Won't make any more HD-DVD players for the Xbox 360.
Microsoft has withdrawn from HD-DVD, the company has announced.
In a statement on the Gamerscoreblog John Porcaro, Sr. Group Manager in Microsoft's Global Games Marketing Team, said that Microsoft will "no longer manufacture new HD DVD players for the Xbox 360", but will "continue to provide standard product and warranty support for all Xbox 360 HD DVD Players in the market".
The move follows the complete collapse of HD-DVD in the bitter high-definition format war with Sony's Blu-ray. Manufacturer Toshiba recently washed their hands of the format following Blu-ray support from Hollywood studios and retailers.
The statement reiterated Microsoft's belief that its withdrawal from HD-DVD will not have an impact on the success of the Xbox 360, pointing towards its digital distribution offering and support for standard definition DVDs.
It reads: "As a result of recent decisions made by Toshiba, Hollywood studios, and retailers, Microsoft plans to withdraw from HD DVD. Xbox will no longer manufacture new HD DVD players for the Xbox 360, but we will continue to provide standard product and warranty support for all Xbox 360 HD DVD Players in the market. As we stated earlier, we do not believe this decision will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room, along with playback of the DVD movies they already own."
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I don't think Microsoft are going to bother with Blu-Ray even in their future consoles, the general feeling I get from reading around is that they're pushing for download distribution for HD content so I figure the 'XBox 720' will have a regular DVD drive but a massive hard drive.
Sony seem to be thinking the same way according to Phil Harrison in this BBC article, which would indicate the PS3 was really just a vehicle to get the Blu-Ray format up and running, we might not even see a PS4 or XBox 720 as recognisable game consoles in the future, they might be more along the lines of home servers or central hubs with everything downloaded to them.
Which makes me wonder why Blu-Ray needed to exist in the first place. I'm thinking it'll co-exist with DVD format for a decade or so by which stage most people won't be on 56k dial up anymore and download distribution of movies and games becomes much more realistic.
On the plus side, at least early adopters of the HDDVD add on have a nice piece of videogame hardware that they can show to their grandchildren and flog on e-Bay. They're the 16k RAM Packs of the future.
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might get one now, as the hd-dvd's will be cheap now, so why not
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