Next Xbox; If not blu-ray, Then what?

[Dexomega]

There is no way Sony will let Microsoft use their technology.

Sony does own the rights to Blu-ray, right?

Actually Sony is just a big backer, and they only own the logo. The current board of directors is as follows:

Apple
Dell
HP
Hitachi
LG
Mitsubishi Electric
Panasonic
Pioneer
Philips
Samsung
Sharp
Sony
Sun Microsystems
TDK
Thomson
Twentieth Century Fox
Walt Disney

o.o

No way. Seriously? Wowza. That's a lot of money behind Blu-ray. No wonder Sony tried so hard to make it look as though it was to the DVD what CD was to the cassette

Samsung, Sony, and Panasonic were the original push behind the format. The rest joined later on.

 

[irishdude]

If it was to be digitally distributed only, what happens if i buy a game on xbox live and i dont like or enjoy the game will i be able to return it? am getting l.a noire on friday and the game sames like it will be good but, if i dont enjoy i can return it for a full refund within 14 days of buying it?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

My first reasoning is that Microsoft refused to release a blu-ray addon after their hddvd addon failed so miserably. A basic blu player would be amazing and they have no reason for not releasing one except to save face from Sony and other blu-ray contributors in general.

Actually, they have a very good reason for not releasing one - they have this whole thing about any game released for the 360 being able to be played on any 360. Having games come out in 2 formats will be a pain in the dick with complaints coming from all quarters, from publishers who only want to use Blu Ray to consumers who accidentally bought the wrong format. They also would have to go to the hassle of squashing in all that proprietary firmware they like to stick in their hardware just to let people turn their 360 into a BR disc player. I don't see them doing that, seeing as basic standalone BR players are already cheaper than what MS would need to charge for their addon player to make it viable for them to do so.

When I said blu player, I meant of movies. I didn't mean or try to mean they would use it for current games. Just a movie player.

Yeah, and they wouldn't bother. The amount of time and money they'd have to sink into the project wouldn't be worth having to pin it's success on whether enough 360 owners would rather buy an expensive addon than a cheaper standalone BR player... especially not when they can make much more cash researching and selling new arm flailing control tech.

 

[nazzer]

If it was to be digitally distributed only, what happens if i buy a game on xbox live and i dont like or enjoy the game will i be able to return it? am getting l.a noire on friday and the game sames like it will be good but, if i dont enjoy i can return it for a full refund within 14 days of buying it?

This is where game demos or post-release locked releases come into play. A player could pay a fraction of the original game's price to play, say, 4 hours of the completed game. Or maybe just a straight up rental, allowing players to play the game for a week for 8 or 9 dollars?

 

[a ginger491]

What I think is that the next console generation will be nothing but HD digital media. All downloaded and instead of using disks everything is on the hard drive and once that is filled up you get a new hard drive or put information on what will probably be a kind thumb drive that has like 50 gigs on it. It removes the cost of buying discs and shipping for publishers so everybody wins!. Well except game stop but they can get off selling peripherals and other accessories. In other words STEAM IS THE FUTURE. I also think that at some point the internet will become public domain which shows some problems with the possibility FCC ruining all the fun and censoring everything, but hey free internet.