J Allard: “We Spent A Stupid Amount of Time on Stuff Like HD-DVD In Response to the Competition”

Allard recalls the incident and believes it was stupid that they focused so much of their (and money) in pushing a media format. This also meant that the team deviated from their core beliefs.

[ApocalypseShadow]

They incorrectly guessed that Sony would do online distribution in J Allard's words over disc format.disc is not some "sacred cow." And I'll tell you why.

Looking at Sony's past systems could have told them why they included Bluray.CD,DVD and Bluray gave them more room to work with. As the content got bigger for movies and games, you needed a local format to fit it on. It's only logical.

HD-DVD was only used to slow bluray adoption. Not push a new media format when Microsoft talked about digital being the future. http://www.icxm.net/x/james...
Sony pushed a media format because they are a MEDIA company that makes movies, TV shows, music and games.It only made sense for them to do so.

What Microsoft also failed at figuring out,is that not everyone HAS internet. Not everyone HAS unlimited data.not everyone lives in America or the UK. If you can't support those without connection,then millions are left out from using your product.

But you can clearly see Sony was right to push bluray. If it wasn't USEFUL, it would not be included in the Xbox one. Why didn't they use DVDs instead if the games are being installed?because bigger content is easier to distribute on bigger formats that only require **one** to use.

Yeah.it was stupid to waste gamer's time and money putting out a format you didn't really care about.and not all gamers like the idea of what digital represents for games where you,the content owner,no longer have control.

[Aloy-Boyfriend]

The days of swapping discs and having scrached disc ended with Blu ray. It was a smart choice by Sony that ended up pushing the format even further worldwide

[VenomUK]

"“There were definitely factions within the team that did worry more about the competition and we spent a stupid amount of time on stuff like HD-DVD in response to the competition that just distracted us from our core beliefs. A new format for high-resolution movies was not important to us. Leading the charge in online gaming was – and the HD-DVD effort was a good example of how worrying about the competition can take you off your game.”

J. Allard is the guy who first registered the Microsoft domain name and the guy who built the original Xbox Live online service. He is very well respected and he was one of the old guard at Xbox.

He explains that Xbox went of its path by anticipating what Sony would do and trying to do it first. This happened with HD-DVD, but echoes of this me-too philosophy can be see with the rush for the 24 hour check-in online-only Xbox One.

What made the original Xbox (1) so great was that Seamus Blackley, the father of the Xbox, and his team had a clear vision of what Xbox should be, a powerful console that would bring online gaming to the home console.

When you look at the Xbox One you can see that Phil Spencer is trying hard to keep his customers happy. But too much of what he is doing is matching PlayStation features. There is no standing up and saying 'this is what we think gaming will be in the future.' HoloLens will eventually become a fantastic product. But it was demonstrated prematurely (because a consumer product wont be ready until late 2017 at the earliest) as a gaming product on the E3 stage. It seemed Phil Spencer did this not because he had a product to sell, but because he did not want to be left out of the VR conversation.

Microsoft need to find their own path and I think if they hired people like J. Allard and Seamus Blackley they would have a unique vision and have gamers flocking back.

[bouzebbal]

I have HDDVD version of Transformers at home.
Fun fact, MS never said they were spending stupid time back then. If only they could be consistent in what they are saying for once.

[ravinash]

That's the benefit of hindsight.
You never know if you were wasting your time on something till you find out if it was successful or not.
I'm sure if HD-DVD was successful, he would be saying something very different.

[UltraNova]

@Venom

You beat me into it. Agreed on all points. Well said +1.

What strikes me the most is that he claims that they basically learnt from their past mistakes, basically reacting to what the competition does (Sony-Blu ray, MS -HD-DVD)yet Phil Spencer is trying to make the XB1 more like the ps4 since he took reins.

MS is as easily detracted from their 'vision' in response to stiff competition as everyone else out-there, and there's nothing wrong about it(as evident by the current positive status of the xb1) as long as you admit it and stop with the wishfull thinking.

[KwietStorm_BLM]

@ravinash

That's not the point. Sony had a vested interest in Blu-Ray, so much so that they took a large hit on profit by including it in every PS3. Microsoft can't say the same for HD-DVD, but they tried to push it *only* because Sony was pushing the competitive format. Which format would be adopted was irrelevant from the start, because Microsoft wasted time on something that wouldn't benefit them in any significant way.

[Gazondaily]

"Fun fact, MS never said they were spending stupid time back then. If only they could be consistent in what they are saying for once."

Lol! Yeah because that's what MS should have done; come up with a statement at the time saying "we are spending stupid amount of time on stuff like HD-DVD in response to the competition".

Anyway, I never bought the HD-DVD add on. I suspected it would fall flat on its face back then.

