This is the new (console) shit!

[ThunderPeel2001]

I don't really understand your question. Why would they?

? To make money. That's the usual reason for selling things!

[toblix]

I've seen that picture a bunch of times, and I wonder if it's a functioning and genuinely useful stack of adapters or whatever they are. Does each element fulfil a purpose, or is it just a console version of plugging together a million power converters?

[ThunderPeel2001]

Yeah I don't follow either. That's a bit like asking why they didn't release a DVD add-on for the PS1 when they announced that the PS2 would have a DVD drive. It's fairly normal to move to the latest optical standard with a new generation isn't it? Unless you're Nintendo of course, in which case you use an almost-but-not-quite version of the latest standard.

Eh? If the PS1 was actually powerful enough to decode DVDs (and I suspect it wasn't) then it would still require a separate disc to turn into a DVD player. Secondly, DVDs were still pretty new when the PS2 came out, and players were still pretty expensive. Thirdly, it's only NOW that we've discovered Durango will have a BD player -- if MS knew they were finally going to give in and admit defeat to Sony, then why not do it sooner?

One of the main selling points of the PS3 over the 360 is that it also doubles as a Bluray player (indeed, that's part of the reason why I ended up buying one myself). If MS are finally going to swallow their pride after trying to kill Blu-rays for so long, they may as well have just released a software update and started selling a Blu-ray add-on, so that people like me wouldn't buy a PS3! (They could probably sell one for $60 and still make a very tasty profit, too.)

PS - You know there was HD-DVD drive add-on, right? The only reason there wasn't a Blu-ray one was because MS wanted Toshiba to win the format wars (because HD-DVDs used their codec, and as everything is going online, they wanted their codec to become industry standard).

[tegan]

I've seen that picture a bunch of times, and I wonder if it's a functioning and genuinely useful stack of adapters or whatever they are. Does each element fulfil a purpose, or is it just a console version of plugging together a million power converters?

One of those attachments is the Sega Cleaning System, which is just a double-ended cartridge with two sets of cleaning pads rather than electrical contacts, so no. Even without that component I'm pretty sure that it wouldn't work, though.

I'm still waiting for someone to make the everygame. ie: You start with an old Gameboy cartridge with a minigame on it. When you beat the game it prompts you to plug in the Gameboy Printer, which prints out a QR code. Viewing the code with a 3DS gets you a download code for another minigame, which you can share via DS download play to an original DS, which then unlocks something on a GBA cartridge. This goes through several stages like a Kinect picking up your motions while you play a Playstation Move game, using a Blockbuster Pokémon Snap sticker printing station to make e-reader cards, and using a Wiimote to track the light emitted by a Virtual Boy headset. At the end you get a postcard from J Allard or something. It would be glorious.

I'm also waiting for the music peripheral game that uses everything, from the DJ Hero turntable to the Samba De Amigo maracas. The only song you can play is "Wildcat" by Ratatat and it's pretty boring for everyone involved.

[Thrik]

Eh? If the PS1 was actually powerful enough to decode DVDs (and I suspect it wasn't) then it would still require a separate disc to turn into a DVD player. Secondly, DVDs were still pretty new when the PS2 came out, and players were still pretty expensive. Thirdly, it's only NOW that we've discovered Durango will have a BD player -- if MS knew they were finally going to give in and admit defeat to Sony, then why not do it sooner?

One of the main selling points of the PS3 over the 360 is that it also doubles as a Bluray player (indeed, that's part of the reason why I ended up buying one myself). If MS are finally going to swallow their pride after trying to kill Blu-rays for so long, they may as well have just released a software update and started selling a Blu-ray add-on, so that people like me wouldn't buy a PS3! (They could probably sell one for $60 and still make a very tasty profit, too.)

PS - You know there was HD-DVD drive add-on, right? The only reason there wasn't a Blu-ray one was because MS wanted Toshiba to win the format wars (because HD-DVDs used their codec, and as everything is going online, they wanted their codec to become industry standard).

Oh I understand your argument about providing a player for things like films, I wasn't really thinking about it in terms of non-gaming media at all. I was referring specifically to the data kind of Blu-ray; there'd be no point having a Blu-ray add-on for the 360 in a gaming context because no games would currently use it and I can't see developers starting to use that extra 40GB-ish capacity and requiring the peripheral. Plus, the main benefits of having so much extra space (textures, audio) can't be taken full advantage of by the 360's hardware. It's the kind of thing where waiting for the next generation is simply sensible.

