UK Xbox Boss: “Who Needs Blu-ray?”

Tuffcub 96 Comments

Stephen McGill, UK Xbox top dog has spoken about the lack of Blu-ray on Xbox and seems to think the format is already dead. He was asked if the lack of Blu-ray was holding back the 360 and answered,

“I think people may have spoken about that originally, but that’s long gone.

I think people now recognise what a smart decision it was to keep the pricing low, and actually Blu-ray is going to be passed by as a format. People have moved through from DVDs to digital downloads and digital streaming, so we offer full HD 1080p Blu-ray quality streaming instantly, no download, no delay.

So, who needs Blu-ray?”

Mr. McGill may have a point when it comes to movies but numerous developers have stated that creating games on multiple DVDs for the Xbox can be tough, most recently Mercury Steam discussed ‘storage problems’ for the console.

As for movies, Avatar broke all records for Blu-ray sales in the UK and has sold a stunning 6.2 million copies. Blu-ray disc sales in Q1 2010 almost doubled those of 2009 and the current outlook for the format is ‘bullish’.

HMV recently announced a 12% profit rise, some of which they attributed to the popularity of Blu-ray.

Sources: X360Achievements / Gizmodo / The Telegraph

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96 Comments

  1. “Who needs Blu-Ray”?

    People with HD-DVD players, that’s who.

  2. Well, games don’t really need Blu-ray but Blu-ray movies are unrivalled, and there’s far more to a quality picture than just resolution.

    Show me the download service which has as high a bitrate as a Blu-ray… I think Avatar has the highest bitrate and has a video bitrate of 28.81Mbps… that aint gonna happen on a download service until long after the the 360 is an antique.

    There is of course the danger, as mentioned of Blu-ray being passed-by as a movie format, sure sales have doubled in the past year – but doubled what? and Avatar was a big success, but it is the biggest movie of all time – so thats hardly surprising. I think it has enough momentum to make it, but there is the small chance that in some parts of the world its obsolete before it started making real inroads into DVD sales as a movie format.

    Most developed countries are heavily investing in broadband infrastructure, so true high bitrate, almost Blu-ray like streaming could come in the next year or two, but the UK is falling behind so Blu-ray is going to be needed here at least for quite some time.

    • it’s the physical thing for me though, I like to have it so I can use it anywhere. I love the sound quality too from Blu-ray it seems so much better.

  3. Love Blu-Ray movies and greatly enjoy collecting them.Do i need justification from an MS rep?,hm nope.
    With an unjustifiable 4 hardware failures and a machine that is so damn noisy i wouldn’t even want to stream low grade porn through it i think that who evers asking the questions has kinda missed an opportunity here.

  4. You just got to laugh at Microsoft sometimes. If not cry for them. lol

  5. A 10GB Blu Ray and 25GB PS3 games, yeh as though Blu Ray is dead and not even the UK has a good broadband connection to download soo much.

  6. COme on, they can’t even get away from tray loading DVD’s. Microsoft is really sounding desperate lately. I think E3 really hurt them with that horrible showing.

    • ha ha ha ha – 10/10 loading trays ha ha ha

  7. So where is the game streaming service that will be needed by Xbox? If Bluray is surpassed by download, then surely DVDs will have as well.

  8. The thing about this is, there is only a very small market for digital downloads, and many developers have stated how much better Blu ray is to develop for, So unless Microsoft want to make another move as bad as they did with the HD-DVD and release the next xbox as a download only manchine, they have really backed themselves into a corned in terms of principals, what type of physical format are they going to use if not blu ray? If they were to use it, would be a big piece of humble pie that MS do not want to eat… I’m realluy interested to see how this works out actually.

  9. the problem with statements like that is that there are people who believe anything i.e. The Sun Newspaper. and a little suggestion from a high flying “Xbox Boss” would/should hold so much credibility that people who make up thier minds and angree with his statement without looking into it at all. however when mention of Disc Space for gaming developers it quickly reminds you that although the PS3 and Xbox 360 do play films and are alround multimedia consoles, thats the primary function is of course gaming, and lets face it, the bigger the disc space… the bigger and better potential games will be. who wants a game in 5 years time to be slapped on 5 discs. for Xbox the futures not invisible downloads, its a room full of discs. :o)

    • leaving the “UK Xbox Boss” with less credibility than he had this morning.

  10. blu ray is far from dead, this guy needs a reality check, I suspect he owns very few films legally, by the sounds of it he’s all into “digital” downloads.

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