be put a lot more load on the 360 than playing movies. Movies are sequential, games are reading from the disc at different spots all the time.
A lot of games stream data as you play, usually resulting in a lot more wear than a movie would easily.
Why pay for more if you don’t have to? The DVD motor argument is weak and the next gen 360 is going to be manufactured a lot cheaper (Falcon started that trend). Cheaper components means a reduced BoM which will allow them to price the 360 just a bit higher than it already is. I am sure they will have the basic 360 and the “premium” edition or Elite edition that has the BD player in it.
:thankyou:
MS can deny all they want, I still think there is more to this…
i would think MS would release a blue ray player “add-on” instead of built in… like the hd-player was?? seems like it would make more sense for reasons mentioned above about the games in hd and such. just a thought.
My PS2 has been playing DVDs forever. Hundreds of hours.
I seriously consider gaming rigs when they can play media as well… which is why I was waiting for the format wars to end.