| Reasonable said:
I did think of that - and they might do that. But it just seems like a huge risk to me. If the go digital only I see two big risks: a) they are wrong and are left in a very weak position having to produce some sort of external bolt on physical media post launch - this would happen if it became obvious too much of the market still wants to buy physical media b) they risk limiting themselves to only countries with sufficient bandwidth to download big games (imagine downloading FFXIII for example if you don't have much bandwidth - this would essentially cut off a big chunk of the worldwide market and essentially hand it to Sony/Nintendo With their entertainment hub message I can't see them going proprietary as stated - that would incure a lot of development expensne and if they wanted their format to also play DVDs they would still have to licence it anyway. Stuffing BR (which is now relatively cheap vs when PS3 launched) into the next Xbox just seems the easy, low risk option to me. It doesn't stop them pushing digital more, it ticks a currently empty box in in their entertainment hub credentials and it actually removes a Sony differentiator - why buy a Playstation or standalone Sony (or other brand) BR player when your entertainment hub Xbox can play it all? I think MS would prefer to go digital, but I think the economic crysis has pushed that back from being realizable, particularly in a lot of the more emerging markets. |
I see digital-only getting introduced as a "slim" version of a console in the upcoming gen or two, kind of like the psp go.
