Microsoft's Steve Ballmer has only recently confirmed that, yes, the Redmond giant would be scaling up its support for all things Blu-ray now that the messy business of the format war is over with. Therefore the natural semantic leap from here is that the Xbox 360 division would sooner or later be introducing a Blu-ray replacement for the now defunct HD DVD add on, with the possibility of a full blown integrated Blu-ray drive in its higher end models. Well, that's wrong apparently.

Following this speculation, Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg has told Reuters that it is definitely NOT in talks with Sony or Blu-ray. See: "Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," he said. There. So drop it, okay.

Although this is a Blu-ray story, it isn't really related to PS3 and so it probably isn't suitable here on PSPSPS. Well I'd like to weigh in with another point: it probably isn't a great idea for Sony to farm out its format to its main console rival anyway. The integrated Blu-ray player is one of the PS3's best and most important differentiating features - to offer it up to the 360 completely eliminates it as a USP.

Without it the perceivable differences between the two warring consoles is severely reduced. It would basically only leave the integrated hard drive as standard as Sony's main advantage, at least until we start to see titles that show off the power of the Cell processor to its fullest extent. Not only is that a big unknown factor, it could be a fair old while before developers can really tap it to truest extent. Even then, would the majority of multiplatform titles be prepared to provide a double standard on the different versions? Probably not in any significant way.

So let's keep the Blu-ray player exclusive to PS3. Might provide a good incentive for 360 owners to upgrade the next time their console turns itself into a prettily lit paperweight.

Source
Game | Life

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