Ranting Kenya

There’s been a number of rumors re-surfacing in the last couple days about Blu-Ray drives coming to the Xbox 360. Microsoft said a few weeks ago after HD-DVD officially died that they weren’t talking with Sony about it. What that really means is “we’re thinking about it, and as of this moment we haven’t contacted anyone.” So are they going to do it? I think so.

I don’t think there’s any question that the future of the DVD/Blu-Ray is limited by digital downloads. We’re already seeing a number of services available that provide just this service. Microsoft’s Xbox Marketplace, iTunes Store/Apple TV, and the VooDoo box are a few. Plus you can watch so much online for free now straight from the internet browser. And of course, there’s still Video on Demand (VOD). VOD could be a real competitor if they’d just fix the quality issue.

Anyway, many have speculated that Microsoft won’t do a Blu-Ray (BR) drive because they want people to move to the download model. This is about half true in my mind. Yes, absolutely, they want people to do digital delivery. However, the Xbox division main goal is to sell Xbox 360 consoles and Xbox 360 games. Would adding a BR drive (either internal or as an add-on à la HD-DVD drive) be an added incentive to buy Xbox 360 consoles? I believe so. Many people bought a PS3 solely as a BR player. The PS3 continues to be one of the best and most flexible BR players available.

However, should Microsoft make such a drive available, it would surely sell at least as well as the HD-DVD drive did. All those early adopters are bound to jump on it since the format war is over. True, Sony would benefit from licensing fees, but at least Microsoft would get a cut on the players. It’s also another bullet point on the Xbox 360 box (BR capability), which would eliminate the major difference between PS3 and Xbox 360.

Plus, you can look at Microsoft’s track record with the Xbox 360. They’ve bowed to the community’s pressure on multiple occasions. The HD-DVD drive was in a way, bowing to consumer pressure. As was when Microsoft released Xbox 360 consoles with HDMI ports (their story before hand was that nobody needed HDMI). And perhaps less due to consumer pressure and more media pressure, the warranty extension to 3 years for all the red ringed consoles. Is there any reason to believe Microsoft won’t flinch and release an external BR drive? I don’t think so. The only reason in my mind that Microsoft hasn’t said there will be BR drives for the 360 is they may be waiting for the cost of the drives to get low enough to be able to offer an external drive at the $199 price point.