It’s no secret that, while Nintendo’s Wii is destroying both the 360 and the PS3 in terms of sales, Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is the leader in the number of exclusive hit games and is usually getting the popular vote when given a choice between the big three. The Xbox 360 was released in 2005 around the time of the Nintendo DS (which seems like forever ago) and has enjoyed many exclusive titles and numerous updates to it’s firmware, software and hardware. In 2010, with the prospect of Project Natal, it seems like the DVD wielding (and HD-DVD failing) console has at least two or three more strong years left in it.
So what about after that?
It’s no secret that the Xbox 360 chose the wrong video format when they sided with the HD-DVD. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD gave each other some good competition at the beginning of their lifespan, but Blu-ray quickly showed its dominance and the HD-DVD is now enjoying it’s time next to the beta max and 8-track formats on the “thanks for trying” table. Meanwhile, the PS3 is currently enjoying some serious sales due to the included Blu-ray player inside of the device. It’s currently the #1 reason people buy the console (at around 60% of all total sales) and the most popular Blu-ray player used by consumers. Both Microsoft and Sony gambled on the new format and Sony certainly chose right. So where does that leave Microsoft?
The Blu-ray disks are increasing in size almost monthly. Last I checked, the bloody thing could hold almost 120 gigs, dual layered. Meanwhile, the DVD’s that the Xbox 360 uses hold about 9 gigabytes, but after Microsoft finishes chewing on them, they hold about 7.8 gigabytes. This is a problem, as I’m sure you can see. While it’s not been too big of a concern this generation, soon, as videos get more advanced and CGI takes more and more memory to store, 7.8 gigabytes is not going to cut it. And even though we’re not expecting a new console generation until into 2012 or 2013 (some even guess 2014), now is the time to figure out what to do with those tiny little DVD’s.
Sony’s got it made. With Blu-ray technology increasing all the time, there is no reason for them to switch formats any time soon; Blu-ray could, I suppose, last forever if they continue to find ways for it to hold more data. Microsoft, on the other hand, has a problem; their gamble failed. They certainly can’t work on a new console that uses DVD’s and it would be stupid to try the HD-DVD path again. So, what options does the Xbox 1080 have?
Well, I suppose the obvious thing for them to do would be to license a Blu-ray drive. This, though, would be completely embarrassing for Microsoft as they have publicly bashed Blu-ray and the PS3 in favor of their over-priced HD-DVD drive add-on for the Xbox 360. This would also allow for Microsoft to be able to tap into the Blu-ray movie market, which is a money printing machine for Sony. But still, they would have to swallow a lot of pride to not only admit defeat but also to kiss the feet of their opponent.
Another possibility is the flash card, or even a solid state mini hard drive. Flash and solid state are both twenty times (usually more) faster than any disk in any format and, by 2014, the price of the technology to have a 50 gigabyte (or more) flash card or a solid state drive could be about equal to that of a Blu-Ray disk now. So not only would the games load incredibly fast (can you say literally no loading screens ala the Nintendo 64?) but they’d be smaller, which could quite possibly lead to a smaller game console, assuming the rest of the technology allows it.
Ironic isn’t it? If we go to flash cards, we’ve gone full circle: cartridges to CDs to DVDs to Blu-Ray and back to cartridges.
I think the last possibility is that Microsoft, being the computer geniuses they are, could come up with an entirely new format for their console. They could create a disk that holds the same amount (or more) than a Blu-Ray that’s exclusive to the Xbox console. It wouldn’t be a good idea for a new format to fight Blu-Ray for control over the movie market again because Blu-Ray is here to stay, but the console certainly could be backwards compatible with regular DVDs, assuming they’re still around by then.
Microsoft's solution to Blu-ray?
No matter what happens, it’s going to be a challenge for Microsoft. I suppose they could switch entirely over to digital distribution, but we all saw how well that worked for Sony and the PSP Go!. I think the most likely option for Microsoft is to just suck it up and put a Blu-ray drive into their console. It would make the most sense and probably bring in the most money for them.
