XBOX360 with Internal HD-DVD on the way!

[JoeSp]

Just found this -- M$ is looking for someone to build a internal HD-DVD driver for their XBOX360 for sale in early 2007!

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=18036

My question, if internal will future XBOX360 games be able to use it? Things are getting INTERESTING!!

 

[mikley28]

**Sigh** While it is good news (ONLY If it doesn't drive up the current price to the extreme prices if at all), CURRENT GAMES DO NOT NEED HIGH CAPACITY DRIVES!. If a game has enough CGI to fill a DVD 9 and need more space then its probably not a very good game because the developers are creating for their shortcomings. I rather play a game than to watch it. 1 hr of HD = 9 gb, a PC game is around 2-3gb so a next gen console game should be around that also. That leaves 6gb for cut scenes. So thats roughly 45 minutes worth of cut scenes...DAMN thats alot of video in a game don't you think? Are you playing it or watching it?

I think if they want to work then they need to dump the core model (which was a useless idea anyway). If they wanted to keep the business of having 2 models then the degrade the current premium package to the core package and make the new package with the internal HD-DVD drive and possibly bigger hard drive the new premium package for $299 and $399 respectively. I think I read rumors that MS may drop the prices of the current packages by $100 each. This may fall in line with the new internal HD DVD model.

I still think with no next gen DVD standard set, the best way to go is with external drives.

 

[korsjs]

**Sigh** While it is good news (ONLY If it doesn't drive up the current price to the extreme prices if at all), CURRENT GAMES DO NOT NEED HIGH CAPACITY DRIVES!.
I think if they want to work then they need to dump the core model (which was a useless idea anyway). If they wanted to keep the business of having 2 models then the degrade the current premium package to the core package and make the new package with the internal HD-DVD drive and possibly bigger hard drive the new premium package for $299 and $399 respectively. I think I read rumors that MS may drop the prices of the current packages by $100 each. This may fall in line with the new internal HD DVD model.

I still think with no next gen DVD standard set, the best way to go is with external drives.

agree.

 

[T2k]

My question, if internal will future XBOX360 games be able to use it? Things are getting INTERESTING!!

As it's been stated N zillion times there's no game that wouldn't fit onto a normal DVD.

And there won't be any for long-long time unless they decide to incorporate full movies into games.

 

[JoeSp]

T2k, just a thought here. What if your game came with lossless audio? What if that same game came with multiple languages on the same disc? What if everything coming out of that game was 720p at the very least? Could you still fit that game on a normal DVD? Would not the lossless audio use up about the whole disc? Imagine, DolbyDigitalHD with your game!! Oh yeah, you would have to have a PS3 for that to happen. Sorry, got a little off track there.

Back to the possible use of something larger than DVD for games. Seems I remember hearing the same thing when the PS2 came out with DVD. Everyone was saying that the CD was plenty of room and no one would ever need DVD for gaming. How long did that last?

 

[mikley28]

T2k, just a thought here. What if your game came with lossless audio? What if that same game came with multiple languages on the same disc? What if everything coming out of that game was 720p at the very least? Could you still fit that game on a normal DVD? Would not the lossless audio use up about the whole disc? Imagine, DolbyDigitalHD with your game!! Oh yeah, you would have to have a PS3 for that to happen. Sorry, got a little off track there.

Back to the possible use of something larger than DVD for games. Seems I remember hearing the same thing when the PS2 came out with DVD. Everyone was saying that the CD was plenty of room and no one would ever need DVD for gaming. How long did that last?

Who cares if there are multiple languages on the same disc. Here in the US mostly everyone speaks English. WHY in the hell would I need or want Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic on the same disc? Each region has its own standard anyway so game developers will be making different formats of the same disc regardless so it isn't saving ANY money at all. That was a stupid point you brought up. Use the space for more game content not 10 different languages. We are lucky to get DTS EX on DVDs now, why the hell would we have the need for DD HD right now... again that is probably another 2-3 years off.

Tell me what would happen if all games came out on 720p? X360 games are already in 720p and they still dont fill up the whole DVD9.

