360 to Have a HD-DVD Drive in 2006

[StrifeSnake13*]

Editor's Note: This is already proven false. Please see above story (http://www.evilavatar.com/forums/showthread.php?t=8047).

Acording to an article on msn japan (http://www.mainichi-msn.co.jp/today/news/20051215k0000m020143000c.html) the xbox 360 will incorporate a HD-DVD drive in 2006. Here is a rough translation from the teamxbox forums (http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=401174),

Microsoft indicated on the 14th that the game machine Xbox360 released on the 10th in Japan will have a new model with HD-DVD capability next year. Rival Sony is releasing PS3 with blue ray capability, which means there will be a next gen DVD battle also on the console gaming world.

The current 360 uses DVD drives but to compete with PS3, microsoft has decided that next gen DVD drives are a necessity to run high capacity high definition games. Microsoft will be adopting the HD-DVD standard which is the standard the company supports.

According to the publishing house EnterBrain(Tokyo) the sales figure in the first two days of sales in Japan is 62135pcs, which is below even the sales of the first xbox which was 120000pcs. The cause is blamed on delay in release dates of popular games.
My question is how will devs make games on hd-dvd discs when many people only have a dvd drive in their console. Is it only for movies? Will there be some kind of add on you can buy?

[Borys]

Interesting to say the least. I'm thinking it's more of a marketing stunt - "We will also have a HD media!" than a real concept but only time will tell.

[Savok]

Xbox 360 SP

When people rip off Nintendo it usually turns out wrong.

[Morratut]

I can't believe MS would stab early adopters like me in the back. I'd be happy with a add on.

Plug it into the USB 2 port on the back maybe. That has enough bandwidth for a Hi-Def media doesn't it?

[TRiLoGY]

So people that dont have the HD-DVD will not be able to play games that are released on HD format?

Though I guess not many games will require that amount of space yet so I guess they will be on DVD for a while..

[Dr Quincy]

This has since been catagorically denied (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=62166).

[mightbe]

They'll have an addon like the Sega CD (http://segaclassics.fx-i.co.uk/museum/megacd/megacd.htm). Duh.

[Abdiel]

Show me one game that deserves the amount of space on either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Note that I said "deserves" not "takes up."

[mightbe]

Show me one game that deserves the amount of space on either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Note that I said "deserves" not "takes up."

Would be nice for game/HD-DVD hybrids. HD-DVD quality video is quite massive, is it not? That's the only thing I could see them using it for in the forseeable future.

Or maybe for MMO's. Instead of eating up such a huge footprint on the HD, they could stream more assets from the DVD. With all of that extra storage on the DVD, expansion DVD's could contain the original assets + expansion content.

But we'll all wind up buying bigger '360 harddrives in the near future anyway.

[Borys]

Show me one game that deserves the amount of space on either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Note that I said "deserves" not "takes up."

Halo 3, Halo 4, Ninja Gaiden 3, MGS:4, FF13, GTA4, KOTOR3 etc.

I hope you were kidding.

Or were you also anti-DVD when PS2 came out?

Please people, stop with the fucking hypocrisy.

CD --> DVD good, DVD --> BR bad? How could evolution be bad?

[mightbe]

I can't believe MS would stab early adopters like me in the back. I'd be happy with a add on.

Plug it into the USB 2 port on the back maybe. That has enough bandwidth for a Hi-Def media doesn't it?

Sorry to throw so many replies in a thread.

Yes, with some clever drivers, USB 2.0 could easily handle enough throughput + overhead to make the HD-DVD run.

The theoretical device would likely require an external power adapter though. Boooo!

[Nessus]

I can't think of a single game that should require that much space. Even as we move into high definition textures, etc. the only way I could see them filling it up is if it's got a bunch of HD FMV.

I mean, look at Half-Life 2 on Xbox. On PC it requires 256 megs of RAM, and a 3.5 gig install. On Xbox they managed to get it to run off of a disc (as almost all console games do, and I think MS is on to something when Gates was saying the PC industry should work towards having games run off of disk with no installation required, but I digress) they got it to run with only 64 megs of RAM. Yeah the textures are lower resolution but aside from that everything else made it in.

My point being that when companies are motivated to they can fit a lot of game onto a single DVD. I always found it insulting back in the day when SNES games were like 3 megs tops, and meanwhile PC games of comperable complexity were 20 megs. Lazy programmers.

Also, didn't MS already say that any future HD-DVD attatchment or model would only be used to play HD-DVD movies anyways?

[GigaFuzz]

In one of the threads about the PS3 - I can't remember which exactly - someone made the comment that most games would still be on DVD rather than Blu-Ray due to the slow read time on BR discs.

I don't know if that is true or not, but could the same also be true of HD-DVD (i.e. fine for playing movies, but too slow to read game data)?

[AspectVoid]

I think the real problem is that making the HD-DVD an addon could make game developers ignore it since they can't guarantee that everyone has one. I only see this working in that there could be a "standard" version of a game that's released on regular DVDs and a "Special Edition" that's released on HD-DVDs, sorta like how some PC games have special DVD editions (FEAR for instance).

As for the person complaining about PC requirements, a PC uses a HELL of a lot more ram then your x-box does. The OS, every single application you're running like a firewall, anti-virus, etc all uses RAM. Hell, if you're running Windows XP, you've already using a good 100+ MB to keep it running.

[bapenguin]

HD-DVD is hardly going to see the light of day. Toshiba just announced it's delayed the launch until mid next year...by then Blu-Ray will have a pretty dominant hold and probably launch....a year later nobody will be buying Blu-Ray movies like Execs think, the prices of the movies will be too high and there simply won't be enough adopters to drive the price down.

This announcement is simply fluff....totally pointless and a desperation move on Microsoft's part.

Borys...the reason CD->DVD->Blu-Ray is dumb is because it's simply not needed yet. Sure it's nice to have....but we need to get back to the days of optimizations...of trying to fit a damn game in 64k of memory (example only). Remember, both the PS3 and 360 will be able to do procedural models and animations with great ease...that is what the focus should be on.

[Savok]

Remember, both the PS3 and 360 will be able to do procedural models and animations with great ease...that is what the focus should be on.
Certainly where Will Wright sees the future.

[Hg-203]

Halo 3, Halo 4, Ninja Gaiden 3, MGS:4, FF13, GTA4, KOTOR3 etc.

I hope you were kidding.

Or were you also anti-DVD when PS2 came out?

Please people, stop with the fucking hypocrisy.

CD --> DVD good, DVD --> BR bad? How could evolution be bad?

While I'm not against improving technologies, BR is so restricted in protection that I can't in any good coconscious accept it. The main sticking point to me is that a BR drive has to be on the net once every X days, if not then it wont work until you connect it or it can kill itself. Now while I understand that content makers have the right to protect their content, it drive is MINE not there’s, and Sony has no right to BRAKE MY drive, if they made the media unusable ok I can accept that, but if they want to break a drive I BAUGHT for full price then they have no right to do that.