Now, what about Nintendo…? They still haven’t quite figured out the DVD yet…
36 comments
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May 29, 2010 at 5:50 am
Mike
Check your facts first.
May 29, 2010 at 5:51 am
dell90wattac
You mean? My facts about Blu-ray and the PS3 I got from Kotaku here.
May 29, 2010 at 6:00 am
gadget
a lot of errors, mistakes, bulshits ..
“Meanwhile, the DVD’s that the Xbox 360 uses hold about 9 gigabytes, but after Microsoft finishes chewing on them, they hold about 7.8 gigabytes.”
6.8 gig .. kiddo .. 6.8 .. so check your facts first .. really.
May 29, 2010 at 6:22 am
dell90wattac
I have been downloading and burning Xbox 360 games for backup for a long time now. It’s anywhere between 5.5 to 7.8… kiddo…
May 29, 2010 at 7:19 am
Bill
Usable space for games is 6.8gb, you are talking about size of the rar’ed iso
May 29, 2010 at 7:22 am
dell90wattac
Not exactly. I admit, there have been some games that are 6.8, but I’ve burned some that are 7.8 as well, un-rar’ed.
May 29, 2010 at 6:02 am
Johnno
Third party devs are already feeling the limitations of DVD. In fact they are reducing game content or selling it back to you as DLC because it cannot fit on one DVD and they see no reason to increase manufacturing costs for extra DVDs for an insignificant amount of extra content. But even then 3rd party devs are finding they have to work around the limitations, reducing the scope of their games or in some cases even dumping an entire amount of content on a 2nd disc to be instlalled to the HDD. And when you total up putting games on 4+DVDs versus 1 blu-ray disc, there is no cost benefit.
The Digital Distribution future that Microsoft keeps trumpeting about is nowhere near realization and Sony has actually been better at attempting more Digital distribution models than they are. As internet bandwidths keep getting cut, the digital future gets set back another decade. Solid state drives may help but as games get bigger as PS3 exclusives are proving, larger drives are needed and space convenience and costs become an issue. Prices also won’t drop anytime soon. Sony already allows consumers to upgrade their own HDDs and when 200GB discs go into mass production can update the PS3 to use them through firmware.
Microsoft has no choice but to license blu-ray next generation. DD still won’t be fully viable and still be a minority in the market. And if they want to also push HD and now 3-D films, those are on blu-ray. It’s more convenient to go with that than creating their own format for no other purpose.
Nintendo will of course also adopt blu-ray for next time, given that their games are still SD DVD shouldn’t be a problem for the Wii.
May 29, 2010 at 6:14 am
FreeUser
What they could do is bring back HD-DVD s a gaming format there wold be no need to push for HD-DVD movies but it would help with the games. If it went well maybe bring back HD-DVD movies slowly. It would save the point of MS sucking up to Sony. Even if MS had a blu-ray drive they would not receive anything from the sale of blu-ray movies so there is no REAL need for blu-ray on gaming format when they could use HD-DVD.
May 29, 2010 at 7:26 am
Nick
HD-DVD is over, movies couldn’t slowly come back to it as the movie studios have chosen Blu-Ray. With modern consoles being trumpeted as complete media centres, then I can’t see how the next X-Box won’t have a Blu-Ray drive, it will have to to be able to play movies! (Unless they go with something like Netflix exclusively, which is something I can see them doing, but even 2014 I think is too soon for people to let go of physical media).
May 29, 2010 at 6:18 am
wampdog29
Ummm, why beat on Nintendo? They haven’t figured out DVD yet? They use DVD, but just don’t allow for DVD movie codecs to be played
May 29, 2010 at 6:23 am
dell90wattac
That’s what I mean. They still haven’t figured out how to make DVD movies play in their console, something devices have had since 1999 or so. Don’t get me wrong, I love Nintendo, but that has always bugged me.