What you heard was about CD storage was about 7 years ago. We had multi-cd / dvd games for only a couple years. So if you want to look at it that way then DVD 9 should be good for the next 5 years. Now by your statement about CD storage and how long ago it was, the PS3 doesn't need BluRay for at least 3 to 5 more years. Face it, putting BluRay in PS3s is Sony's desparation move to push their own format and unneeded. EVERY format they tried to force on consumers failed. Most PC games don't even fill 1/2 of DVD9 and they are more complex than a console game.

The ONLY games that will probably need Blu-Ray or HD DVD are the Final Fantasy games. Even those aren't really games anymore... they are more like movies with little game content.

 

[JoeSp]

So, you think all Americans only speak English? Man, you really live in a box. Having multiple languages on a game would greatly enhance its market. Not everyone in this country speaks only one language. Especially the French, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish speaking families would really approve if their kids were playing games in their native language. You must not have any retail experiance or you wouldn't have made such a stupid racist statement. Good Luck on your next career.

 

[mikley28]

I DO have Retail ExperiEnce. It's not a racist statement you twit. It's a fact. Most immigrants that are here speak and understand English. If they can speak and understand english then multilanguage DVDs are unneeded. Common sense.. Do you have any other than the sense Sony must be paying to do their advertising? I think T2K is right about you all along!!!

 

[DaveyBoy26]

JoeSp is pro- Sony, and T2k is anti-Sony. Pure favoritism on both sides. They argue and bicker, but they are exactly the same......

 

[JoeSp]

Mikley28, you are indeed clueless. Have you noticed that most DVD movies come with French and Spanish included? Have you ever wondered why? And if you are in retail have you ever spoken with French Canadians living here in the U.S. ? Have you ever spoken with any Chinese or Japanese living here in this country. Sure, they speak our language but they prefer their own. Having that language on a game would encourage them to purchase for their kids as they would prefer that their children maintain use of their native tongue. Playing a game in that language is a plus to those families.

This country was built and is maintained by immigrants. They speak many differant languages. The fastest growing segment of our population is Spanish and believe it or not Chinese. The vast majority of these families are limited in their use of English and do buy products that include their language. That is why most electronics and electrical tools come usually in three languages-English, Spanish & French. Why not video games -- the movie studios have adopted the practice?

I just put forth a possible reason how additional room on a game disc could be used to expand its market. I guess some of you Good Ole Boys still believe there are only 'White Folks" in this country.

DaveyBoy26, if I am so pro-Sony why do I at times slam Sony for their stupid mistakes? I am an equal oportunity person. I like the PS3 and have said that. I believe both HD formats will survive -- I have said that. I use many M$ products and I have said that. The only Sony equipment I own is a Playstation 2. My audio/video products are Denon, my HDtv is Pioneer Elite, my speakers are Yamaha and Polk Audio, I build my own computers and I use NEC monitors because they are the best and I own and play a XBOX. I traded in my Sony XBR57" HDTV because it was defective and I haven't looked back since. How do you see me as being Pro-Sony? Tk2 and I are not alike. I post information and links to that information. I will offer both positive and negative remarks to most and the only time I will jump on someone is if they make STUPID remarks. If that makes me Pro-Sony -- oh well.

 

[DaveyBoy26]

Calm down, Joe. I read pretty much all of your comments and T2k's comments regarding VIDEO GAMES as this is that forum. I meant pro-Sony as far as consoles go, not the rest of their products. When I said T2k is anti-Sony I was only refering to games, again. You guys bicker so much BECAUSE you are both 'passionate' about your OPPOSING viewpoints. I wasn't trying to insult you, I just think neither one of you are really impartial on the subject. Just my opinion.

 

[mikley28]

Hmm.. French and spanish on DVD movies are in hundreds of thousands of homes. Multilanguage is more of a selling point in DVD MOVIES. A DVD MOVIE can be played on ANY player thus the cost of translating into 2 foreign languages is negated by sales. Now talking about games... there are how many different consoles? Not to mention there arent as many game consoles as DVD players. So translating into 4 different languages will not pay off at all which is probably one reason they either dont do it or use something called SUBTITLES.

I am willing to bet that most French Canadians also speak english. They may prefer their own language but don't requre it and it certainly won't justify paying $599 for a game console. Common sense there.

And before assuming that I am "White Folk", why don't you ask... Let me save you the trouble... I am Asian-American, I prefer using English, my family prefers English. Guess what my friend's and families prefer.... Yep you got it, ENGLISH!! It's preferred because it's easy to communicate with others. So next time before you try to play the race card do a little research.