Regarding whether or not Sony were right in adopting Blu-Ray at the time; for me, the long installations and the headaches associated therein were a pain. Now the X1 is a complete pain the back side with ludicrous install times- luckily 95% of my games are digital.

J Allard got A LOT of things right though. Achievements is a BIG thing that he pushed that Sony later on copied. Plus stuff like relegating MS OS' out of the system which Ballmer and others wanted to push.

Shame Allard wasn't in charge of the X1. It would definitely be a different beast had he been in control. He needs to come back! Not that he will :(

[bouzebbal]

"Lol! Yeah because that's what MS should have done; come up with a statement at the time saying "we are spending stupid amount of time on stuff like HD-DVD in response to the competition"."
smh... are you serious? well he just admitted it, and that's opposite to what they have been claiming in 2007/2008.

"J Allard got A LOT of things right though. Achievements is a BIG thing that he pushed that Sony later on copied."
BIG thing huh? So big that you don't care about them?
so funny how you twist the info. Make a big deal out of something you are not concerned with. what's your gamerscore? and your platinum collection? Just wondering how much of a big deal this truly is for you.. How did they change the way you play games? share your experience with us...

[Gazondaily]

@abzdine

"BIG thing huh? So big that you don't care about them? "

Uhh yeah. You know something doesn;'t stop being big if one doesn't care for it? Just because I am not overly obsessed with Achievements means that it isn't a big thing?

What if I didn't think TLOU was a big deal but the world did? Does that stop making it a big deal?

Common sense.; your comment has absolutely none.

"so funny how you twist the info"

What twisting? You were the one making a nonsense point and then changed the topic to something else I talked about?

"Just wondering how much of a big deal this truly is for you.. How did they change the way you play games? share your experience with us..."

Achievements and Trophies didn't have a massive impact on me at all. But it did for you? You are chasing platinums all the time? Although I remember your absolutely laughable attempt at downplaying the introduction of achievements because (wait for it...) ....Spyro the Dragon lmao.

Yeah try and think and talk sense next time instead of snaking your way into making an ill-thought out comment.

[XisThatKid]

LMAO yea, It was a waste of time that HD DVD failed if it had succeeded 360 would have solidified a disc format used to this day. It was a bold move on both companies part and wasn't a waste of time to try and capitalize on something line that unless you lost then in retrospect yea but of FN course taht would be the case and should go without saying. The fact that he stated that some 8 years later is ridiculous and makes the team look like tools. That was a high risk high reward kind of thing....."waste of time"...

[darthv72]

The one that really got the shaft over HDDVD was Toshiba. They co-created the evolution of the DVD format to HDDVD and tried their best to sell it but you have to see that Sony was not just a media company making a rival format but also has the means to fill that format with content from their own in-house studios.

Toshiba isnt a content provider so it wasn't going to work out for them if studios were being courted by the likes of Sony. And there was likely no way Sony would let their content be put on another format.

Now what many seem to forget is that HD and Blu are more alike than they are different. And MS really had their hand in both with their VC-1 codec being supported by both. So in the end they still walked away unscathed unlike poor Toshiba.

[bouzebbal]

"Achievements and Trophies didn't have a massive impact on me at all. But it did for you? You are chasing platinums all the time? Although I remember your absolutely laughable attempt at downplaying the introduction of achievements because (wait for it...) ....Spyro the Dragon lmao. "

You are full of it! And all you do is twist things to yuor advantage. Trophies aren't a big deal for me. I always finished my games i enjoy 100%. I did it on 8bits and still doing it today. a platinum trophy and a 100% in a game aren't the same thing. 100% of a game goes beyond that in many cases, so trophies aren't a big deal in that sense.
For example i cannot say that i am done with a Zelda game without finding all heart fragments and last time i checked nothing poped up when i do that. Stop the damage control and be real for once.

"What if I didn't think TLOU was a big deal but the world did? Does that stop making it a big deal?

Common sense.; your comment has absolutely none."
TLoU changed something in gaming.. sets a new standard in storytelling, character interaction... yes it is a big deal like many other games that happen once every full moon (Mario 64, SF2, TR1...)
Trophies/Achievements bring absolutely nothing, you are only trying to cherish your brand that's all. You can say online gaming made popular on consoles i will almost agree.. but achievements? Is that all you can do?

[Skate-AK]

I live in the US and still have a data cap of 150GB monthly.

[DLConspiracy]

Switch ISPs. That crap is stupid and they know it. If google fiber takes off caps will be a thing of the past. Fiber optics are getting better everyday and people are getting better internet sooner.

[Skate-AK]

@DLC I can't. There is only one other ISP here and they are worse. We have fiber optics up here and up to 1gbps download but they still enforce caps. Its $5 for ever 1gb you go over.