May 29, 2010 at 7:00 am
NIck
They know how to do DVD but just don’t wan’t to pay to license the codec. That is how they were able to keep the price so low for so long.
May 29, 2010 at 6:54 am
YE
Nothing particularly embarrassing about licensing Blu-ray. I don’t think we’ll see new systems before 2012, and by then the bickering of the format war will have long been forgotten among the general public.
None of the alternatives are viable.
May 29, 2010 at 6:54 am
Liam
Blu-ray is the only way
God Sony are smaaart man if Microsoft actually thought about this instead of releasing a dud console which had more guarantee to RROD than to actually last they wouldn’t be in this predicament, saying that they would more than likely of had to release alongside the PS3 or even sometime after with a similar price tag which would of caused the sales this generation to look alot different on the charts then they currently do and the 360 may even of been a doomed console so it seems they are going to have to go the way of the Blu-Ray 
1up Sony, High Five!
May 29, 2010 at 7:33 am
John Lock
Next Gen Blu-Ray will be much more then 50GB a disk.
For M$ I would just say go the Blu-Ray rout, because lets face it. M$ w/ the Xbox 360 is holding game devs. back. Example? Resident Evil 5, ME2, BFBC2, etc. they give you stuff to download, when it should be on the disk.
May 29, 2010 at 7:35 am
fidget
Liam seriously get your head out your back passage fanboy. I love my PS3 and my 360, anyone who calls the 360 a doomed console is an idiot. Its already sold enough consoles to assure its success well into the next generation, nothing, nothing including all game and console sales stopping now, nothing could stop microsofts move into the next gen and the 360′s position as a high selling console is set in stone.
Hard as this is for you fanboy idiots, there is no winner in this console generation, time will tell the final numbers but right now all three console manufacturers have gone through to the next round. I put it in football terms because you seem like anything more complex would knock your lil brain all topsy turvy.
All of my die hard game fan friends own a 360, we all buy four or five full priced games a month. From the general high amounts of gs I see its a similar story everywhere. Microsoft are very happy.
May 29, 2010 at 12:37 pm
ken
Major corrections to the author of this article.
Sony did not ‘chose’ blu-ray nor ‘gambled’ with it. Your choice of words hold no water and are misleading. Sony CREATED blu-ray disc technology itself again with Philips and Pioneer.
” Sony/Philips started two projects applying the new diodes: UDO (Ultra Density Optical), and DVR Blue (together with Pioneer), a format of rewritable discs that would eventually become Blu-ray Disc (more specifically, BD-RE).
How can Sony have any choice if blu-ray disc is the only format it has?
Microsoft actually had a choice BD or HD-DVD but as Michael Bay stated Microsoft wanted both to fail in favor of Digital Download content so they can heroes of the new millenium.
In the past Sony has a track record of being a ‘sport’ and sacrificed billions of dollars in royalties giving in to Toshiba and Microsoft to AVOID a format war during the pre-DVD era. But this time around instead of avoiding a format war Microsoft ignited it.
Is Microsoft reaping what it sowed?
The will Sony be a sport again and forgiving to allow Microsoft to use their ‘own technology’?
May 29, 2010 at 3:55 pm
barakiu
If Microsoft were to invest in google’s plan for 100x faster internet speeds,
the new format could be download only even sooner than later or streaming/cloud gaming.
It’ll probably be necessary for faster speeds anyways just to run games online. Could today’s PS360 games run on 56k?
May 29, 2010 at 6:54 pm
Jaybronee
Why would anyone buy an Xbox? Pay to play Live service, have to buy HD drive that is now extinct and they constantly RROD. After my third, I’ll never buy again. Still on my PS3 that I bought the first week it came out. Just bought a slim for the bedroom.
