Shock as Gates Shows External HD-DVD Drive for Xbox 360 – Full Report

Lame. First the retard pack, now another disc drive. This thing takes up way too much space. A 360 and a power brick which are loud and hot as hell, plus now another noisy speaker. . . er disc drive to increase the heat and disc searching noise.

Did MS invest heavily in electrical companies and ditch all their shares in home heating stocks.

Its no secret to anyone i know, that i just dont like xbox, but ive always respected it to an extent (that extent being that halo isnt half bad), but this is just the damn dumbist thing that they could do! This , as mentioned in the article, will be a potential problem with the console. If they would have waited a few months and just included a hd-dvd drive then it wouldnt be so bad, but the only reason they are even atempting this is to compete with blu-ray. Anyone who bought an xbox 360 isnt going to want to buy this add on, i mean, that was the whole damn point of the premium system, to make it so you dont have to add on and spend another $100. The whole xbox thing has always seemd to me to be a very bad atempt at makeing a lot of money off a pop culture phenominon (not saying that thats not the point of playstation too), and the supprise is that it is working, but a $200 to $300 add on (maby more, maby less) to your already $400 xbox 360 just isnt practicle, to go along with the wide variety of half baked EXPENSIVE accesories and thair premium edition of each one is just stupid. Hd-dvd add on, wired remote, wireless remote, the wireless network add on, the memory unit, the headset, premium edition remote, universal media remote, and all the faceplates is just a bit much, not to mention the hard drive for those who could only get the core edition. They could have just as easly made one kind of everything and then the cost of all the accesories would be cheaper because everyone wants the premium ones, not the cheap ones, and without cheap ones, they would make cheaper premium ones.

If there releasing something to compete against a strong rival in hopes to make more money, then the ideas ISN'T stupid. Granted they should of shoved an HD-DVD drive in there in the first place, but then that would've cranked up the already high price tag. The add-on should do well if the price is right, even $150 below the average HD-DVD player. I do not enjoy the issue of certain games using it though, creating fission for console gamers is bad developer idea #1!

Don't go creating dumb arguments just because you hate Microsoft. The only thing you really need to buy is a memory card or if you have HD version, nothing! I mean one could make an argument that putting four ports on the Dreamcast was a ploy for people to buy more accessories.

Look at the bigger picture.

Blu Ray has gained more support than originally expected. Microsoft can introduce a cheaper alternative which they hope will take sales away from Blu Ray. If this fails, they can just release a BluRay addon drive. Putting the drive in in the first place makes the 360 more expensive and cuts down microsofts options.

No this makes perfect sense. <font size="1200">If</font> this is a success, and that's a very big if, they can release a 8-Track cartridge add on for X-box. And a thing that joins it to your fridge, and let's you know when you are low on beers via a HD-3D virtual head-up interface (which will be available as a separate add on, of course).

The way this convergence thing could really work is if we all buy single purpose items that do one thing well, and then link them together via a rat-nest like mess of wires and cables.

I'm thinking a DAT add-on that lets me play music in high definition digital quality. And maybe a thing that can hold a CD still and rototatate my Xbox round at high speed to read the data on it.

If you've spunked £400 on a 360, you might as well pay the money and get a decent stand-alone HD-DVD player.

Why didn't they just make the original DVD drive removable like the hard drive is and then it wouldn't seem so bad as you could choose to upgrade it when the HD-DVD version came out ? Muppets!

This seems very like MS, but the thing is that it kind of shows an act of desperation but get one over on Sony. In the long run PS3 will still beat 360s arse because it will sell well in all sectors.

Paying out £300 odd for the best 360 pack was bad enough but fair for all the bits and bobs you got with it. Now gamers must buy more, damn they might as well had held 360 back to include the damn drive as standard.

I can see a lot of people passing this one up for PS3 or a stand alone HD-DVD player/recorder instead. If I get a 360 I won't be buying one of these.

w00t! Let's all dance and sing songs!

Finally after realizing what a monstrosity the original xbox was, and and making the 360 somewhat easier on the eye yet failing to shrink it down, we can attach an external player to it which will probably be about the size of the Nintendo Revolution!! GREAT!

This is exactly why Nintendo will be back in the game: no gamer is going to buy both PS3 and Xbox360 combined, because not only will it tear it's bancaccount to pieces, but due to the fact that they just won't both physically fit in the same room due to size! </drama>

Seriously now, i wonder if they might include some sort of testosterone feature for PS3 and Xbox360, so that both machines could start pissing and marking their territory inside your living room.

The thing is though, add-ons hardly ever sell. Even the Live add-on for the original XBox only sold to about 10% of all XBox owners.


