Well, time will have to tell on this one. According to Engadget, The Economic Daily, a chinese written newspaper has reported that a company named Pegatron, an OEM subsidiary of ASUS has won the order to assemble Xbox 360 consoles with a Blu-ray Disc ROM drive.
They are reporting that shipments are expected in the third quarter of this year. Microsoft, in their usual fashion, have refused to comment on any of this, but it will definitely be interesting to see if something like this is true.
What interests me is that they are said to be assembling the consoles with drives, as opposed to the external HD-DVD drives that we has seen in the past. This of course, could just be something that was lost in translation. As well as adding yet another SKU to the already confusing line-up of 360’s, there will be other issues to look at as well.
If Microsoft do indeed release consoles with Blu-ray drives, I can’t see them having any sort of support for gaming as splitting the abilities of the different SKU’s would cause nothing but problems. We have already seen the problems that have been caused with those owners who have have hard drives, and those who don’t.
It’s with this in mind that I want to assume that the drive will be integrated only as a Blu-ray movie player, and won’t have any effect on the Xbox 360’s gaming experience.
source: Engadget [via 1up.com] [Ed] I have to say I highly doubt we will be seeing a Xbox 360 with an integrated Blu-Ray drive. An add-on is much more likely
Last Updated: May 5, 2008
Evilredzombie
May 5, 2008 at 07:16
I honestly dont see this working, it will not be cheap.
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kay
May 5, 2008 at 08:43
For a long time I did not believe this would happen. A Blu-ray add-on makes no sense – it would cost too much, it would only serve as a movie player, and the console is already on the noisy side.
An embedded Blu-ray drive makes more sense, especially if they switch to a 45nm manufactoring process and/or improve the console cooling at the same time. Yes, it would still be for movies only, but I think the spike of PS3 sales after Toshiab threw in the towel on HD-DVD.
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kay
May 5, 2008 at 08:49
Sorry, that laste sentence should read “I think the spike of PS3 sales after Toshiba threw in the towel on HD-DVD might have chanded their minds at Microsoft.”
kay’s last blog post..Chase Jarvis Doesn’t Use a Light Meter
Milesh Bhana ZA
May 5, 2008 at 09:11
This move will only work if the Blu-Ray 360 is cheaper than the PS3. This is unlikely because they have to pay Sony (well the Blue-Ray consortium of which Sony has lots of clout) royalities for the tech. The big selling point of the 360 is getting an equal if not better gaming machine for half the price. They would also have to drop the Elite, 4 SKUs is just confusing for your average consumer.
Gary
May 20, 2008 at 12:21
More standardisation between competing products (e.g. Xbox and PS3) makes sense for consumers! Let’s hope that the Xbox and Blu-ray combo becomes a reality.
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Wesley
October 8, 2008 at 14:15
blah blah blah … thats probably what microsoft said hearing these kind of alligations, think of it this way.
If MS was planning to go BD they would of announced it at E3, they probably hate BD ’cause it caused massive losses to them thanks to the external HD DVD we all come to see as the abortion MS tried to forget.
I hate rumors like these… its like that stupid MGS 4 rumor we X360 guys got.. with open answers and retorical gestures.
I believe strongly that Blue Ray will never ever see the xbox… probably not this generation… Im hoping to see HD DVD in the “720” dont know about you guys