Rumors float around the Internet questioning when Microsoft will ship a Blu-ray enabled Xbox 360 or add-on device like they did with the, now failed, HD-DVD. At CES 09 Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division, says this request is “way down the list.”
Mr. Bach had some great selling points as to why a Blu-ray player has little value in the world of Xbox 360. The primary reason, of course, being the Xbox 360 developers cannot take advantage of Blu-ray as a development platform for games. This was the price Sony, or the consumer, paid to own a PlayStation 3 since all games are printed on the media and are, in effect, Blu-ray “capable.”
We say capable because not all (any?) PlayStation 3 games currently make full use of the Blu-ray media. Many games will reprint the game on the media for optimization purposes, fill the game with international voice overs for all countries or, otherwise, stuff the media with something that will serve a useful purpose. Sony has near-future-proofed their device by giving game developers years of growth in terms of utilizing the Blu-ray capacity.
Microsoft chose to take the smaller old-style DVD format for games and media. Adding the HD-DVD didn’t add a large deal of risk because, as we saw, they can discontinue the model and not change their core gaming demographic. We still laughed a bit at them, but that was where it ended. Bach also said that it’s not really a great economic time to push a new 360 SKU on potential customers with additional cost just for Blu-ray movies playback.
They could add Blu-ray game development support as well but that would just alienate the “28 million Xboxes” they have already shipped.
“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.” (gamespot)
Of course, the first thing that came to our mind was “well, you did it for HD-DVD, how is Blu-ray different?” The key areas we can think of really come down to Blu-ray is a Sony technology and they are a direct competitor and, to top it off, HD-DVD allowed them to fight against the PS3 at the media level of the industry. They minimized the risk by making the product a secondary add-on device and, if HD-DVD had won, they’d have the winning format already under production (still not for games).
It seems Microsoft has changed their battle plans a little. They started out talking up the media aspects of the 360, using Media Center, renting movies and TV shows and had the HD-DVD as a subproduct. Today, they’re investing in Netflix for media and everything else favors the games.
Which is fine, we like games.
Despite the announced shutdown of Star Wars: Galaxies and the approaching new Star Wars-based MMO Star Wars: The Old Republic, loyal subscribers don’t want Galaxies to end. They’ve begun a petition to
@Culture Diversity in games: I don’t know which is sadder: That you both didn’t think of Quest for Glory or the Witcher 3 when asking how many games have Baba Yaga. Quest For Glory series explored not just European culture but Arabian (QFG2) and African(QFG3) as well. You get to deal with Baba Yaga as a villain three times once in QFG1 and once again in QFG IV (Slavic) (which you also faced Domovoi and Rasulka, along with Vampires and Werewolves) and finally in QFG 5 (Greco-Roman). I do have to thank Sierra games for showing me such diversity of cultural backgrounds in their games, they also had a series called the Incans.
Now Witcher has these Hags which seem like the kind of creature that Baba Yaga is, if you’ve seen some of them:
http://www.gameranx.com/updates/id/13158/article/the-witcher-3-concept-art-depicts-baba-yaga-and-other-mythical-creatures/
They should have had one of these “ladies” at the end of Blair Witch, that would have been great nightmare fuel.
I do agree we need more game diversity of cultural backgrounds and Sierra had a lot of that. Speaking of which Ken Williams gave an interview about the new King’s Quest game being made by the Odd Gentleman
http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2015/01/02/ken-williams-interview-kings-quest-sierra-game-informer.aspx
One point of the interview Ken says how he doesn’t like to categorize a game like “point and click” that they should be more an experience and not get stuck on trying to be next big thing. It made me think about how they tried to keep up with the changing game market back in the 90’s, struggles with FMV and then 3D games. Both this King’s Quest game and the GK1 remake are Corporation backed while the Kickstarted Hero-U and Space Venture are not and seem to be having trouble getting done at all.
@ “Selling out”: I like the saying if you can do something well, get paid for it. I think it makes sense, everyone deserves to eat even brilliant artists.
@ Hacker Punks: I cannot wait for these punks to be arrested; they committed a crime so YES they will be investigated. I had to laugh at the phrase “all the good hackers have done” yeah like what? Also apparently Sony was “asking for it” by not having better security, now I wish Sony had worked harder on being more secure it still doesn’t give the right for them to break in.
@Playing Online: I agree I don’t like trying to play with random strangers and having a group of friends is great. So speaking of Polycast we’re always open to you dropping by on Saturday Jonah. We’ve been playing Civ 5 and Beyond Earth lately.
@Christmas loot: I got a bag of holding from Thinkgeek, lightsaber chopsticks, a Star Trek communicator badge, a Professor Layton game and a doctor who Pocket watch. So I got some good geeky loot this Christmas!
@Help me mom, they hacked my Xbox!!!
I wasn’t affected this time around because I was with my family for New Year and mostly played offline. I will have to agree thou. Microsoft and Sony get hacked so often now that it’s not even news anymore. I find it ironic how a snot can spit down on a huge company whenever he pleases. Something has to change.
@STALKER: Shadow of >>>CENSORED<<<
Maybe the Ukrainian government did not want a tourist influx into their danger zone. The STALKER series did raise Chernobyl’s profile considerably. Last thing they wanted was amateur treasure hunters crawling around the Sarcophagus looking for artefacts. On the folklore cultures, there are quite a few different mystical entities that would make good game characters. In fact, there are many Russian games based on the Russian folklore. But they never make it out beyond the Iron Curtain. Not enough demand. The reason why Greek and Roman gods are so popular is because everyone knows them. On the contrary, most westerners can’t even pronounce Vodyanoy or Kikimore (mystical creatures).
@QOTW
Not as much as I would like too. I only play online with my friends, and currently we have a mismatch of gaming platforms (I have lots of consoles but no PC). I used to play a lot on Xbox Live. Have my fondest memories playing Bad Company 2, Borderlands and Left 4 Dead 2 till the latest hours of the night. But university fixed that. Had no time to play anything at all. Now I can’t get back into any online gaming. I have a huge of backlog of singleplayer games and no worthy multiplayer games to keep me interested. It has been a long time since something fresh came out. Maybe Evolve and Halo will fix that.