[Justin Leego]

Microsoft are behind the VC-1 codec which has something or other to do with the bluest of rays.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Microsoft are behind the VC-1 codec which has something or other to do with the bluest of rays.

Yep, it's used sometimes on Blu-rays, which is good for MS but I understand it was pretty much the agreed upon standard for HD-DVDs.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Oh I understand your argument about providing a player for things like films, I wasn't really thinking about it in terms of non-gaming media at all. I was referring specifically to the data kind of Blu-ray; there'd be no point having a Blu-ray add-on for the 360 in a gaming context because no games would currently use it and I can't see developers starting to use that extra 40GB-ish capacity and requiring the peripheral. Plus, the main benefits of having so much extra space (textures, audio) can't be taken full advantage of by the 360's hardware. It's the kind of thing where waiting for the next generation is simply sensible.

Aye. Movies, sir. (Also, LA Noire would make use of the Blu-ray capacity... although it's not worth the effort of everyone involved.)

[JonCole]

You can buy blu-ray players for less than $50 on a regular basis. Microsoft probably wouldn't produce an add-on drive for the 360 because their margins would be garbage and they'd have to pay to license blu-ray decoding codecs. The PS3 being a blu-ray player hasn't really been a factor for a while now, at least from my perception.

That said, I still don't know why that's relevant to the Durango having a blu-ray player.

[ThunderPeel2001]

You can buy blu-ray players for less than $50 on a regular basis. Microsoft probably wouldn't produce an add-on drive for the 360 because their margins would be garbage and they'd have to pay to license blu-ray decoding codecs. The PS3 being a blu-ray player hasn't really been a factor for a while now, at least from my perception.

That said, I still don't know why that's relevant to the Durango having a blu-ray player.

If you don't get it after all I've explained, then fair enough. It's still a big deal.

[brkl]

It would've been a big deal if Microsoft had made a Bluray add-on when the format war had just ended. Now it's just kind of obvious.

[Thrik]

Yeah that's true. At this point it'd seem kind of retarded to use anything but Blu-ray. Unless you're Nintendo of course, who seem to be content with just not even trying to use any kind of standard (although the Wii U's 25GB discs are suspiciously reminiscent of Blu-ray).

[JonCole]

The PS3 doesn't deliver a particularly good user experience when it comes to blu-ray and I can't possibly imagine that a 360 with an external blu-ray drive would be any better. The interfaces (both software and hardware, the latter being the controller) aren't compatible with normal people who simply want to watch a movie they rented at the Redbox. If people were "smart", they never buy a DVD player and rather buy a PS2 or original Xbox or they would never buy a Blu-Ray player and rather buy a PS3. Unfortunately, simple utility and price consciousness don't always work on normal consumers, especially when you don't have a rich interest in gaming and don't see a $299 box as an "investment".

In other words, my relatively tech-savvy girlfriend (she has a gaming PC, uses Steam, plays Guild Wars 2, has online dated, etc) has no idea how to play a blu-ray in the PS3. This is even with the blu-ray remote I bought for the PS3 which adapts the buttons to a more remote-like paradigm. If she can't figure it out, it's difficult to convince me that blu-ray in gaming consoles as a movie delivery format is a big deal instead of just a bonus.

[ThunderPeel2001]

It would've been a big deal if Microsoft had made a Bluray add-on when the format war had just ended. Now it's just kind of obvious.

The format war ended in 2007 -- in all that time MS hasn't bothered to release a BD add-on. It's the very fact that they didn't release one after they lost the war, even when they were losing buyers to Sony because of the lack of one, that makes it such a big deal today. It would have made perfect sense, but they still didn't want to back Blu-rays... possibly out of spite, possibly because they had their eyes on another horse. The fact that they've now taken onboard Blu-rays, and not, for example, pushed the online service they've been developing, must be a bitter pill indeed -- and makes all those sales they lost to Sony completely pointless.

That's why it's a big deal.

