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It appears the fat lady is about to sing for HD-DVD as another nail is driven into the coffin of the HD-DVD in this so called "Format war". Blu-ray now has 80% of the studios supporting their format.

I expect Sony's stock to rise on the news and a very bright year for the PS3.

Now we should see some stellar games being developed that take advantage of the BD capacity and native 1080p. The question now is: Will Micro$oft make a add on Blu-ray disc player for the 360?

This message was edited by SS4Gogeta on Jan 05 2008.

Even if Microsoft wanted to Sony would not let them, Sony own Blu-Ray so would charge Microsoft lots and lots to add a Blu-Ray drive, there is expanding your sales and expanding your sales while expanding the sales of Xbox 360 product.

Sony isn't going to charge Microsoft anything. Blu-ray is a distributed format. Meaning Sony doesn't hold any sort of exclusive rights to it. Microsoft will pay the same amount as everyone else to utilize the technology. Ultimately the format war doesn't affect the console war at all.

Sony would have happily given Microsoft the blu-ray technology for the 360 if Microsoft had asked for it. In addition Microsoft already needed the technology to develop drivers for Windows. All that will come of it is an admission that blu-ray is the superior format and the HD-DVD add-on will be discontinued. After all Microsoft and Sony are only competitors in a single field.

quote Koloth

Sony would have happily given Microsoft the blu-ray technology for the 360 if Microsoft had asked for it.

Actually Microsoft could probably get the Cell if they wanted it. Because again the technology isn't exclusively owned by Sony.

But what you fail to see is Sony isn't competing against Microsoft on the HD format. They are only competing in one single venue. The console wars. And the 360 having Blu-ray bulit in would have secured another big user base to the format.

Not to mention that Microsoft would have had to wait a year to release the 360 because blu-ray wasn't anywhere near ready in 2005. That was kind of why Microsoft had to use DVD9. There were no available HD formats in 2005 to utilize so it was either wait or release early with a clearly inferior format.

This message was edited by Koloth on Jan 09 2008.

WOOT. go ps3!! haha.

but who paid for the funding of the cell? sony. it wasn't just like sony went to intel to buy millions of quad core processors. sony paid whoever it was to develop the cell. so although yes, sony doesn't OWN anything about the cell, i highly think they would have a say whether microsoft got a hold of the cell (although they could for $400, just buy a ps3 haha).

but it's good to hear that the 360 released early with hd rather than waiting a year or two for the blu-ray. and in that perspective the ps3 owns the 360. but yet that makes me sound like a sony fanboy....ugh, the 360 has great games!! haha.

Comparing the Chip to the Blu-ray is absurd in my opinion. I doubt they'd be as willing to hand over the chip technology to the competitors, where as I'm sure they would be willing to let others have the Blu-ray technology, because for every Blu-ray device they get money, and whilst it would be the same for the chip, if installed in the X360, it may boost it to a point where it's near or better than the PS3 (if). The Blu-ray format wouldn't do that, since if the XBOX360 were to have a Blu-ray, the format war would have been long over, and Blu-ray would have been declared the winner. Sony would have preferred that, than being the exclusive console with HD straight from the box, and fear of losing to the HD-DVD, though I'm sure they were sure from the beginning that they would win - then again, I'm sure that Toshiba were as well. I guess the Betamax has to win at some point

Well Microsoft paid to develope their own custom Power PC chip. They are actually pretty similar in design. The Cell just has a few advantages over the 360 chip, namely the number of cores. But again had microsoft waited they could have procured their own Cell and Sony wouldn't have much to say about it. Again Sony doesn't own the Cell.

Microsoft could steal just about everything about the PS3's design if they wanted to and vice versa. Neither company really has any propietary rights to the hardware. Just how that hardware is put together.

Good to see the superior format triumph.

I feel sorry for toshiba lol they must be sad.

A GamePro article echoed what some people have said here.

quote SS4Gogeta

Will Micro$oft make a add on Blu-ray disc player for the 360?

I could see Sony allowing them to make a Blu-Ray player only if it were to be used for movies and not games. Figure that way Sony still has the edge when it comes to the games that can be made and the size of the game, but they still get more Blu-ray systems in more homes and more blu-ray movies sold, making them more money both ways

No, they helped create it and own shares in the technology. There are more companies that are invovled.

Actually I believe Sony pioneered the technology and owns a major stake in it. But yes there are more companies involved. A lesson they learned from the mistakes they made with Beta and UMD.