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Major Nelson: We have no plans for Blu-ray on Xbox 360

Posted Oct 22, 2009 at 3:27PM EST by Ryan F.

Listed in: Xbox 360 Tags: Larry Hryb, Major Nelson, Steve Ballmer, xbox 360 titles

blu-ray - Image 1

Xbox Live director of programming Major Nelson (also known as Larry Hryb) has clarified Steve Ballmer's statement yesterday regarding the apparent confirmation of a Blu-ray drive accessory for the Xbox 360. According to the good ole Major:

I wanted to clear something up. Steve was referring to Blu-Ray accessories for the PC. As we have said in the past, we have no plans to introduce a Blu-Ray drive for the Xbox 360. In fact, the future of home entertainment starts very soon when Xbox 360 becomes the first and only console to offer instant-on 1080p streaming HD movies. With a library of thousands of TV shows and movies to choose from, Xbox 360 owners can instantly watch the movies they want, when they want, in the highest form of high definition.

So there you have it guys, I guess Blu-Ray on Xbox 360 will not be happening anytime soon.

Ballmer: Blu-ray add-on coming to Xbox 360

Via Major Nelson

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Why is it a bad move? Bringing out blu-ray on 360 now makes no sense. Let's say they fully integrate it into the system, then what? Are you going to tell then tens of millions of people that already own 360's that they can't play the new games because they're on blu-ray? You can't change your disc format in the middle of a generation and expect it to go well.

Maybe instead they make an external drive, like the one rumored in the last couple of days. It would only be good for playing movies, not games. With Microsoft pushing their 1080P video on demand service so hard, they'd only be hurting themselves by offering consumers another option on the same console, especially one that feeds right in to their main rival's hands.

Blu-ray is awesome, and Sony was smart to make it their format, but Microsoft can't change from DVD to Blu-ray now. It makes no sense for them to even try.

As for Microsoft's next console? Well, that's a different story.

# It a great move... — papajag 2009-10-22 17:49

Echo307 is right on the money. 360 needs to stay on top and introducing the Blu-ray might raise the sail of the PS3.

# well... — Shatterdome 2009-10-22 17:57

If they were to launch an accessory of course it would be identical to the hd-dvd add-on.....just for movies.

Also the 1080P on demand service is no where near blu-ray quality.

Just uncompressed video alone, at 60 fps would require 237 megabytes a second.....then the uncompressed 7.1 audio would add-on to that.

Sorry unless you are running fibre optics, there is no way to acheive that over the internet.

So XBL will be compressing the videos and even then, I can't see this service going smoothly. The internet is full of too many factors and you can NEVER rely on mainting a certain transfer speed.

I guarantee there will be buffering and knowing murphy's laws....it will be right at the best part of the movie...

# @Shatter — Echo307 2009-10-22 18:13

I'd love to see where you're getting that info of 237MB per second, please include a link if you can.

237MB per second equals 14,220MB per minute... add that up for a 2 hour movie and you get 1,706,400MB, or roughly 1.7TB... and that's NOT including audio. Last I knew the biggest BD available on the mainstream market was in the neighborhood of 50GB. So, by your figures, that means that even movies/games on blu-ray are very heavily compressed, which is not the case most of the time.

I can't say what Microsoft's video on-demand will look like, because I haven't seen it first hand, but the previews done by IGN and Game Informer say it's fantastic. Up to the quality of blu-ray? Probably not, but close enough that the average casual consumer probably wouldn't care, and let's face it, that's who Microsoft is trying to target with stuff like a video on-demand service.

# Gimme a break.... — Silver-Tiger 2009-10-22 19:32

You seriously think this will work? A Blu-Ray Rip is approx. 10-15 GB big. Even if you compress it very good, and you want to keep the quality as high as possible, you will still be at least at 5 GB, which is more than a whole DVD!

Given that a movie is 90 minutes, that would mean you need a speed of 925 kbits! That's nearly a full Mbit! I doubt that even 1% of the population of the USA has that fast internet.

# Bluray speed — core2kid18 2009-10-22 19:48

I have a PS3 and when you hit select it says at the top the speed of the Bluray you are playing. It's around 15-25MB/s

# @Silver — Echo307 2009-10-22 19:52

925Kbits? I have 20MB download and 2MB upload. Pretty much the lowest speed of broadband these days is 1.5MB per second. I'm sure you can still find 1MB and lower, but I personally don't know anyone with less than 1.5. Streaming a regular DVD is already a reality, because programs like Netflix do it.

