Josh Babetski : Quixotic Bravado

Xbox 360 Blu-ray Player?

With the HD-DVD format officially dead, I’ve seen a spike in banter about people now shopping for a Blu-ray disc player; I’m part of that search. Hands-down the most often quoted choice for price/performance is the built-in Blu-ray player in Sony’s Playstation 3. I’m seriously thinking about getting one.

I love my Xbox 360; I don’t like much about the PS3, the controller, the game selection — not my thing. Microsoft has been effective at overtaking Sony in the game console market, but they backed the wrong horse in the high-definition DVD. A lot of people have been fence sitting the HD format war, now that there’s a clear victor there’s a lot of reason to go get a Playstation 3. In fact, I remember seeing somewhere that because the game selection was so bad, most people who had been buying PS3s were doing it for the upgradable Blu-ray player it had.

To me this seems like a no-brainer, with the HD-DVD corpse still warm, Microsoft should have announced the release of a Blu-ray player for the 360. Even if it’s not ready to be shipped, tell your 360 owners it’s coming. Did Microsoft do this? No, they did not. I’m sure they believe they’ll just bypass physical discs and everyone will embrace their downloadable video. Not yet. Here’s why:

• The video is so compressed it’s a stretch to even call it “HD.”
• Most broadband connections will still force you to come back later once it’s downloaded, this doesn’t play well with an instant gratification culture.
• No one wants to be locked in to the fragmented selection of HD content on Xbox Live. Apple’s going to have an issue with this as well with AppleTV.
• Netflix. At 10 bucks-a-month, one can get around 6 movies mailed back and forth. At $3.99 each per download, you can get two-and-a-half movies.

So instead of moving to the ball, people will go get a PS3, including me probably. Having the PS3, maybe they’ll start buying games for it, maybe some accessories. This sounds like a great strategy for giving market share back to Sony.