Microsoft on standby
In an interview with GamesIndustry.biz,Microsoft Europe's Senior Regional Director, Neil Thompson has suggested that Microsoft would be prepared to release a Blu-Ray player add-on if the HD format market were to shift in that direction. The market for high-definition content is still in its early days, but Microsoft are on stand by with a solution should Blu-Ray win the battle.
"I'm not sure the market has moved to high definition [movies] yet. And if and when it does, then the way that we've constructed the offering we've made means we'll be able to go whichever way we want," said Thompson. "Whatever format wins it is highly likely we will offer a solution. The only debate is if you want to watch Blu-ray movies and pay the extra money for that feature. We prefer to offer the consumer choice,2 he told the BBC yesterday.
Thompson didn't miss the opportunity to take a dig at Sony's next-gen console, re-affirming the point that the Xbox 360's DVD9 format can hold more than enough data, whereas the PS3 discs have far more space than really necessary, therefore increasing the sales price to the consumer.
"Do I want to make people pay �200 extra for a machine with discs that have storage space I don't need? My answer's no, I don't need to do that today. And I don't think I'm going to need to do that for quite a while."�
Thompson concluded his interview by pointing out that Microsoft are offering the consumer a choice with their HD DVD drives. "This is about the architecture of the hardware. With the PS3 you've got a big, heavy truck that requires a big, heavy engine. With Xbox you've got a much more nimble box that uses software in the architecture of the box in a much more nimble way. That's the difference between us and PlayStation, we didn't have a need to develop a really complicated engine to get Blu-ray players into the market. We wanted to deliver HD gaming. Judge us on what we've done."
I wonder if Sony are on stand-by with a HD DVD drive?
Source :: GI.biz
