While bargain hunters are busy scouring the bargain buckets for the recently deceased Xbox 360 HD DVD Player, Microsoft are wasting no time mourning the loss of a not-so-loved one, instead looking to a decidedly blue future. Originally their support of HD-DVD was more of a strategic maneuver than a technology based one, and now Toshiba have officially thrown in the towel, Microsoft needs to act fast to take on Sony's PlayStation 3 in the HD movie playback stakes.
If rumours are to be believed, Microsoft are set to release an external Blu-ray drive for the 360 as early as oct 2008. Officially, the only word from Microsoft comes from CEO Steve Balmer, stating the company 'will support Blu-ray in ways that make sense.' It doesn't take much reading between the lines to say that it probably 'makes sense' to support the only remaining contender in the HD movie format business. Combined with the recent announcement of a European price drop, a reasonably priced optional Blu-ray add-on seems like an obvious choice. While this kind of story should come with a fair amount of opportunity for gloating over corpoarte u-turns, Microsoft have alway maintained that they would entertain a Blu-ray drive if it happened to succeed.
would you like to see a blu ray xbox 360?? Discuss!