I can't see any developers releasing games on HD-DVDs because of the above argument. If they can only sell to 5-10% of all XBox owners they ain't gonna sell enough to make the game worthwhile.

ohhhhK!
a) it will not play games, games will not be made on hd-dvd's. this will act only as a player for movies. so it is in no wway dividing "gamers". what it is doing is alowing people who happend to be gammers to also be early adopters of the newest video tech. How long where dvd's out before everyone here had a player? and then a dvd-rom drive? and then a burner? and then a bunch of extra palyers... and then one in your car? sure as s**t wasnt the first year or even two that dvd's where out.
b)64dd,segaCD,sega32x,snesDrive,jaguarCD(hehehe) all failed because they where designed to play games, not add extra functionality to a game machine. sure the sega cd acted as a cd player way back when, but the damn thign was liek $200, way more than a plan old cd player... had it been, oh i dunno... 50... it woudl have sold much better... also it woudl have been nice if it was actually usefull insome way instead of just allowing the worst FMV ever seen.
c)if i paid 400 for a 360 (which i did) and i own an hdtv (which i do) and i would like some sort of hd video player i woudl much rather pay 100-200 for an add on drive than pay 500+ for a stand alone. its aburd that some people are bitching that the system is toooo big and this will make it worse... and then some people woudl preffer to by a fuill sized hddvd player which will be much larger than an external disk drive.

now, they will probably make it capable of playing games some time in the far future (2-3 years if i where betting) and when that happens, games that could use the space will just be sold in two dif versions, just like the pc games. and by then it wont matter... and there may even be a redisigned console then with it included... liek when the pstwo came out and it had progressive dvd play back.

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The thing with this upsetting people is that it clearly shows MS rushed...well everything! The Hardware needed a few months more of tweaking (and producing), the games too and now this. You do know there are games in development for the Xbox360 that are going to be 4 DVD's big!! If they just went with HD-DVD and waited a couple of months before they launched we wouldn't have a reason to bitch about it all.
These are all little mistakes which will add up (and are perfectly preventable) and gets people frustrated and go look/wait for an alternative. Nintendo had the same thing with the GC, all these small problems (a purple lunchbox! huge quarter year droughts, ect.) that brought down its image and made it third place (however with MS's Gunjumping they could beat the Xbox worldwide).

Now MS is going GameCube and doing all these stupid things which will damage them in the long run just because they want to make a profit as fast as possible so their Xbox-project won't be shut down in 2007 under shareholder pressure. If Sony keeps f**king around with it's cell-hardware like it is and MS supplyfucking everyone and keep doing stupid "Yeah we know we rushed it, but here's a add-on to make up for it..." things Nintendo could have a free lane to walsh trough. Offcourse that's if Nintendo doesn't have souped-up techdemo's as launchgames as with the DS...

Not the best idea in the world but at this point maybe better than Sonys plan. If Sony plans to launch their baby this spring ( I read rumors it is now fall) there is no way they can keep from losing their ass on it. MS is losing about $100+ on each premium Xbox 360 they sell and it has no HD DVD in it. Stand alone HD players will be from $400-$700 this spring so what will the PS3 have to cost in order to even match MSs losses on the 360. I myself buy a gaming machine to game and although I have a HDTV buying yet another format to watch movies on is way low on my importance factor. Especially when it is another spinng disc format and not something revolutionary. I think HD and Blu Ray DVD will go the way of good old Super VHS when a better and more sensible format is released.

You can not add the SNES CD drive to the list of failed addons...IT NEVER CAME OUT!.
I you get technicle..it did come out, name the PLAYSTATION. I dont think that failed. The rest of the addons I agree with.

If I want a HD-DVD player...I will by one. Why would I buy an addon for a game system that does not play games? PLaystation 2 sold mainly because it was a dvd player. The first dvd player many people owned.
I don't think it would have sold well at all if the DVD player was an addon...and Dreamcast would have remained king.

At least the Revolution addon to play DVDs will either be an internal drive, or something like a dvd dongle simular to what Xbox has now.

Nintendo will be king. It will do 1 thing PLAY GAMES and do it well, cheeply, with a small form factor and small price.

To the person who keeps saying Microsoft is pulling a GAMECUBE....Pull your head out your butt, Nintendo does not have any such addons for gamecube so stop trying to slam them with such a stupid remark...it devalidates all the rest of your statments.

I think you've gotten confused. I believe SPOnG was talking about the 'Satelliview' (sp?), an online-enabled disk drive add-on for the SNES that was released in Japan that enhanced certain first-party titles. I'm sure they know the CD add-on never saw light of day.

It all seems like a very hurried method of convergence, just for the sake of competing with Sony. It's a catch 22 though. If you make games on HD-DVD in the future, you're basically shutting out some of your consumers by saying "You need to get this add-on first!". But if they don't, then people won't see it as necessary for one, and will probably say it's rubbish compared to PS3. Consider that apparently developers were already having problems fitting code onto the standard DVD for launch, and suddenly it seems quite unappealing for developers without the Drive too.


OK mate, calm down. ;P

It's called context... if anything Microsoft is pulling a Saturn! I used GameCube in the context of making mistakes, not in releasing add-ons...