May 29, 2010 at 9:19 pm
DCBronco
Sony fans would love for Microsoft to go to Blu-ray but more than likely it will never happen. And if it did, it would be Sony coming to Microsoft with a deal not the other way around. For all of the Sony fans claiming Blu-ray has made it, the sales say different. Home Media Magazine shows sales every week and it’s rare for Blu-ray to amount to more than 12% of the sales(cash). Considering DVD is far cheaper on average, actual Blu-ray disc sales are far less than most think. And PS3 sales count for most of the Blu-ray player sales. Those machines are bought for game first. Don’t believe what Sony wants you to. They’ve been saying that for over a year now people buy PS3′s for Blu-ray and disc sales still average less than 12%. All the while DVD sales have fallen overall and they are still consistently 88 to 92% of the market. Digital Downloads would have no problem catching and passing Blu-ray with studio support and the advertising push Blu-ray got. And the amounts of money Sony paid studios.
The next Xbox could easily go with a 3.5 2TB HD, paying the same price as the original 20GB in 360 by 2011, and have DVDs downloaded to the drive. Even if each game was 20 Gigs(and they won’t be), that’s 100 games. Or more than anyone will be playing at any given time. Instead of Microsoft needing to crawl to Sony, Sony needs to be honest and admit Blu-ray was a mistake. It cost them this generation. And put them in such a bind financially that they may stay at the bottom for another generation.
Here’s a link to Home Media Magazine. Check it each week and look at past weeks.
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/
May 29, 2010 at 9:43 pm
Neil John Brimelow
The next generation Xbox is going to go with CARTRIDGES. Memory is CHEAP these days and the console manufacturers are going to need something that can’t be easily copied.
The great thing about cartridges is that they would not be big and bulky as they were in the past and the cost to manufacture, although greater than the cost for Blu-Ray, is not the $30-$40 that it cost back in the 80s and 90s.
Blu Ray is useless. Nobody is buying Blu Rays. Even the people who originally bought the PS3 for Blu Ray playback aren’t buying Blu Ray movies. My best friend bought his PS3 at launch, bought a few movies and one game, and that’s been it, and he can afford to buy any game/movie he wants.
The future for movie delivery is digital. Everyone and their grandmother has a portable device that can store and play video files. Nobody wants to deal with physical media anymore.
That said, I do think that the DVD market will continue to thrive for at least the next ten years. PERHAPS Blu Ray will displace dvds one day, but the studios are going to have to start pricing Blu Rays similarly to dvds for that to happen. Nobody’s going to pay $30+ for the Blu Ray of “Paul Blart: Mall Cop.”
On a side note, I saw that SONY is selling a $100 BR player at Wal Mart that’s PACKED with features, so the niche the PS3 originally carved out for itself as being the cheapest way to get a BR player has been erased.
May 30, 2010 at 12:16 am
MrTinnedPeach
“Another possibility is the flash card, or even a solid state mini hard drive. Flash and solid state are both twenty times (usually more) faster than any disk in any format and, by 2012, the price of the technology to have a 60 gigabyte flash card or a 300 gigabyte solid state drive could be about equal to that of a Blu-Ray disk now. So not only would the games load incredibly fast (can you say literally no loading screens ala the Nintendo 64?) but they’d be smaller, which could quite possibly lead to a smaller game console, assuming the rest of the technology allows it.”
To paraphrase Morbo: “TECHNOLOGY PRICING TRENDS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!”
Seriously, you can’t have the price of something drop by 99% in two years. That is not how it works. An 8GB SD card that retails for $20 now wasn’t $2000 in 2008.
Also, how can you compare a 60GB SD card with a 300GB SSD? They’re based on the same technology; SSDs are super expensive for a reason.
May 30, 2010 at 12:24 am
dell90wattac
I was also assuming that games might cost more in a couple of years, a trend we HAVE been seeing. Let’s say a 64 gig SD card retails for 80$. In three or four years (which is the time frame I gave), do you really think that a 64 gig flash card is going to be too expensive to mass produce and sell games on? Maybe I was a bit off with the pricing of the solid state drives, but goodness, how can you argue that SD cards won’t be cheap enough in three or four years?
