News

posted on 04 April 2008 10:04

Contrary to reports from Taiwan that Lite-on is manufacturing Blu-ray drives for the next-generation Xbox, Microsoft says it is not.

A Microsoft spokesperson said to TechRadar: “Lite-On is not manufacturing Blu-ray drives for Xbox 360. As we have stated, games are what are driving consumers to purchase game consoles and we remain focused on providing the largest library of blockbuster game available.”

The UK's Guardian newspaper has Microsoft UK's Xbox sales chief, Neil Thompson, responding to a question about backing the wrong HD disk horse: ""What do you mean? The horse that we're fundamentally backing is the one that says the future of entertainment content is online digital distribution. I would argue that we backed the right horse."

"If we're sitting here in 12 or 18 months time, we'll be saying 'why were people even thinking about a disc format when it's really about digital distribution?' Our strategy's been developed for the last six or seven years, and ever since we launched the platform it [online content] has been our big, big, big bet." 

That's unambiguous. Microsoft is saying 'We don't need movies to sell Xbox consoles and you can play high definition movies on DVD or you can download them.'

But it smacks of denial. If Microsoft needed a high definition optical format for the Xbox 360 once - and it did with HD-DVD - then why has that need gone away? How come Microsoft is now ignoring customers to whom previously it would have offered an HD-DVD experience? This doesn't seem logical and runmours and reports will persist whilst Microsoft's position on high definition optical media remains inconsistent.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}