Blu-ray Rumours Refuse to Die

by Peaking Legoman

Since the launch of the 360 back in November 2005 rumours of a Blu-ray equipped SKU have been fairly frequent. However as Microsoft initially supported the HDDVD platform most people wrote the rumours off as run-of-the-mill Internet noise, not worthy of anyone’s concern.

But in February this year the landscape of the HD market changed somewhat with the acknowledgement from Toshiba that the momentun was with Blu-ray, and the official announcement of the discontinuation of the HDDVD format. On the surface this seemed like terrible news for Microsoft and their HDDVD add-on for the 360 - but the company has said all along that regardless of the outcome of the HD format war the future is with digital distribution.

However that hasn’t stopped the rumours from claiming that Microsoft does indeed have plans for Blu-ray support on the Xbox 360. The latest story comes from a seemingly trustworthy source - the Taiwanese Economic Daily - and claims that a tech company has received an order from Microsoft to manufacture the new Blu-ray supported 360 with the intent of shipping within the next six months:

XBOX 360 BLU RAYA report from Taiwanese news source Economic Daily News says that Pegatron Technology—a recently formed subsidiary of Asus that shouldn’t be confused with the Decepticon leader—has received an order from Microsoft to manufacture a Blu-ray equipped model of the Xbox 360. According to the report, Pegatron says that it plans to begin production on the HD version of the Xbox 360 soon, with plans to ship within the next six months, aiming for a pre-holiday release.

So there it is… yet another Blu-ray/360 rumour. There is no word in the article regarding specifics such as price; whether its an integrated or add-on drive; and whether or not games will be supported on Blu-ray. Although it seems very unlikey that Microsoft would allow Blu-ray based games as they have said that they would never do this. It would drastically splinter the userbase and after the RRoD fiasco Microsoft can’t afford to have any more bad will out there in the marketplace.

Source: Kotaku

~ by garethb on May 3, 2008.