[syntheticgerbil]

Those pictures are why I finally trolled ebay last year for one of these:

[youmeyou]

Thunderpeel, are you suggesting that it's a good idea for MS to release an external Blu-Ray player right now? A year, assumedly, before their next system ships? There is no conceivable universe in which that would be a good investment.

[Frenetic Pony]

Huh, 16 bit, hell yeah! That seems to refer to the CPU? I suppose we're up to 64bit processors now, if you told that to someone in 1989 (gods, was that when the Genesis was released?) they'd have been like "Far freakin out man!" Because the 60's and 80's are so old they're interchangeable right?

Also, Blu Ray isn't going to be added to the 360, I'm surprised it's on the Durango or whatever. They could have skipped the licensing fees and gone with their own format. Discs are less dead than they deserve to be, but they're getting there. Even my parents have skipped straight past blu ray to a Roku, not too mention the last physical game I bought (given the choice of digital) was... shite I don't even remember. Company of Heroes or Sins of a Solar Empire (the first one) which ever came out later.

But discs are pretty close to the walking dead of technology so far as I can see, propped up only a few more years by any number of dying factors. I was thinking about someone (the odd man out) in the middle of Africa buying a game. Odds are it might well be easier to go to an internet cafe and download it than get a legitimate disc.

[brkl]

I just figured MS did the math and thought designing a Bluray peripheral wouldn't make them any money, since buying one from a customer's point of view wouldn't be much different from buying an actual Bluray player that did a better job of playing Blurays.

[juv3nal]

But discs are pretty close to the walking dead of technology so far as I can see, propped up only a few more years by any number of dying factors. I was thinking about someone (the odd man out) in the middle of Africa buying a game. Odds are it might well be easier to go to an internet cafe and download it than get a legitimate disc.

Granted, Steam seems to be doing fine, but you need retail to sell your console and if they don't have disc games to sell alongside them, well, I can't imagine they'd be happy about that.

[Thrik]

The PS3 doesn't deliver a particularly good user experience when it comes to blu-ray and I can't possibly imagine that a 360 with an external blu-ray drive would be any better. The interfaces (both software and hardware, the latter being the controller) aren't compatible with normal people who simply want to watch a movie they rented at the Redbox. If people were "smart", they never buy a DVD player and rather buy a PS2 or original Xbox or they would never buy a Blu-Ray player and rather buy a PS3. Unfortunately, simple utility and price consciousness don't always work on normal consumers, especially when you don't have a rich interest in gaming and don't see a $299 box as an "investment".

In other words, my relatively tech-savvy girlfriend (she has a gaming PC, uses Steam, plays Guild Wars 2, has online dated, etc) has no idea how to play a blu-ray in the PS3. This is even with the blu-ray remote I bought for the PS3 which adapts the buttons to a more remote-like paradigm. If she can't figure it out, it's difficult to convince me that blu-ray in gaming consoles as a movie delivery format is a big deal instead of just a bonus.

I don't agree with this. I consider the Blu-ray remote essential, but if you have one it really couldn't be simpler: but a disc in and it'll play, then you use the controller like any other TV remote. Unless you've disabled disc auto-play, which is kind of your own fault although it's not much harder to go to 'Video' then click the golden disc. The scene selection and in-film menus are just fine too.

My dad, pre-teen siblings, and girlfriend haven't had any trouble with it anyway.

[Frenetic Pony]

Granted, Steam seems to be doing fine, but you need retail to sell your console and if they don't have disc games to sell alongside them, well, I can't imagine they'd be happy about that.

What the hell are they going to do about it? I'm not saying it would make sense to ditch discs NOW, well maybe I am. I was thinking about it, and PC retail is about as dead as can be. Retail is fighting it's own losing battle against Amazon as it is. Best Buy is going to be out of business by the end of year, Gamestop might go be the end of next year. Since both MS and Sony will do a much better job of digital distribution than Nintendo has with the PS4 and etc. then I can see discs dying as well.

Maybe it'll take a few years, maybe the transition will need to be eased. Probably will for a lot of people. I suppose that's what discs are there for.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Thunderpeel, are you suggesting that it's a good idea for MS to release an external Blu-Ray player right now? A year, assumedly, before their next system ships? There is no conceivable universe in which that would be a good investment.

