Well I was getting ready to take the plunge with a PS3 since my 360's HD drive is essentially a boat anchor, although I have about 20 HD DVD titles. Of course the article says "Xbox 360 consoles equipped with a Blu-ray Disc (BD)-ROM drive" so that makes it look like there won't be an add on box like the HD-DVD drive. So if they don't make an add an drive for Blu Ray current 360 owners get screwed again!

I hope they make an add-on. My Hitachi 57'' rp hdtv doesn't have hdmi though I doubt that MPAA would allow blue-ray without HDCP.

Thats dumb!
cant sony do anything about it? it might kill ps3s sales unless there at the same price range.

Blue-ray can go to Hell.

I have both, so I'm not worried.
I believe that in the future discs will no longer be neccessary, downloadable content will rule the day. Why clutter my small apartment with discs and boxes when I could just fill up a hard drive.

it might kill ps3 sales? HA sony did that all by themselfs LOL

Well I havent bought a XBOX yet but I do have the add-on HD drive for my PC so now with it coming with BD then I think I will get that with the HD add on drive I will have a dual player which will be sweet for some of the HD DVD titles I already own.

Even if they did release X360 internal bluray drive, no games are released on bluray discs. PS3 can benefit all the storage capacity BD provides, along with the quaranteed harddrive ecosystem. So this is not so big thing for X0 gamers.

Here is why Sony won't be worried. The big difference between PS3 and 360 is that Sony is actually making their games on Blue-Ray disc and 360 won't be able to till the next generation of Xbox system. Why? Because then they'll alienate the over 20 MILLION 360 owners who's system's won’t be able to play a 360 Blue Ray game. And what does that spell? Instant disaster. Current 360 games are made on standard DVD's and a firmware upgrade will not magically allow current 360's to play Blue-Ray games, the drives in the current systems would have to be physically taken out and replaced with blue-ray drives in order to do that. And that is why the PS3 will rule over 360 because devs have more room to play with on a PS3 game than a 360 game because of blue ray (MGS4 for example is over 40GB on a single disc). So Sony has nothing to sweat because this move my Microsoft is their way of trying to play catch up while the PS3 will continue to sell. Them going to Blue-ray is just another instance of Sony one upping them once again.

Downloadable content is the way Microsoft wants to go, and I will fight it all the way. They would love downloadable content, no longer giving a person a hard copy. Hey I haven't seen that movie can I borrow it? Nope it on my hard drive, so you'll have to watch it here and only on this t.v. Oh wait, my hard drive crashed last week so I'll have to buy it again before you can see it. People are idiots if they buy into downloadable content. It's not meant to improve your experience, it's to increase profits. Any small benefit to the end user is negated by its drawbacks.

Well downloadable games vs downloadable content are two big different things. Content usually isn't that big, biggest DLC i ever downloaded off Live was 500MB or so. Now if Microsoft and Sony enter the age of giving players the option to download games from them direct then that'll take alot of effort plus it'll kill stores like Best Buy and EB Games. Why pre-order when you can just download the game from home. Good for us yes, bad for them. Also unless MS and Sony decide to increase the storage space of thier game consoles, downloading whole games from them is pointless. 40 to 80GB offered by sony and 20 and 120GB (120GB on the Xbox Elite) is very little especially when games these days are 8GB to 40GB big (MGS4 for instance). So if the average game is 8GB big on a 20GB drive you can only fit 2 games on your HDD. PC games can get away with it with services Direct2Drive or Steam, but consoles games are far far away from offering whole games to be downloaded directly from the console makers.

Well, downloading games is already killing the game stores, as is the ability to buy from sites like Amazon for quite a bit less than a game will cost in the stores.

Personally, I have NEVER, EVER had a hard drive crash. Not even the 10 year old one in my 1992 Packard Bell computer.
People who have hard drives crashes are an infinitesimal amount of people, and frankly.... I thought Microsoft allowed you to redownload things if you have bought them as long as you are using the same console. It was supposed to be locked to the CONSOLE, not the hard drive because Microsoft knew that people would have catastrophic failures of them sooner or later.

If you own a computer long enough you WILL experience HDD failure. I have gone through maybe 8-10 in the last 15 years across all the systems I've owned or bought for use at work (20 or more). Most recently I had a terrabyte hdd fail after 3 months... luckily it was in a raid0 configuration so no data was lost.

Don't ever trust a hard drive with critical data, but with game consoles it's not a major concern, you can re-download any purchased content on both boxes.

duh... raid1 (mirroring) not raid0. If I'd been using r0 I'd have lost the data on that drive AND the other one too.

I still haven't heard an official (or MS employee blog) announcement of BluRay in the Xbox 360. Has it crossed anybody's minds that MS is merely setting up hardware deals for the next Xbox, which they are working on and will arrive Nov 2010 (unless MS doesn't want to be a year ahead of PS4 and releases at the same time in 2011).

