No Blu-Ray For Xbox 360

Microsoft's Bach explains why Sony's tech isn't coming to your console.

US, January 9, 2009 - Microsoft executives have made it clear for some time now that they have no plans to add Blu-Ray functionality to the Xbox 360, but they've never really delved into specifics.

But Seattle-based tech Web site Tech Flash (via Gamasutra) cornered Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's Entertainment & Devices Division, at CES this week and pressed him on the issue. And this time, Bach talked at length about the subject.

Microsoft still has no plans to bring Sony's high-definition disk format to its console, mainly because consumers aren't asking for it, Bach said.

"It's not a feature we get a ton of requests for. We really don't," Bach told Tech Flash. "When you ask people the list of things they want to see us spending time creating in Xbox, Blu-ray is way, way down on the list."

And even if Xbox 360 gamers were clamoring for the format, it wouldn't be in the company's best interest to make it happen. If future 360 games were to be published on Blu-Ray, they wouldn't play on the current installed base of 28 million DVD-based consoles, which would be a bad thing, Bach said. Oh, also it would apparently be quite pricey. Still confused? We'll let Bach break it down:

"And so the scenario is, 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."

But what about the ability to watch high-definition movies on a gaming console? Bach said he's perfectly happy with the Xbox Live video-on-demand service and the recent addition of Netflix streaming movies.

So if you're still holding out for a Blu-Ray peripheral for your Xbox 360 or a rebooted console model with a Blu-Ray drive, it looks like you're out of luck.

thanks to ign.com for the text