Stop assuming everything. And use some common sense as a business and how to keep costs down in a gaming industry.

 

[JoeSp]

Just because you see yourself as not white does not mean you can not expouse a one-sided view of language. As for French, I believe no video games can be sold in France if they do not use the French language. In fact, they passed a law a few years ago that if a new word entered their little part of the world that they would not except a another language and would make up a new French word to describe it. The French are very passionate about their culture and their language. Production costs would be saved by having the languages on one disc instead of multiple. A product that did not sell well in France might be hot in Germany and a company could move the same product to that country to sell it out. Enough on that subject.

The real crux here is the $100 differance between the XBOX360 premium setup and the core PS3 setup. That is no differance at all in terms of purchasing a new video game system. While the XBOX360 and PS3 slug it out for the big dollars Nintendo's Wii is going to lap up the small dollar sales. All three units are going to sale and be successful.

In fact I predict that between Oct 1 and the end of the year the following will be true, Nintendo will sell the most units because of price, PS3 will continually be sold out because it is a new system and no one really knows how many are going to be produced, and the XBOX360 will be found by itself on the shelves of most stores come XMAS day (depending on production schedules the XBOX360 will probably be second in sales because of more production then the PS3 this time around).

After XMAS, when there are more dual layer BluRay movies encoded in MPEG4 and V1C you will see the $599 PS3 being purchased as a inexpensive HD BluRay player once HD adopters get to know if it does well with the medium. That is why I believe M$ is pushing for an internal HD-DVD drive for the XBOX360. Exciting times are ahead for both gamers and HD-Video customers.

 

[mwgiii]

This is false. MS has no plans for internal HD-DVD:

Microsoft always says they don't comment on rumors and speculation, but over at the Gamerscore Blog run by Microsoft employees, they mention how the company "proudly launching" the HD DVD Player as an accessory, not built in to Xbox 360's hardware, as little birdies have been suggesting. Hmm.

"Turns out you want a say in how you spend your entertainment dollars. So who are we to burden every customers with the cost of expensive movie technology?"​

A more caustic remark couldn't have possibly been produced from their lips, as it just comes off as a bunch of spin -- why couldn't the company offer both HD-DVD and non-HD-DVD SKUs? The spin here doesn't work. The blog continues with praise of the HD-DVD format and how it's "winning the early reviews" encouraging the readers to just "read the reviews" -- extremely easy when they don't provide a link.


To summarize: no internal HD-DVD 360 SKU is "officially" in the work.


Source: http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3153701&did=1

 

[JoeSp]

Lately the big debate is about 'SONY'S LYING'. Anyone here belive M$ doesn't push a few big ones out the door too? Just look at VISTA, man if ever a product has underperformed based on what a company said it was going to do there is one. However, to believe the M$ would not add an internal drive to the XBOX360 at some point in the future seems to go in direct conflict with M$ HD-DVD plans. If Sony can be successful selling the PS3 with a BluRay drive built in don't think for a minute that M$ will not see the money in doing the same thing with their XBOX360. If you do not want it buy the system without the HD-DVD drive included. I do not see the downside here.

 

[Paradox-SJ]

Lately the big debate is about 'SONY'S LYING'. Anyone here belive M$ doesn't push a few big ones out the door too? Just look at VISTA, man if ever a product has underperformed based on what a company said it was going to do there is one. However, to believe the M$ would not add an internal drive to the XBOX360 at some point in the future seems to go in direct conflict with M$ HD-DVD plans. If Sony can be successful selling the PS3 with a BluRay drive built in don't think for a minute that M$ will not see the money in doing the same thing with their XBOX360. If you do not want it buy the system without the HD-DVD drive included. I do not see the downside here.

You really just dont get it do you?

 

[JoeSp]

Actually, you don't get it. M$ is already planning for a March release of a XBOX360 with an internal HD-DVD drive to coinside with the European release of the PS3. Some folks just can not believe what they read.

 

[T2k]

T2k, just a thought here. What if your game came with lossless audio?

Joe:

1. as you can know it from writeable CDs a full 80 minutes of uncompressed stereo 44kHz/16bit WAV - which is the 'zero point' when it comes to audio quality - takes up 700MBs only.