[DLConspiracy]

Well that makes sense if the games were about 25 (single layer) to 50 gigs (dual layer blu ray) of data back then. Most games were about 4 to 6 gigs of game data on a disc last gen. So it wasn't utilizing the entire blu ray cap even. Overall Blu Ray won the format war because you could store more on a blu ray disc than an HD disc. Plus of course porn helped that format war. MS was using a form of compression software on the HD DVD (VC-1) and a different type of software to run the menus on disc. Blu Ray was using Java for their menus. Which was money in licensing. MS wanted to make money on the discs and the licensing just like Sony. They didn't make HD DVD for any other reason than Formats. It had nothing to do with consoles other than it was an add on and a way to market HDDVD.

I have heard a lot since this gen started about how MS pushed media tv tv tv all the time. To me last gen when PS3 came out I felt like they were pushing Blu Ray Blu Ray Blu Ray instead of gaming. At least the begining half. Then they charged more for it at launch. Since Blu Ray was so new and Blu Ray players were about $500 on the cheap side back then. They probably justified the cost. Still it made it seem like it was a blu ray player first.

[Why o why]

Blu ray was utilised despite what some still cling to.

The words 'need'and 'needed' often come from the mouths of detractors when people should those words with useful and potential to improve gaming. Games were a certain size because the leap platform was limited to that size. Ms weren't even in the position to use the format they backed

Yes, Sony pushed their format but I'd much rather that and see the progress and tangible results than them back something just to stunt the growth of others. That was one expensive c block.

[joeorc]

While I see your take on things ,awareness though references other things you must take into account.

A) Sony had invested into blu-ray laser diodes since 1997. Having invested well before the playstation 3 was even in development.

B) Sony had a blu-ray disc cart recorder on the consumer market in Asia 2003 three full years before NEC & Toshiba even had one HDDVD consumer optical drive even in the market. It was not even until 2006 before Toshiba even had a consumer based HDDVD player. Not even a recorder.

Toshiba& NEC at the time wanted to have HDDVD be the standard for HD Video recordings, but 22 of the largest Optical Drive manufactured optical drive companies choose blu-ray because it was already ready.

Microsoft did not get into this until the blu-ray standards board decided to go with Java-BE instead of Microsoft's (iHD) control software, Toshiba & NEC went with iHD along with Microsoft in order to disrupt the other 22 optical drive companies backing blu-ray over HDDVD.

In 2007 NEC joined Sony in making blu-ray than that just left Toshiba itself making HDDVD by itself making the HDDVD optical drives.

Sony could not just not include Blu-ray out of the PS3, they needed a mass optical drive platform to lower costs for blu-ray in order to make sure their investment since 1997 would have paid off.

Microsoft & Toshiba had other plans. Spending all that investment since 1997, and many think Sony was not going to do what it could to keep the technology viable?

Blu-ray optical drives in the PS3 was a 2x that was a true speed optical drive it was a CLV not a CAV optical drive that means the performance was = to the speed of a 6x speed DVD drive even in some cases = to a 8x DVD optical drive in data throughput from constant read speed!

Blu-ray was a complete upgrade to optical drives , they included such for reasons that made logical choice of blu-ray a no btainer for Sony. Mainly because blu-ray was not only more mature of a technology than HDDVD, it was also cheaper to produce in the long run
25 GB single layer single sided Blu-ray disc's were going to be far cheaper than a DL- HDDVD disc vs single sided single layer /GB than HDDVD. Its like a production costs of dl-DVD vs the single side single layer CD in costs.

A single sided single layer CD is far cheaper than DL-DVD in production costs in manufacturing.

The only reason was HDDVD was even going to stay on the market as long as it did was simply Microsoft's support, the iHD control software was easier to adopt for content created over BDjava at least at first. iHD was just more mature before BD-Javas control software would be ready for blu-ray standard the hardware was on the flip side more mature for blu-ray over HDDVD. For their standards in HardWare.

[DLConspiracy]

@why

I wasn't clinging to HDDVD. I backed Blu Ray from the start. Everyone knew HDDVD wasnt going to last because how much storage it could hold was less than blu ray. My point in bringing it up is to squash the nonsense of MS made HDDVD to win a console war. That wasn't the case. It was a format war period. As I mentioned it just felt like PS3 was being pushed as a blu ray player first and a gaming platform second at the start.

@Joe

Sounds about right to me. I was referring to the fact of how the commenter Apoc made it seem a console issue than a format issue. I was also referencing the fact that both these companies push media. So I agree.

[Why o why]

Woh dlc....my comment had loads of typos and missed words.....suprised anyone could even stomach that.

Ok when I say cling to I mean that notion that blu ray wasn't needed NOT anything to do with supporting hddvd.

[quaneylfc]

Bit of a poor reaction to a good comment.

Just say "well said" don't flood the comments with faux teenage expertise.

