wasn't MS saying that blu-ray isn't good? or at least for consoles

@major

yeah. but these kinds of contradictions occur a lot in the business world. Microsoft is willing to adapt to a new standard if it is able to do so without taking a huge risk.

When the 360 was being developed, the HD format war was in full swing and MS opted not to include either HD-DVD or Blu Ray in its console because it wasn't sure who would win. It backed HD-DVD because it was competing against Sony's Playstation.

But now that Blu-Ray is the standard, MS has no problem using Blu-Ray for computers. There's no reason why the next Xbox won't have Blu-Ray. It's merely because of public image and money that MS will say that Blu Ray isn't necessary for gaming right now.

Sony should make a PS3 vs. Xbox 360 commercial in the same style, just for laughs LOL

totally. But it is just business :) It is time to move on. I rarely touch a DVD nowadays. Old tech is old and unreliable.

I take it you don't play PC, PS2 or Xbox games then?

well it's not like pc even need a physical support for games .

Every ps2 game can be dropped on an hard drive too . And i might be wrong but it's the same with the original xbox

Microsoft would love to see Apple standardize on Blu-ray and increase the cost even more. Since there is absolutely nothing to gain except to eliminate this talking point in ads.

There's going to be nothing on Blu-ray except movies. No one is going to backup on it, distribute software on it, and movies, well Netflix says hello.

I'm not even sure why MS is running this ad. It seems to exist just to irritate Apple for some reason.

but if Apple standardize on blu-ray, it will be when it DOESN't increase in cost

macbooks and all their other computers in general have falled in price (compared to when I got mine 4 years ago)

either way it'll be mainly for the movies/music compilations and the HD experience =)

I know people here are going to use this to push the "MS is evil and hypocritical" theme MS is known for, but there is more to it than that.

Take Sony playing off Rumble as not being "next-gen". Eventually they add it. Obviously they play it down, why wouldn't they? Are they hypocrites? If you consider MS hypocrites then you should consider Sony too.

There is a difference between MS saying Blu Ray isn't important for gaming and MS saying Blu Ray is important for PCs. They are two different venues for the same company and they handle things their own way. It's not contradictory, just the way they handle their image.

Gaming=/=Movies, MS is just playing to their strengths. Yes, Blu Ray is great for gaming, but why would MS admit that? Why admit defeat? Companies use PR to spin and promote confidence no matter how hypocritical or backwards it may seem.

I don't see the big deal with this ad. MS PC isn't MS Xbox.

They are obviously going to make Blu Ray seem like a big deal because Apple lacks it and they are obviously going to play it down for their gaming machine because Sony is competition. Do you really expect any company to admit their own faults?

Just because the Xbox and PlayStation are brand rivals doesn't mean MS and Sony are sworn enemies. They have a partnership with their PCs and obviously they aren't going to sabotage their own product. They work together to promote VAIO/Windows, and if a Sony product will play Blu Rays then they will promote that because they benefit from it too.

Of course seeing as a majority here are gamers primarily they will look at this through the Xbox/Playstation perspective but it is nothing more than common practice.

Yea..."Who doesn't do that"
Like how sony used built in (removable) HDD instead of memory cards, they copied Microsoft, it is just making it better, so why not?
People thought blu-ray wasn't going to be a huge impact, obliviously no one thought that it was going to be the dominant disk format.

If microsoft really hated sony, then they wouldn't make sony product compatible with their windows stuff, face it they have a partnership but not when it comes to console gaming. (as said above :D)

Nothing in gaming is needed.

But.....It would be interesting to see how many NES cartriges GT5 would take up.

So yeah. BR and gaming go well together.

Rage much?

I'm not a fan of MS's practices either, but I think you're exaggerating this a little too much. First of all, when MS said Blu-Ray isn't needed for gaming, they meant they didn't need it for the 360 this gen. It doesn't mean they're not going to include it in their next system. As Alpha pointed out, they're just trying to make their product look as good as possible.

"It would seem Game console WOULD be the machine that needs blu-ray and PC's with HDDs which install EVERYTHING WOULDN'T need Blu-ray."

That doesn't make any sense... Are you suggesting that if people want to watch movies on their computer, they should download 30 - 50GB of data into their HDD just to watch it in HD? Are you saying that the game's graphics isn't dependent on the hardware, but on a Blu-Ray disc?

"It's hypocritical. You can spin it how you like. What good would it do any company when one department burns bridges for another for any reason?

It's a good thing for the 360 division to trash blu-ray but BAD for the Windows/PC department to not encourage the use?"

If you were in business, wouldn't YOU try to do your best to make your product look as good possible? Saying they don't need Blu-Ray for games is legit and not at all dirty. This is in no way suggesting Blu-Ray sucks. A while back, MS claimed that Xbox360 consumers won't need Blu-Ray to watch HD movies, but that was because they focused on hyping Digitial Downloads for the 360.

If you look at Halo Reach, it's one of the best looking games out now and it didn't need Blu-Ray. Gears 3 is also looking great too.

For one final thing you said...

"But now that you can get your lips pumped full of collagen, and get some steroid shots or some jelly injected in the ass, NOOOOW it's a good thing."

Now that's just completely ridiculous, this a large generalization you make here and it fails on so many levels. I don't know about you but the majority of the people I know have absolutely no interest in getting those types of enhancements. I don't know why you came up with this analysis.

The rest of your post I'm not even going to go on about.

Interesting and kinda overkillish analogy.

You might be surprised to learn Windows 7 supported Blu-ray from beta. Vista does too mang.