2. If you use just the everyday FLAC - free, open source lossless audio codec, I keep all of my CDs in FLAC on my NAS box home - then it becomes less than 300MBs...

3. If you use the most likely used - becuase every external unit can decode it - multichannel 5.1 DD, that's still just 640kb/s...

4. And game music/souns/voice are reusable objects, not a 2-hrs symphony, you store files/samples on the disc, not hours of audio tracks.

And let's not forget that every games prefer to use lossy multichannel codecs, that we have yet to see any game with lossless audio. (Unlikely...)

What if that same game came with multiple languages on the same disc?

That's voice only. Voice - as it doesn't require very high sampling rate or multichannel - takes up usually very little disc space.

What if everything coming out of that game was 720p at the very least? Could you still fit that game on a normal DVD?

Joe, on PC EVERY SINGLE GAME SUPPORTS at least 1600x1200 but rather 1920x1200 and usually 5.1-channel 44kHz 16-bit compressed audio.

For years now - and they ALL fit to DVD.

Would not the lossless audio use up about the whole disc?

No, it wouldn't. Again: uncompressed stereo WAV is less than 10 megs per minute - compressed 5.1 multichannel DD is around 640kb/s, so I bet even TrueHD - of which bitrate I can't recall - won't be more than 2-3 megs per minute.

Imagine, DolbyDigitalHD with your game!!

I don't have to imagine most of my games have high-quality multichannel DD audio already. DDHD? I'm having very hard time imagining any noticeable difference when I'm blowing off somebody's head in UT2k4 or in Prey...

Oh yeah, you would have to have a PS3 for that to happen. Sorry, got a little off track there.

PS3 has nothing to do with it - show me ONE PS3 on the market.

There's zero - PS3 is STILL A NO-SHOW, a vaporware product, with changing specs as little as 7-8 weeks before its oft-postponed launch date.

Nobody believes a f**kin' word for Sony anymore.

Back to the possible use of something larger than DVD for games. Seems I remember hearing the same thing when the PS2 came out with DVD. Everyone was saying that the CD was plenty of room and no one would ever need DVD for gaming. How long did that last?

Ummm and how many PS2 games use the full 4.5 gigs, let alone DVD9? Zero.
All of those DVD discs are filled with garbage content, only to make illegal copying harder.

CD was obviously small for games on the long run, I have never questioned it.
Also the CD->DVD jump was much bigger jump than DVD-Blu-Ray.

Last but not least it's MONEY: releasing a game on Blu-Ray would either raise the game prices by a good $5-10 above its already barely bearable $60 level or lower the game studios profit significantly, making it less likely to invest more into PS3 development thereafter.

Unless these HD disc prices go down to DVD's current level or close to it, most likely DVD will be around for another good 5 years (which is the usual lifespan of a console generation.)

 

[T2k]

Actually, you don't get it. M$ is already planning for a March release of a XBOX360 with an internal HD-DVD drive to coinside with the European release of the PS3. Some folks just can not believe what they read.

MS' move makes perfect sense: by then HD-DVD's price will go down a lot - it wouldn't make any sense for MS to include it before but it does make sense to offer it as an external, optional choice.

And I bet the basic, cheaper version of 360 will remain DVD-based as MS' will try to keep the entry price as low as possible, in order to penetrate the market more effectively.

 

[T2k]

Just because you see yourself as not white does not mean you can not expouse a one-sided view of language. As for French, I believe no video games can be sold in France if they do not use the French language. In fact, they passed a law a few years ago that if a new word entered their little part of the world that they would not except a another language and would make up a new French word to describe it. The French are very passionate about their culture and their language. Production costs would be saved by having the languages on one disc instead of multiple. A product that did not sell well in France might be hot in Germany and a company could move the same product to that country to sell it out. Enough on that subject.

OFF
Coming from a - now, it used to be an empire - smaller country with its own language I can actually understand the French approach. These rules may sound silly for Americans but without having some sort of statues they would lose their own cultural identity within few decades.
Any Americans laughing at them should think twice: do you like French cuisine? Or Mexican? Or Italian etc? Because if you do then you must like the fact that they have their own cultural identity, even within' the US because that's the sole reason you have these cusisines/cultures here, because they don't let it to die out and melt in the melting pot - thinking any other way would make you a hypocrite, a person who likes the sausage but hates the way they make it...
/OFF