posted on 22. 10. 2009 by Lori in Industry, Microsoft, Xbox 360 

Ballmer: Xbox 360 getting blu-ray; Digital-Foundry: makes no sense

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Ballmer: Xbox 360 getting blu-ray; Digital-Foundry: makes no sense

While a Blu-Ray drive will never be in the Xbox 360, Ballmer confirmed today that you will be able to buy one to add to your existing console:

Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there—you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.

Ballmer really does not want you to buy that PS3. However, the announcement was faced with scepticism early on, as DigitalFoundry’s Richard Leadbetter points out:

HD-DVD handled 30Mbps max, while Blu-ray ups the ante to 50Mbps. At the time of the HD-DVD add-on’s launch, Microsoft talked about how a combination of both CPU and GPU power was required to handle the decoding. Assuming there’s no overhead in the code, it could require significant re-engineering to get it up to BD specs.

This is just one from the laundry list of reasons he deems it unlikely.

While Microsoft certainly is no stranger to adding accessories to the Xbox 360, this move seems highly unlikely, given that the company has often stretched that they believe that digital distribution is the future for movies on consoles, offering solutions such as Netflix Streaming, Video on Demand, and soon, the Zune Marketplace on Xbox 360.

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