Generic Linux does not equal GPL. In general, Linux does suck for desktops. That's why it's gone nowhere in any real sense on the desktop. Works great for appliances and such.

Whatever you do, never, ever research the origins of the original NT Kernel... <ggg>

"That doesn't make any sense... Are you suggesting that if people want to watch movies on their computer, they should download 30 - 50GB of data into their HDD just to watch it in HD? Are you saying that the game's graphics isn't dependent on the hardware, but on a Blu-Ray disc?"

I'm suggesting that with Blu-ray, people that own a Game console with smaller HDD sizes don't have install a 30-50 gig(Though I haven't seen a rip over 17...yet) movie.

If you put what I said in context I was saying that PC's have large HDD on purchase so if the owner only wanted to DL high file size movies they could. All game consoles don't have that luxury, though it's starting to change.

Also, Performance of games are based on both disc media of choice AND the applicable hardware that's using it.

Now, argue that say MGS4 would be the same game on DVD. You can't actually make a determination of how most games would be on one disc media vs another because all multi-platform games are predetermined in scale for it no to be an issue.

As for the actually RENDERING of the game on the hardware, no. Disc Media isn't even needed at all as long you have a large enough HDD :). In context.

"If you were in business, wouldn't YOU try to do your best to make your product look as good possible? Saying they don't need Blu-Ray for games is legit and not at all dirty. This is in no way suggesting Blu-Ray sucks. A while back, MS claimed that Xbox360 consumers won't need Blu-Ray to watch HD movies, but that was because they focused on hyping Digitial Downloads for the 360."

Let's put it into perspective. If the new thing was to say, "Since we all ready have plenty of adults, children are not needed." Would that be making Adults just look good? Or would that also be implying that children are bad.

If you have an "Up" there is always a "down". You can't spin something into a double positive or double negative when it's subjugating its success vs something else.

that can only make sense IF what you're comparing it against isn't even relative to subject of comparison...WHICH IS STUPID.

"Now that's just completely ridiculous, this a large generalization you make here and it fails on so many levels. I don't know about you but the majority of the people I know have absolutely no interest in getting those types of enhancements. I don't know why you came up with this analysis."

Because in CONTEXT it's a parable of Microsoft's "Business as usual" as stated by Alphamale22 above.

Microsoft trashes Blu-ray on one hand but when it's in one of their products NOW it's good.

Remember, MS pushed HD DVD. They could have just as easily backed Blu-ray, but they didn't want it succeed now did they? They wanted to get a 1up over Sony's disc media AND their hardware.

If HD-DVD had won we wouldn't be having this conversation and Blu-ray would still be perceived as a negative vs Microsoft's brand.

And it doesn't matter if YOUR friends don't go for any of those procedures, the truth is the majority speaks louder than your 2 or 3 friends. Even more so if they happen to be Males lol.

Point is, if the only way you can make your product look good is finding a way to make the other look bad, your product must suck.

"Business tactics" should not be used in common life. Why people want to go around undercutting each other for no damn reason is beyond me. But I'm not gonna support it.

These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse

Contractual agreements are not the same as “gentlemen” agreements. If you think that they work with their distributors a month before production then their entire business model is trash. They work with companies like nvidia constantly for building the graphics cards they need. They work with companies that build motherboards years in advance. This is what proper business planning does.

They are not buying components on a whim like a consumer. So again, considering the ram isn’t a singular module and is integrated into the motherboard I highly doubt they wouldn’t have a final schematic that they are supposed to be building around.

If they are delaying production another 3 years then it’s obvious again this is an after though project and is just trying to be responsive to their bad execution they had the last 14 years.

It also isn’t far fetched to use their failure to produce first party titles the last 7 years including the highly anticipated games I mentioned all being cancelled. That they would continue to you know… lie

Yeah with FSR 5 they should be able to offer a much cheaper version of Helix.

Series S is what has killed Xbox Series so... Will they dare?

The factors are largely external. Covid and Russia-Ukraine war causing inflation led to the first price increase in 2022.

Then we get Trump's tariffs increasing hardware prices, AI boom causing a RAM crisis, war on Iran causing a worldwide fuel crisis which impacts the cost of everything.

Gaming doesn't exist in a vacuum. The last few years have been a shitshow and lot of it was definitely avoidable.

LucasRuinedChildhood,

For sure. No disagreement on the external factors doing a lot of this. Where I have to gently push back however is on two fronts:

1. The pandemic definitely caused some issues: asynchronous development was a big issue and really complicated timelines and affected game quality. At the same time, when it comes to price hikes, it's really difficult to know what was genuine necessity and what was taking consumers for a ride. The pandemic brought about "stag-flation" which was increasing prices and stagnant wages, which was a problem caused by supply chain constraints. There was also "Greed-flation", where companies that were slightly affected or had no issues took advantage of the situation and squeezed everyone citing supply chain issues when there were none.

2. It's definitely true that the tariffs, AI boom, and RAM crisis were all things enabled by tech broligarchs throwing money at this caricature of a world leader, one of them being Satya Nadella. I don't think Sony and Nintendo have contributed much to this problem if at all, but Microsoft's Nadella I feel was instrumental in causing every one of those issues. Microsoft as a company contributed to both candidates (though they gave Harris 4x as much if I recall), but Nadella was all in on letting AI run wild. He paid for unregulated AI, and got a war that's not a war (even though Trump called it that at least five times on television) that screwed up helium access. So for me, I feel that one of the players in the gaming industry is a key architect of these issues, and for that reason I struggle a bit to think of it as "external".