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
Stripeysocks
He’s a real idiot
Cray2k
Just wait a year after apple jumps on the blu-ray bandwaggon, then microsoft’l be all over it.
Phizzy
Blu-ray quality? Just because you have a video at 1080p doesn’t mean it’s the same quality as a film on blu-ray. I very much doubt they have videos from 25-50GB in size. It’s more on the order of 8-10GB. Cutting the bitrate to three to five times less than that of blu-ray will obviously not give you a picture equal in quality. A friend of mine who tried to stream a 1080p film on a 128Mbps line complained of near-constant block noise in anything but still camera talky talky scenes. Why should we switch from a solution that works to that utter waste of bandwidth?
Tuffcub
Xbox streaming is a tad misleading. Yes, it’s on instant start but its not HD – then stream builds up the quality as it buffers the movie (and degrades it if required)
mcduff1979
if i had the choice of a digital copy and a blu-ray disc that i can hold in my hand ill take the disc any time… i guess thats just the collector in me…. im the same for my games
Mossychops
So, next XBOX will be DVD again?
Klart
In what world does this guy live? Are they still that ignorant at Microsoft?
Dumbass.
grogy86
digital downloads of full games wont work in my opinion, i personally like having a disc version. You would need to have a massive hdd if you only downloaded games. For games such as MGS4 it would work
Boomshanks
Who is he saying this to? I think most gamers will know that Blu-ray is far from dead as a format and that digital distribution will not be the standard for quite a while.
So is he trying to convince the family market to get a 360 in time for Kinect? Think they’ll buy it? The story that is
hobgoblin
As others have stated on here, I’d rather have physical media in my hand.
Plus where I live, 2Mb broadband is the quickest I can get, so streaming HD movies? No thanks.
JesseDeya
Wow, that 4GB Xbox is looking pretty sweet for this exciting new Digital Downloads Only world right Microsoft?
Just think of all the cool things you can fit into 4 whole gigabytes! OMG!!!11!
Boomshanks
Haha good point. Though you can always purchase more space of course. Don’t we love Microsoft