May 30, 2010 at 12:48 am
Berfanz Atrus
So, just to clarify, game publishers, that are already fighting for every penny, are going to, free of charge, give a flash card with every purchase? Even if they’re a mere $3 a pop, that’s a good $2 more than the cost to make a Blu Ray Disc. There is NO way by 2012 that we’ll see flash media that cheap. No publisher is going to eat a $2 per copy hit. Those 750,000 copies sold of your latest title? That’s $1.5 million off of your bottom line.
Here’s how impossible this is. You probably didn’t play video games back then, but PC games used to be sold in big boxes. Those boxes had a cardboard frame inside them that kept everything secure in shipping, and gave the box a nice heft to it. Then publishers discovered they could save $0.3 per title by not putting that in there. And so it disappeared. After this, a very important meeting was held amongst all the top publishers. They all agreed that they would all use a new, smaller box. This smaller box could save them upwards of $0.05 per title.
So, yeah. Until flash memory is as cheap as a disc, don’t expect it any time soon.
May 30, 2010 at 12:52 am
dell90wattac
You have to understand, I wrote it as a hypothesis. Sure, it might not be cheap enough in a couple of years, but with the decline of the cost of technology and the increase in the price of games, we may very well see 75$ games sold on 64 gig flash cards.
May 30, 2010 at 2:03 am
jason
hey guys just thought I’d comment.
SONY actually pay royalties to MS/ Toshiba for the use of the VC-9 codec that was used in HD-DVD’s. As it was and still is the better codec ,and better than anything SONY and it’s partners could come up with. So I don’t see why the 2 companies (MS and SONY) could come up with some type of agreement and incorporate Blu-ray into the next XBOX. In saying that though MS are a stubborn bunch and probably will not fall to SONY.
I have both consoles, I love my 360 even though I have gone through 4-5 and have 2 now!! for that “Just in case” moment. The PS3 is mainly for PS3 exclusives. (I did just buy RDR for it though)I started with a slim and do not regret it one bit.
A true gamer will not argue or put the other down, they will embrace both for what they are. I didn’t include the Wii. For specific reasons. As it doesn’t reason cater for the true or Hardcore gamer.
thanks for reading
JNV
May 30, 2010 at 2:15 am
dell90wattac
This man speaks the truth. I hope everyone knows that I am not in any way defending either sides of the “Xbox VS PS3″ argument. Like Jason, I own both and have gone through many Xbox’s as well (actually, I too have two of them. Go figure).
May 30, 2010 at 1:21 pm
DCBronco
Jason is right about the two companies working together on a lot of things. Sony computers do use Windows. Blu-rays use MS codecs. But the thing has always been when you had no choice, you went where you didn’t want to. Sony has to use Windows. MS codecs were the best and after using Mpeg-2 for awhile and being told that HD-DVD looked better because of of it’s VC-1, Sony had no choice. They did try anything and everything to avoid going to VC-1 though. But there are better options for MS than Blu-ray. The only reason for them to go that direction would be Sony offering a deal they can’t refuse. Otherwise, it could hurt Xbox sales as it would seem like an admission that the PS3 had superior technology. It would hurt digital download because it would strengthen Blu-rays place in the market. MS has pushed DD from the start.
More than anything, there have been rumors for sometime that even Sony may not be using the Cell or Blu-ray on the next Playstation, so why should Microsoft want any of that tech. Sony stopped trying to develop Cell technology a couple of years ago and sold their fabrication factory. And while we hear announcements of Blu-ray advances from time to time, none ever reach the market. We’ve heard about 100GB disc for years and still haven’t seen them in the market. The reason is regardless of the information released to the press to create hype articles, there is no market for the product at it’s cost. And the cost won’t come down until a market develops. So Blu-ray will remain at an impasse until something major happens. The closer we get to the next generation without a major push from Blu-ray, the bigger chance there is for something to replace it. When a new Xbox comes out next year with a different format, Blu-ray will take a step toward it’s grave. If the PS4 doesn’t have it, Blu-ray will lay in that grave. And once DD starts to get a push from advertising and studios, start putting nails in Blu-ray’s coffin. The only thing keeping people from buying into DD is licensing and the ability to sell a disc. Take away the licensing problem with accounts that allow you to download thing over and over and the biggest obstacle is gone.