But hey don't take my word for it, go and read the articles written by people that have already tested it. IGN and game Informer is a good place to start. Microsoft hasn't revealed yet how they're doing it, but it has something to do with some crazy compression techniques. My guess is after it's downloaded in the compressed form, something on your 360 uncompresses it and makes it viewable. Think of it as streaming the contents coming out of a zip file on your computer. The computer can process how fast it's coming out, and the network can handle downloading it, because it's compressed before reaching your console.

Again, I'm not saying this is going to best blu-ray quality or even match it. But it is full 1080P and 5.1, and that stat alone is enough to appease most people that video on-demand will interest.

# um huh — Master Chef 2009-10-22 20:04

My connection is 50mbits down/10 up. Comcast is the largest ISP in the States IIRC, and they offer nothing below 16mbits per second...

And where are you getting that DVDs don't go up to 5GB? They make 4.7, 8.5 and 9.4 GB DVDs... You just have no clue what you're talking about do you?

# Uh... — Teivin 2009-10-22 20:43

PS3 bluray read speed = 2x.

Thats 72Mbps Or 9MBps.

Testing my crappy, crappy connection on a server on the west coast, while I'm on the east... I get about 11MBps

..So, I could stream a full HD uncompressed source faster than a PS3 could read the disc, were the streaming servers of decent quality to allow such a send speed (And this is, if said servers were connected on the other side of the nation from me.)

Bluray is great, PS3s bluray drive is not. It's a x2. Very slow. Hence all the installs.

tl;dr I can stream a bluray movie from LA faster than a PS3 can read the disc. Thank you internet.

# Films on Blu-ray — chessboxer 2009-10-22 21:29

films can transmit anywhere up to 50Mbps (part of the Blu-ray standard) so the PS3's 2x drive is more than capable.

Regarding game installs, it's partly down to the competency and knowledge of the developer (as well as the budget for the development of the game and how the dev cycle of the game began). Depending on how the devs store data on the disc depends on whether or not an install is needed.

Some of the biggest and best looking games on the PS3 (Uncharted, Uncharted 2 and Killzone 2 among others) don't require an install because the devs have placed the data efficiently on the disc so that the necessary information can be streamed to the HDD when it is needed. This will be much easier for first party devs to achieve as many of them around the world share their knowledge and pool resources in game development. Sony also have over 20 1st party devs so there's a lot of sharing going on. 2nd party devs also benefit from this knowledge. Some 3rd party devs get limited or no access to this knowledge (depends on their budget, resources and deadlines).

As for your broadband, if you can download 11MBps, I would hardly call that crap. That's equivelent to an 88MB connection (almost fast Ethernet) which is approx 20x faster than the average broadband speed of the entire US.

# ,,,, — MagilsugaM 2009-10-22 21:37

True that there is no way you can stream blu-ray quality movies... Even compressed ones you will need fast internet connection and it would look like crap compared to blu-ray. On top of that you can't even save them cuz is jsut stream thats just lame!

# UNTRUE about Comcast! — ShinseiTom 2009-10-22 22:41

Comcast most certainly DOES have tiers below 16Mbps. They have a 6 Mbps (which is still enough), but they also have a freakishly low 700Kbps speed.

He's obviously talking about single-layer DVD's. I don't know anything about how DVD video works. Can it go from one layer to another while still playing uninterrupted? I would assume so, but just making sure.

And, though I intensely dislike the 360, I will say that Netflix at least on the 360 is great. I've not put it side-by-side with a blue-ray, but I noticed no artifacting or blurry compression even on 1080p.

# maths is easy! — craigorio616 2009-10-22 22:43

Hey, 11Mbps is pretty good. Average in US is ~7. Nominally, Comcast plans run from 12-50.

And chessboxer, you know that 8 bits + 1 byte, right? So that's not 88MB, unless you mean MB/min, but even that would be 82.5. And I guess that news about this disc-optimizing strategy kinda sucks for the majority of game developers, huh?

Does anyone know why so many PS3 owners are on the 360 QJ? Or do most people just read from the main QJ.net?

# I'll answer the last part. — ShinseiTom 2009-10-22 23:21

I tend to just read from the main QJ.net. I used to open each seperate part, but with them trimming out many of the other parts (like MMORPG, and Science), I started just bulk reading everything. As long as you read once a day, you don't have to go through too much other stuff.

# WTF! — YAMI ANUBIS X 2009-10-22 23:30

Hes trying to make Steve seem like he said the wrong thing, thats BS blu ray accessories coming to PC.

PC already uses Blu Ray type accessories, its been using them since BR came out.

This guy Nelson doesnt really know how to protect the truth. He just said the most stupid, idiotic statement, thats already been proven false because PC's already have blu ray accessories.

I know game companies and this is pretty much true, there horrible at lying and his statement is a big lie, trying to protect the fact that blu ray add on is coming to 360.

Nelson isnt really smart for bringing his own statement, he should have thought more with his statement.