This is not true I share files (movies, pictures, etc.)

Well personally I do not care about GIANT CORPORATIONS like Bestbuy, GameStop. I plan on downloading Age Of Conan before it release and before I the box and disc. Hence I pre-ordered it and will be able to play 3 days before the retail release. Download WINS...

How many people actually watch a movie multiple times. I have seen multiple movies over and over. Only because they were on network TV. I rent a movie and then never watch it again except for network showings. Think of downloaded content that way. If your keeping a library of DVD's consider that library of VHS tapes so many are trying to convert to DVD. Download it, rent it, borrow it, then forget it.

Hard drive failures will be a thing of the past. Single State Drives are going to take over the market soon. Downloaded content is here to stay, there will still be options to buy at the store for people who do not have a good internet conncetion.

Sorry to say it but no, downlaoded content will enver fully take over, that would shut out a lot of retailers, also you can't share. Try and download a game on a Wii and transfer it to anohter Wii, it doesn't work because why would they let you download it if you can just take it wherever and make copies? I still see music CDs around and people thought downloading music was going to take over. Sorry but it won't happen. XBOX might do it but it will be a draw back. Also you mean Solid State Drives?

Microsoft denied the claim.

If Microsoft build a 360 with an integrated blu-ray it may dent sales of the PS3 but Sony will be getting a share of the sale of 360. You don't think people can just start building blu-ray drives and shipping them without some kind of licensing agreement from Sony (LOL). I would love to see the faces of the chief's at Microsoft though for getting it all wrong and knowing that in the future everytime someone buys a 360 a percentage goes to their bitter rivals. If they had shipped the 360 with an integrated HD drive to start with I doubt Sony would have won. Just think how many people would have a HD drive and would therefore be buying the HD disks.

I didn't mean share a game but share movies and music. Every month CD sales are droping and more and more people are downloading music. Yes there are still some people without MP3 players and a decent PC or internet connection. Movie downloads are slowly catching on but in the future your computer will be much more apart of your tv hence more movie downloads. Well, as for games everything can be shared with the right tools...

BTW I bet if you got the right numbers, music downloads sales probably out numbers CD sales, but don't quote me on that.

Except that Sony doesn't own Blueray, its a conglomerate of 9 hardware vendors.

What the hell difference does that make to my point. The point is you can only build/sell blu-ray drives with the consent of whoever owns the licensing rights. If you ask any normal person they will say blu-ray is a Sony product anyway.

I wonder what a "Single State Disk" is? maybe it is a Solid State Disk which can only store 1's OR 0's?

if sony can use ps2 games that are on dvd xbox 360 can do it to and if xbox get the blu ray tech its over for ps3 because there will be blu ray xbox 360 games

It's not the same as DVD. You can't just copy someone's product fella and start selling it, think about it? Ever heard of patents or copyright? Another minor point you are missing here, if Microsoft start bringing out blu-ray games then everyone with a 360 is going to have to buy another one with a blu-ray drive. You can't just swap out the internal drive can you? How do you think that will go down? And while we are in a 360 v Ps3 arguement, I own both and can honestly say the PS3 owns the 360. When you turn on the 360 it's like someone is hoovering in the room the noise is so bad. You can barely hear the PS3 even when it's quiet in the room. The 360 in its current state is not suitable for serious movie or music playback so if you have to choose which blu-ray platform to go for (if Microsoft are allowed to use it) people with any sense will stick with the PS3. If they aren't allowed to use blu-ray then the games will start to fall behind PS3's when they really take advantage of blu-ray storage and performance. The loss of the format war in my opinion is a catastrophic disaster for Microsoft consoles.

Im for down loadable content. Just like any other gamer my discs are always getting scratched or burned up. So if you can download a whole game instead of buying a disc it will pay off in the long run. You hear of more dvd disc quit working rather then a hard drive crashing. Actually the hard drive rarely ever crashes. Most cases something internal in the xbox defects but what is nice is that you can switch out the old hard drive very easy and not have to pay for a new one. I know right now im on my third dvd of halo 3 right now. and my second copy of grand theft auto. With games at 60 to 70 dollars a pop i sure did spend a lot of money on games that i already bought. I say bring on the DOWN LOADABLE CONTENT with the DOWN LOADABLE GAMES! And one more comment... not having to play disc means less parts wich equals less that can go wrong with your game system.

Also Sony knows what they are doing. If Xbox goes with Blue Ray and makes games on Blue Ray in the future. Sony will sit back with there pockets full of benjamins saying "SHOW ME THE MONEY!" They would be double dipping. Oh whats that Microsoft you just sold another xbox game on Blue Ray.... I think ill take my 10 percent cut which is about 7 dollars a game. Sweet thinking Sony not only are you making millions on your games now you can make millions on Microsoft games too! And who said Sony was going to put there selves out of business?