Microsoft: lots of reasons why Xbox 360 won't go Blu-ray

[Septimus Prime]

Originally Posted by MoPe

Then why did the release the HD-DVD drive? It's not like they could format the games on the HD-DVD anyways, so what was the point to release a HD-DVD drive?

Obviously releasing a HD-DVD add-on drive :

"...is, from a technical perspective, it doesn’t help us in the core of what Xbox does, which is in gaming. Because then they won’t play on the 28 million Xboxes we’ve already shipped. So it doesn’t help us in the core gaming space.


The third thing, and this maps to all three of those, is that it costs a lot of money. And so the scenario is, OK, let me get this straight: I’m going to add something to the product that’s going to raise the cost, which means the price goes up, consumers aren’t asking for it, and by the way, my game developers can’t use it."

I'm thinking the HD DVD drive's market failure is what caused them to see it that way. Back then, the format war was still a toss-up, sort of (not really), so MS could have been a pioneer in the industry if that horrid thing succeeded.

But now, they see that they have few benefits to reap with such an add-on, so there's probably no reason to follow up a mistake by repeating it.