Microsoft’s best option is making HD-DVD a proprietary gaming media like someone else mentioned. It’s nothing more than DVD with small changes. With a few of the different developments made for DVD, HD-DVD would provide more than enough storage for now and the future for the next Xbox. And it wouldn’t be much more expensive than current DVD cost. You could get 50 GB HD-DVD for pennies more than DVD.
May 30, 2010 at 1:38 pm
Liam
Clearly your brain is a little topsy turvy, i never claimed that the 360 is a doomed console if you look back and check through i said that if Microsoft released the 360 alongside the PS3 then it may not have been as successful as it is today, and may not have survived if it were to have a blu-ray drive incorporated in the system and was at a similar price point as the PS3, Idiot.
May 30, 2010 at 7:17 pm
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June 17, 2010 at 5:49 am
Bobby
I have been downloading and burning Xbox 360 games for backup for a long time now.
July 9, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Karim
If Sony wont let Microsoft use blu-ray Sony can say goodby to Sony vios who is using Microsoft software
July 26, 2010 at 4:42 am
dave
No disks are going to go the way of the floppy just look at what apple is doing with it’s new personal computers and anyway most new laptops are being sold without a DVD drive so I think that all XBOX games will be comming out on 2TB SD cards which will be protected so that they cannot be copyed but the next generation XBOX will be able to read the data of the SD card and let you play the game and it will make for a smaller XBOX console and games will play as advertised because SD cards don’t get scratched.
September 15, 2010 at 5:48 am
john
Find out why VHS won over BETA, this will elighten everyone on so called format wars. If microsoft wants to use blu-ray for the next generation console they will, it is as simple as that.
October 9, 2010 at 9:06 am
bendle
no one has mentioned that dvds took awhile to become the standard from VHS. bluray is the next format..digital download will never work..if you cant grab something off of a shelf and take it home with you, you will never get sales.
how will you market digital downloads to those in the store? during the first with a little cash on hand? how will the child of the parents say ohhh man i really want THIS? as he points to it.
digital download is great, in a world where internet is free and so are modems and everyone is given access to high speed internet. but in this world, we go to the store for food..and buy a dvd or game whatever, because its on the shelf.
digital media will never surpass physical media, because in the end..when you spend that money..you want something to show for it. take online games that have expansions..they still release physical media..and that still outsells digital media that they released at the same time. how many of you people who play WoW bought the dvd’s from the store, instead of doing the digital download.
microsoft will either stick with dvds, or go into bluray if sony lets them. microsoft is a HUGE corporation, xbox is one of the smallest sub companies of it. the money microsoft makes or doesnt make from xbox is just a drop in the bucket compared to most other ventures. the price to start up hd-dvd factories..just to produce games for a next gen system, seems very unlikely.
in the end, xbox is screwed. but also i could see people paying 80-90 bucks for a game on xbox, they already pay to connect the system to their modem for online.
digital downloads for a next gen system would do nothing to help increase sales…of anything. you have to have physical media. but then again..the only people worrying about this, is xbox owners.
January 25, 2011 at 8:03 pm
Evan Plaice
According to blu-ray.com the original blu-ray format only supports 25/50GB. Gaming consoles have little to do with what format the media comes in since games (and expansions) can easily be ordered online and stored directly on the HDD.
Plus, an increasing number of people primarily use their gaming consoles to stream media, not play games.
If any improvement will be made to the system, it will be greatly increased HDD capacity to store more downloaded content.
All the same goes for the PS3 except they also need to find a way to clean up and unify the social aspects. XBox Live beats PS3 social aspects hands down.