Blu Ray accessories are already on PC's.

# hmmm — Master Chef 2009-10-22 23:39

My bad, I looked it up, they do offer 1, 6, 8 and 12 mbits down connections, but the vast majority of their customers are at least on the 15 mbits down speed, that's their basic package now. Even DSL averages about 4mbits down now. All are enough to stream movies.

Also a DL movie doesn't transition completely without interruption to the other layer, but it's a very small hiccup. I can notice it on most movies, not sure about other ppl. It's like a half-second pause about 60-70 mins into the movie

# Steve did say the wrong thing — Master Chef 2009-10-22 23:45

You don't know much about Ballmer if you think he's incapable of mixing up his words. Google him, he's done it countless times.

I'm 99% certain Steve did say the wrong thing and BR is not coming to the 360. It would not make sense at this point, MS could not release a BR drive add-on for movies at a reasonable price. It would be at least $250, and people would just buy a PS3 or a BR player if they wanted it

# Lol, this isn't new — martin447 2009-10-23 00:34

In the other article, that other guy never mentioned anything about adding a Blu-ray add-on to the 360. Strange that You would even think so.

# ..... — Silver-Tiger 2009-10-23 03:14

My bad, i never thought Americas ISPs would already offering that high connections to normal users. See, i'm living in Europe, Germany to be exact. Here, speeds like 30 Mbit's aren't normal. In fact, I have a 1000 kbits connection

# I totally screwed that up.... — Silver-Tiger 2009-10-23 03:26

Scratch all the crap I wrote earlier. I confused it with Gbits. I must have been drunk or something.....

@ Master Chef: I exactly know what I'm talking about. I know that there are dual-layer DVDs, but my example was a normal single-layered DVD, which most video DVDs still use.

# No... at least not here — ShinseiTom 2009-10-23 05:34

15/16 Mbps is not the basic package. 6Mbps is the average speed most people in my area use.

And no, you can't use speedtest stuff as an indicator. Only people who care about their speed would be the ones using that. Basically the people who do buy the ultra high-speed tiers.

I myself have the 16Mbps where I am, but it's the crappiest internet ever. It's actual speed bounces between 2Mbps to 20Mbps, more often at the low end. I hate Comcast, but they're all I have for high-speed.

# $ony owns the patents on the Blu-ray — symbyosis 2009-10-23 06:24

Hence why most movies are paramount or sony pictures, also disney aligned with Sony. you don't see any of those movies even on Netflix on 360...so basically it'd never happen because $ony wants to cripple M$

# good for sony — core2kid18 2009-10-23 07:19

Microsoft *****ed everything over by the in game soundtrack, netflix, etc by patenting them so sony couldn't use it. it's time Micro***** got a taste of their own medicine.

# "You can't change your disc format in the middle of a generation and expect it to go well." — rollypoly 2009-10-23 09:19

:cough: psp Go :cough:

# I think.... — Bountyhunter53 2009-10-23 10:51

I think Ballmer was talking about the X360. But Nelson just covered upa leak.

Ballmer said "Well I don't know if we need to put Blu-ray in there—you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.

I think mostly the future of movies is on-demand, actually, as opposed to distribution via physical media. So we're just gonna keep driving forward and try to make it the best entertainment — overall entertainment, not just gaming, but overall entertainment experience we can."

And then a MS rep said "Our solution for HD quality video on an Xbox 360 is coming this fall with Zune Video and 1080p instant-on HD streaming. As far as our future plans are concerned, we're not ready to comment.".

Is it me or are they talking about the same thing? Movies on demand is what Ballmer said. Rep said 1080p streaming, thats the same as on demand....

# @rollypoly — sirgrinalot 2009-10-23 12:59

the psp has been out for 5 years, it was never meant to last that long. they changed it with the pspgo b/c they are just trying to squeeze everything out of 5 year old portable technology...

# @ craigorio616 — chessboxer 2009-10-23 13:59

Thats why I was questioning the comments about crappy broadband. A download of 11MBps (note that a capital B was used denoting bytes instead of bits) would be enough to stream very high bitrate video over the net, but if Teivin used the wrong "b" and was actually only obtaining 11Mbps then (s)he would have trouble trying to stream such high bitrate video content, especially action films or scenes where a lot is happening.

# Obviously — DXcellence 2009-10-23 14:44

Why would MS even think of blu-ray. If they did equip the 360 with blu-ray that means that they're only promoting sony, since they created blu-ray. Makes no sense to promote a product from your rival corporation.

But when next gen consoles hit im sure a new disc format will be create

# huh? — danielakadanny 2009-10-23 17:17

I thought it was EA that didn't let us PS3 user's to have in-game music like super-secret said

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