Nope, although I accidentally typed that initially (oops), I hope it's obvious that I was talking about the past. Here's an interesting piece (it's a little too anti-MS, but it has many interesting points in one place). For those who don't know (and it seems many don't, considering the resistance I've had to my simple observation): Toshiba was going to give up on HD-DVD back in 2005, before it had even been released, but Microsoft got behind them and "incentivised" them to continue. Microsoft tried like hell to kill Blu-ray. They gave $150 million to DreamWorks and Paramount to keep them HD-DVD exclusive, and are suspected to have subsidised Toshiba's manufacturing costs for their stand-alone HD-DVD players -- god knows how much they spent in total over those two years.

As TheDigitalBits wrote at the time:

Unlike so many of the most ardent supporters of either side, I don't have any particularly dislike for Microsoft or love of Sony. I really could care less about such things - I just love watching great movies in great quality. I'm a Vista user, and of all the next-gen game systems out there, I really dig the Xbox 360. I don't even have a PS3. But I'll tell you, I've been suspicious of Microsoft's motivations in this format war for a while now, based on reports from our many industry sources, and my own personal experiences with Microsoft's HD-DVD "evangelism" team. This news fleshes out and supports (from another perspective) MANY of the things we've been saying for a while now, including the fact that it was Microsoft that convinced Toshiba to continue backing HD-DVD when Tosh was ready to give up back in 2005 (before these formats actually launched), and also that Microsoft campaigned on behalf of HD-DVD to prolong the format war itself. It's no coincidence that right after Warner announced they were backing Blu-ray at CES, Bill Gates started shifting the focus away from HD-DVD toward downloading. And it's also no coincidence that since CES, Microsoft - which had been the most vocal supporter of HD-DVD up until that time - hadn't said much else about HD-DVD until their statement on Monday that the format's failure wouldn't impact their Xbox 360 business.

One of the big reasons we here at The Digital Bits decided to finally officially back Blu-ray in June of 2007, was that we'd noticed that certain folks in the HD-DVD camp were saying things that made no logical sense to us, that were contrary to EVERYTHING we'd come to know about the home video business in more than a decade of working in and interacting with it, and that occasionally we even believed to be blatantly false. We also noticed that much of this misinformation was being spread to folks online in the various discussion forums and groups, who didn't have the perspective, experience and industry contacts to KNOW it was suspect, and these folks were in turn spreading it elsewhere online. This happened repeatedly. It was a deliberate effort to use enthusiasts to fight corporate PR battles, and finally we simply couldn't sit on the sidelines any more and let it continue unchallenged. We've gotten pretty good over the years at sniffing out marketing spin and PR BS. And some of the stuff that was spread around was really despicable, even to the point of personal smears. We've never seen anything like it. Even back in the DVD vs. Divx days, it NEVER got as nasty online as it did with HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray. And certain parties were deliberately fuelling the fire.

Microsoft were pretty much responsible for the format wars ever happening, or at least for making them last as long as they did, and they fought like bitter hell.

When Blu-ray finally won, they probably could have swallowed their pride and taken some of that BD pie. They could have released a cheap stand-alone drive for the 360 (just like they did for HD-DVD -- which sold pretty well for the time), offering a viable alternative to the PS3 for those who were swayed by such things. It always baffled me as to why they didn't... I figured they would never go down that route (possibly holding out for online to take over) but now, almost 10 years later, they're going to release hardware with Blu-ray. If they were going to support it eventually, why didn't they do it sooner? I'm guessing it's with great reluctance that they're including it now.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Granted, Steam seems to be doing fine, but you need retail to sell your console and if they don't have disc games to sell alongside them, well, I can't imagine they'd be happy about that.

Eh? Many retail PC games are already just boxes with Steam/Origin download codes in them.

[JonCole]

Yeah, I think people are downplaying the importance of retail to the sales of a new console. Download-only would directly sabotage retail relationships in pretty significant ways, not to mention the admittedly minority yet important group of people who don't connect their consoles to the internet. I'm fairly convinced that this is why Games on Demand and Sony's full-game download service has practically never been competitive on price with retailers - if you don't make price and convenience a trade-off, retail is essentially worthless. Hence, why the retail PC game section is so insignificant in most game shops.

[melmer]

They should release digital copies 2-3 months before retail copies. Ooosh I've just saved the industry.