360 HD-DVD add on at $199 makes Sony's case for them!

[Dangerboy]

If words were cut trees we'd have raped the planet dry by now with nothing but hot air to replace the waste.

It doesn't matter.

It seriously doesn't matter. The problem here is that it doesn't matter how clear a movie is if the movie still sucks ass. And most movies out lately I wouldn't pay $6 for, much less $24.99 - 29.99

Between consoles and real players, I have 4 DVD players sitting within arm's reach. One was free, the rest came as bonus items to the GAME SYSTEM I bought.

The trick here is that it's a GAME SYSTEM. I'm pleased that Microsoft kept it a DVD player, and I'm damn pleased that Nintendo took it out of the Wii. The HD DVD add-on for the 360 is brilliant. Why? Because it's a CHOICE.

$199.99 for games, accessories, food, clothing, rent, and HD-DVD at half price...or... forced to spend on a media format that god help me, actually has an old school sandclock loading screen (proven, I was watching the $1,000 Blue Ray player have to load a freaking movie at Best Buy)

Sony isn't giving the choice, but it doesn't matter since the system is nowhere on my radar. Not after seeing through all the smoke and mirrors and lies via Sony and EA...some of which are a whole separate rant entirely.

My $600 is going to a Wii and 6 games with 2nd remote, and I'll eventually get a 360, when the price drops significantly or there's a sweet bundle.

[Push Upstairs]

There were some early DVD's that were "flippers"...meaning half of the movie was on one side and the other half was on the other side (ala laserdiscs) and you had to eject the disc and "flip" it over to watch the whole movie.

I believe today there are some movies that are spread out over a few discs simply because the movie is either too long or there are a bunch of extras that make it impossible to store the movie on a single disc at a decent bitrate.

I believe some of the "Lord of the Rings" directors cuts and "Pearl Harbor" are more recent examples of this.

[business]

$199.99 for games, accessories, food, clothing, rent, and HD-DVD at half price...or... forced to spend on a media format that god help me, actually has an old school sandclock loading screen (proven, I was watching the $1,000 Blue Ray player have to load a freaking movie at Best Buy)

This is exactly how I feel. Microsoft is giving us a choice with this one. They have already stated that they have no plans to create HD-DVD games. So is it forcing you to buy if you already own a 360? No. It's giving you an option to watch High Def movies with your 360 if you so desire.

Unlike Sony who is trying to pimp their ps3 by pushing a whole new format.



Sony---^

[jajaja]

Many seems to forget that the BR player in PS3 isnt for movies only. Games for PS3 will also be on BR discs, i cant imagine how to play these without a BR player hehe. Its sorta like complaining about the DS using its own format and that you cant choose.

[Daria]

Many seems to forget that the BR player in PS3 isnt for movies only. Games for PS3 will also be on BR discs, i cant imagine how to play these without a BR player hehe. Its sorta like complaining about the DS using its own format and that you cant choose.

Except the DS cards weren't astronomically expensive.

[Dangerboy]

Games for PS3 will also be on BR discs, i cant imagine how to play these without a BR player hehe. Its sorta like complaining about the DS using its own format and that you cant choose.

The difference here is that the DS is pretty much instant access, and proven technology. Though I forgot to put it in perspective in my original post, another reason for my distaste of the Blue Ray is the loading time (hence the Best Buy comment).

EA, most notorius for load times that are still roughly the same damn length every year, like the newly released NBA Live 07 on the 360 this past week. Having made the simplest selections (play game, choose team, start), the 360 version took forever to load. Granted, they hide this issue behind a mini-game of shooting hoops, but it's annoying as heck. If a BR-DVD has to throw up a load screen for a DVD menu, what is it going to have you do while you stream an entire game level full of high resolution textures and such? Does anyone remember the original batch of PS2 load times?

There's also the small grating issue of the PS3 being a feeder slot...I get at least 1 ps2 a month at the store where the drive has died and we need to pry off the door and tug the tray out to retrieve the customer's game. What happens when your $60+ game is now trapped inside the feeder slot of a $600 system?

There's just too many questions about the system that leave me with either no answers or no good ones. I adore my PSone, but Sony just hasn't won me over with the PS3, much less some of their game choices.

[SamuraiSmurfette]

So what will Microsoft's answer to all this be? I've got two words.

