Microsoft Announces External HD-DVD Drive for 360

How much more extra crap do we need to buy to have the "real" 360?

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Originally Posted by ssbomberman

lol, of course. What do I care about the economy ;)

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The problem with the arguement for downloading games like music is that music is much, much shorter than games, length wise. Where you can get five or six minutes of entertainment out of a good song on its first play-through you get five or six hours out of a game. The incentive to actually buy a new game when you already have two that will last you four days is very low.

The fee for buying a game online would have to then be raised considerably to account for this large time difference. The problem is greedy corporations, but then again without them there wouldn't be enough money to produce this material in the first place. Catch 22.

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Originally Posted by SpoDaddy

It's just an attempt to deter stupid people from choosing PS3 over Xbox 360 just because it plays a hi-def movie format. It doesn't matter. DVD is only now becoming universally embraced, the mainstream is not even close to ready to move onto another format. DVD's won't be dethroned by another disc format, it'll take some sort of alternate delivery system to dethrone DVD the way Mp3's are dethroning CD's.

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Microsoft isn't just pushing it on the console front though. They're doing it with PC's as well.

http://hdbeat.com/2005/12/29/microso...e-hd-dvd-fate/

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Microsoft considers full HD-DVD support in Microsoft Vista, the next operating system due out in late 2006. Blu-Ray would likely be unsupported in the new OS in order to further persuade the market (and OEMs) towards HD-DVD. Add to the fact that Media Center functionality will be included into Vista and you've got a recipe for a struggling Blu-Ray format.

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Originally Posted by Andrew

The fee for buying a game online would have to then be raised considerably to account for the this time difference. The problem is greedy corporations, but then again without them there wouldn't be enough money to produce this material in the first place. Catch 22.

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Er, manufacturing, packaging, and shipping costs are a huge part of companies' expense on games. With online distribution, all that is gone. They could charge half of what they currently do for games and make as much or more profit than they are with physical products.

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Originally Posted by ssbomberman

It may not fail, but it will be a while before it seeps in to the mainstream, which I'm sure the main players are well aware of. But if PS3 is going to be doing blu-ray out of the box then I guarantee if the prices for the movies are decent people will be making the jump, since they don't have to do anything extra to make use of this new format.

All this is a really a waste of time, at some point, as many have argued, we won't deal with physical media anymore. I don't see why we can't have downloadable games now, but I guess there are too many issues with it. Give me PS3 with a HD and let me download the games I want, just like iTunes. Someone else posted an article here that said something like this: A manufacturer makes a game, seals it up, ships it to retail, you buy it from retail, unpack it and put it in your machine. What a waste of time. Instead we could be directly downloading from the source, no going to the store, none of that crap, but of course it would kill the retail industry, but oh well...

I'm perfectly happy with DVD, if something else comes along that is easy to use and affordable then I'm all for it, otherwise it's stuff for the videophiles to deal with.

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i dont mind downloading games either, it'll also benefit the manufacturers since they wont have to pay to ship or package games like you said. but if i had to download a Blu-Ray game, which i'm guessing would be in the 9GB and above range, it would take an awfuly long time to download unless you have a super connection! ...afterall, i dont think everyone has broadband....not yet atleast, and the industry doesn't want to miss out on them.


do you happen to work for infinium labs? :lol:

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Originally Posted by ssbomberman

Don't forget the ill fated D-VHS...

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is that the same as HD-VHS?

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Originally Posted by marwan

is that the same as HD-VHS?

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I've never heard of HD-VHS. Maybe you're thinking of S-VHS (S-Video), or what was originally called Super-VHS?

Yeah, I used S-VHS when I was a "Media Duplication Specialist" for Anne Arundel Community College.

Basically I copied tapes all day.

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Originally Posted by Zerodash

How much more extra crap do we need to buy to have the "real" 360?

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You were missing something:

http://www.the-nextlevel.com/board/a...id=18213&stc=1

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Originally Posted by ssbomberman

All this is a really a waste of time, at some point, as many have argued, we won't deal with physical media anymore. I don't see why we can't have downloadable games now,

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NO NO NO NO NO and NO! I do not want all of my expensive media content on a harddrive that will die, will become outdated as larger HDs are made, is a pain to move to a new PC as the PC becomes outdated, etc.

I want physical disks that I can rip to whatever HD I'm currently using and put into storage. When I need to rip again, I can. No worries. I want to actually own what I paid for.

Yeah. For fucking real. Discs for life, imo.