HD-DVD Confirmed For Xbox 360

JorgeDeLaCancha writes "Microsoft has recently confirmed plans to bring an external HD-DVD drive to the Xbox 360. This has been previously speculated numerous times, with Bill Gates himself stating 'future versions of Xbox 360 will incorporate an additional capacity of an HD-DVD player.' Do consumers even want another format war?"

Re:Sega CD anyone?

[Fred Or Alive]

AFAIK Microsoft have said all games will be on DVD, the HD-DVD drive is for movie playback only I guess.

Re:Same thing as PS2 Hard drive

[OverlordQ]

the PS2 has a harddrive but nobody uses it.

You sure about that? I knot a lot of people who use it play their uh . .. *cough*backups*cough*

Re:Dreamcast

[r_benchley]

The Dreamcast DVD player was announced by Sega and was shown at E3, but it was killed off before it was released to market. You can view a picture of the prototype unit at http://www.sega-dc.de/bilder/zubehor/dvd_gross.jpg [sega-dc.de]

The Xbox 360 may have already flopped

[Animats]

Early speculation was that the shortage of Xbox units was "managed" by Microsoft. But the shortage continued through the Xmas season. Microsoft missed the Xmas shopping season. That's a disaster for a toy. No vendor does that on purpose.

Somewhere, there was a schedule slip. A bad one.

Check what's happening on Ebay. Early on, Xbox units were selling at high premiums. That's over. Core systems sold for $330 today. At $355, core systems don't sell. That's an unopened price; used systems are down to $200 or so. Many speculators who bought systems for resale are still trying to unload them, and they're not making money when they do.

This is not a "must have" product any longer.

Re:Hmmmm... wikipedia disagrees

[drinkypoo]

All those connections (composite, component, s-video and VGA) have one thing in common: they carry the video signal in an analog format. What about digital connections such DVI or HDMI? Will there be A/V packs with DVI and/or HDMI connections? If not, will you consider offering that in the future?

Todd Holmdahl: Xbox 360 will support HD component video output, which is compatible with nearly every HD-ready TV on the market today. We're poised to hit the sweet spot of the HD market at launch and as the market matures, and we will provide an HDMI for our customers when it makes sense. The reality is, you don't need HDMI for HD gaming.

http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/1190/Xbox-360- Interview-Todd-Holmdahl/p1/ [teamxbox.com]

Well, that doesn't say much. Anandtech doesn't say much either:

Unfortunately in the first version of the Xbox 360, that AV cable port appears to be strictly analog. Microsoft has indicated that they may support HDMI at a later point in time, but that may require a new revision of the motherboard - assuming there is no digital video signal carried over the AV port. On the flip side, ATI has had a history of placing TMDS transmitters on their GPUs, so it may be possible that a digital video signal is present at this connector today, although if it were we don't understand why Microsoft wouldn't offer a DVI/HDMI cable option now.

http://www.anandtech.com/systems/showdoc.aspx?i=26 11&p=2 [anandtech.com]

So maybe there will need to be a new revision, but maybe not, because it uses an ATI GPU, and they might have tucked it in.