Price


DROP

Um...perhaps you didn't read my comment on the last rant you made. MS is NOT doing a price drop, rather they will be bundling Ghost Recon/live arcade unplugged with it. They'd rather add value to the consumer, then lose more money (like Sony's PSP strategy) However, this IS NOT a rumour. It's fact. wait and see for yourself...

[itobandito]

didn't read the whole post so some one may of said this. PC games have been doing this for a while. Having a CD-Rom Version of a game and a DVD-Rom version of the game. No extra cost. Occasionally the DVD version may have some extras. Its all convienance. I highly doubt they will make any game exlcusive to HD-DVD discs. I wouldn't be suprised if the HD-DVD version of a game that comes out in the future looks better than the DVD Rom version. With HD-DVD you have to do less compression of textures and what not. I heard that this is why the PS3 version of Oblivion will look better. The bigger the space on a disc the less compression has to be done.

[jajaja]

Games for PS3 will also be on BR discs, i cant imagine how to play these without a BR player hehe. Its sorta like complaining about the DS using its own format and that you cant choose.

The difference here is that the DS is pretty much instant access, and proven technology.

True, but the discussion was about choosing. You cant choose what media u want for any consoles. There are no alternatives.

Except the DS cards weren't astronomically expensive.

Afaik know it isnt more expencive to produce a BR disc than a DVD. The production cost for 1 DVD is less than 10 cents. It cost more to produce a DS card.

[Daria]

Except the DS cards weren't astronomically expensive.

Afaik know it isnt more expencive to produce a BR disc than a DVD. The production cost for 1 DVD is less than 10 cents. It cost more to produce a DS card.

Not the disc. The Hardware.

[jajaja]

Thats because its new tech. A ROM reader is ancient. When it was new it was also very expencive

[Anthony1]

Um...perhaps you didn't read my comment on the last rant you made. MS is NOT doing a price drop, rather they will be bundling Ghost Recon/live arcade unplugged with it. They'd rather add value to the consumer, then lose more money (like Sony's PSP strategy) However, this IS NOT a rumour. It's fact. wait and see for yourself...

Oh, I see. How long have you been working at Microsoft? Wow, it's cool that we have an actual Xbox employee on these boards.

[hezeuschrist]

There is simply not one reason to put games on the HD-DVD disc.

I think that's a little too harsh. I will agree that there isn't a reason to have a game "EXCLUSIVELY" on a HD-DVD disk, but saying there is no reason whatsoever is a little premature. In the Playstation era, there were certain games that spanned multiple CD's. I think there were a few games that were on 4 or 5 disks. Well, I could easily forsee a Xbox 360 game far into the future that would be available in two versions. The regular version would come on 4 or 5 DVD's or whatever, and a HD-DVD version would be on a single disk. But the game wouldn't be any different. It would just be for the convienence factor of not having to keep putting different disks in. That would be the only reason.


The chances of Microsoft releasing an exclusive 360 game only on HD-DVD is pretty much non existant.. But if there are games that span 3 or more DVD's, I could see a special HD-DVD version also being available as well. Again, the only difference would be that you wouldn't have to screw around with multiple disks. This way you are just giving the add-on owners an extra incentive to think about that game, but you aren't screwing the overall Xbox 360 fanbase by making some exclusive HD-DVD only game. Going down that road would lead to dissaster.


Having said all of that, I don't think we will see any 360 games that span multiple DVD's for a few years at least, so I don't think this will even become an issue for debate for a long, long time.

I don't buy it. I understand that PC games have been making that transition from CD to DVD in recent years, but thats a transition that should have happened years ago.

The penetration rates (as I outlined previously) for the HD-DVD unit won't warrant creating anything for use exclusively with the X360 HD-DVD addon. The movies will of course all be useable in any HD-DVD player. If you do create dual releases (DVD/HD-DVD) you have to develop both versions, you have to physically produce both versions, you have to seperately package both versions, and you have to stock both versions worldwide. From an overhead standpoint past the development cycle, it's like creating two games but only aiming one of them at 2% of the userbase.

The one question you need to ask yourself is this, "If they ONLY release the DVD version, will that prohibit anyone from purchasing it?"

The answer is no. As a publisher, why would you bother going that extra mile for essentially nothing? You'll sell the same number of copies if you offer it on one format or two, so creating the second format just adds completely superfluous costs.