Tuesday, January 8th 2008
Microsoft Says There Will Be No HD DVD Xbox
Despite rumors to the contrary, Microsoft did not unveil an Xbox console with HD DVD capabilities built-in at CES, and has no plans to do so in the future, according to an executive in Microsoft's entertainment business. "Absolutely not," said Jeff Bell, corporate vice president of global marketing for interactive entertainment at Microsoft, when asked Monday if an HD DVD Xbox was in the works. Microsoft has been pushing HD DVD over Blu-ray as the format for high-definition video, but HD DVD suffered a significant setback last week when Warner Bros. said it would drop support for the format in favor of Blu-ray. Monday during an interview at CES in Las Vegas, Bell said Microsoft is taking a more agnostic view on how to serve up HD video. He said that it's up to consumers to make a choice between the two formats, not vendors. "We'll let the market decide how they're most interested in consuming entertainment," he said.
Giving customers choice of hardware platforms by licensing its software to partners has certainly served well in its enterprise and business segments over the years. With Xbox, Microsoft has had a more direct line to consumers, but the company has still leveraged partnerships, such as new ones it announced Sunday with entertainment companies like MGM and ABC to serve up premium video content to consoles via the Xbox Live service.
Next to Windows and Office, Xbox is poised to be one of Microsoft's most successful consumer products ever, although the product is not yet profitable. Bell confirmed that the Xbox business, as well as the division that oversees it, Entertainment and Devices, would be profitable by the end of its 2008 fiscal year on June 30, a previously stated goal of Microsoft's.
At CES, Microsoft made sure to reveal some recent milestones for its Xbox business. Xbox console attach rates, or numbers that refer to the amount of merchandise sold that's connected to the console, are an especially important metric the company is tracking. According to Microsoft, the company sells about seven games for every console, a number that is higher than both its competitors, Nintendo's Wii console and Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3).
Bell also cited November 2007 figures from market research firm NPD, which claim that for the year, Xbox generated more than US$3.5 billion at retail, $1 billion more than the Wii and $2 billion more than Sony's PS3.
Microsoft's Xbox Live service is certainly a big reason the console is doing so well, and the company is using it as a launch pad for getting video content into the home. This strategy could put Microsoft in competition with set-top box makers that work with service providers to deliver Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV service into homes.
Bell said Microsoft would rather view its strategy to use both the Xbox Live and Mediaroom as entertainment-delivery platforms as covering all its bases rather than competing with partners, or even each other.
"We're very committed to this concept of choice," he said. We learned from our first generation of Xbox -- if you impose too much content on consumers, it's not a winning strategy."
Source:
PC World
Giving customers choice of hardware platforms by licensing its software to partners has certainly served well in its enterprise and business segments over the years. With Xbox, Microsoft has had a more direct line to consumers, but the company has still leveraged partnerships, such as new ones it announced Sunday with entertainment companies like MGM and ABC to serve up premium video content to consoles via the Xbox Live service.
Next to Windows and Office, Xbox is poised to be one of Microsoft's most successful consumer products ever, although the product is not yet profitable. Bell confirmed that the Xbox business, as well as the division that oversees it, Entertainment and Devices, would be profitable by the end of its 2008 fiscal year on June 30, a previously stated goal of Microsoft's.
At CES, Microsoft made sure to reveal some recent milestones for its Xbox business. Xbox console attach rates, or numbers that refer to the amount of merchandise sold that's connected to the console, are an especially important metric the company is tracking. According to Microsoft, the company sells about seven games for every console, a number that is higher than both its competitors, Nintendo's Wii console and Sony's Playstation 3 (PS3).
Bell also cited November 2007 figures from market research firm NPD, which claim that for the year, Xbox generated more than US$3.5 billion at retail, $1 billion more than the Wii and $2 billion more than Sony's PS3.
Microsoft's Xbox Live service is certainly a big reason the console is doing so well, and the company is using it as a launch pad for getting video content into the home. This strategy could put Microsoft in competition with set-top box makers that work with service providers to deliver Microsoft's Mediaroom IPTV service into homes.
Bell said Microsoft would rather view its strategy to use both the Xbox Live and Mediaroom as entertainment-delivery platforms as covering all its bases rather than competing with partners, or even each other.
"We're very committed to this concept of choice," he said. We learned from our first generation of Xbox -- if you impose too much content on consumers, it's not a winning strategy."
29 Comments on Microsoft Says There Will Be No HD DVD Xbox
EDIT: We'll see though, news like that doesn't just appear.
Also things are very awkward right now technology wise. They can't see to stream 1080p efficiently yet, most people don't have large enough hard drives (or even media centers for that matter) to download high def movies in any practical way. Not to mention the lack of availability of cable internet in many areas of certain states. It feels like certain technologies are surging ahead, and others are lagging behind. Some are driving the market, while others are riding the other's coat tails. And the poor average consumer is just begging and waiting for someone to make sense of it all for them. Lots of competition creates fantastic products, and lowers prices, but also really confuses the average non-techie. I think the average person wants to be told what to buy, not have to worry about hooking up a media center to an internet service, configuring it, making sure they have adequate storage capacity, learning and navigating a new online store interface via their TV, and then being told to spend their hard earned money on "virtual products" they can't touch or feel. It's disconcerting for many people. My 2 cents.
If you were Gates, and there were two formats such as this, what would you do? You have no idea if HD-DVD is going to be adopted as the new format, and if it isn't, then there will be money lost and upset consumers. If you wait until the victor has emerged, then you can safely pop in the new format players, and by that time prices would have lowered on players of that format. So I'd say waiting is the best way to go.
I feel bad for HD-DVD, I personally support that format because it is not owned by a particular company. I think the space on those devices is more than enough for a high-def movie, who needs all those "extra features" honestly? I figure they will use all that leftover space for advertisement, and naturally we get screwed at the end.
And they wonder why we pirate movies!
www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=827
I personally love to be proved wrong, because that way I learn something by force!
In short, the shitty looking HD movies (on either format), are due solely to the studio's laziness in encoding, rather than either format's storage capacity.