[IamTylerDurden1]

I had that stupid hd add on, eventually i couldn't give it away.

[miyamoto]

Thursday, 30 Aug 2012 | 3:10 AM ET

Kazuo Hirai, who started as chief executive in April, told CNBC: “We need to do several things at once. The first important thing is to make sure we’re laser focused on the core business. Those areas are: gaming; the mobile space and digital imaging. A lot of the investments that we have done are in that space.”

The key word is "laser focused" and that is the PS4.

J Allard

"There was always the tension and appetite internally to try and twist Xbox into something that could help Windows be more successful. I always believed that being a smash hit for the company and building new muscles around consumer, entertainment, media and artistry was the best way to help Windows. It always felt like asking Windows to serve Xbox and Xbox to adopt Windows was a recipe to slow two great teams down and complicate two otherwise really clear businesses with different objectives."

january 23, 2016

So there you go.
Two polar opposites.

[FallenAngel1984]

It was stupid that they supported HD-DVD, especially doing it half-assedly. They didn't even have much faith in the product by not putting Xbox 360 games on HD-DVD and wanted to not be affected much if the format failed, which it did.

Everyone wanted to criticize Sony for putting Blu-Ray into every PS3, but in the long term it was a brilliant idea since it made that format standard and allowed future games to be put on the biggest physical media available.

[Volkama]

Was it a brilliant idea? The blu-ray drive was one of the primary reasons the PS3 released a year after the 360, and including it added ~£150 to the price of the console.

Sony got their control of a media format. It cost the Playstation division dearly (even though PS survived and is now flourishing again). It would only really be considered a "brilliant idea" of controlling a media format is more lucrative than a competitively priced PS3 could have been. I don't know the answer to that, but it's not blu-ray that has been keeping Sony afloat the last couple of years.

Somewhere in a parallel dimension, Sony released the PS3 with a DVD drive. In that dimension:
-The Xbox 360 struggled to break 20million lifetime sales, and MS pulled out of the console business
-The ~140million PS2 gamers almost all adopted the PS3
-Neither Blu-Ray or HD-DVD really got established as a household format and people still watch DVDs/Netflix
-The Uncharted games all ended before the introduction of their respective super-natural bulletsponge enemies, in order to fit on the DVD.

[UltraNova]

Sony, was and still is a media company as well. They always risked pushing the next standard media format with each console they made (PS1-CDs, PS2-DVDs, PS3-Blu ray) a strategy that worked each and every time, even if the ps3 didn't end up selling 150mil units, it still outsold its main competitor which had a head start, was always cheaper and had most of the early consumer mind-share for well known reasons I wont go into right now.

Since price came down rather quickly, most Ps3 issues originated mainly from increased coding difficulty devs faced and the lack of unified memory.

[sovkhan]

Well you are trying way to hard!!!

It's not the bluray integration that cost Sony so much, but the r&d and manufacturing of a new cpu. The r&d alone cost more than 400M.

It's the very reason, why all console makers are focusing on a proven all in one system (x86 architecture )or before it the ppc or arm family.

Add to that that the console comes up as a full package, if you add up the wifi, bluetooth etc...You will end up with almost the same price for the X360!!!

We won't change history here, but Ms did also pay the price for rushing the X360 out, the RRoD is a a big scar for the brand, and xbox division is yet to be profitable...But a near monopoly and some royalties poured into it make it look so!!!

[Volkama]

@UltraNova there are plenty of examples of Sony trying to launch a media format unsuccessfully as well. No doubt, it is (was?) a part of their strategy for a long time.

It might be really lucrative, or they might have been better off making sure the PS3 was as price-competitive as possible. I'm not in a position to say, I have no idea how valuable blu-ray is and has been to Sony.

None of this has anything to do with how good or bad the PS3 or the media format is, just picking up on the "brilliant idea" comment and raising some discussion around it.

[DLConspiracy]

@sovkhan

"Ms did also pay the price for rushing the X360 out, the RRoD is a a big scar for the brand"

There was some sort of anti lead solder law in some countries I've heard and they had to switch solder types last minute. It wasn't necessarily rushed out. The solder they switched to suck though and caused most of the issues.

[UltraNova]

@Volkama

Fair enough!

@DLC

This is the first time I've heard of this, care to produce a credible link?

[rainslacker]

@sov

The Cell was meant to be a fairly major advancement in computing and Sony invested in it not because of the PS line, but rather if it had gotten more acceptance, they'd be a major player in the technology.

The Cell itself was a beast of a processor, and still is at higher specs. But ultimately, devs don't really want beast, they want what they know, and not enough adoption happened across the board to make it a viable alternative outside of some very limited applications.

IBM still works on the architecture, but they do so from a standpoint of integrating it into current processors. Much of the new concept stuff we see in current processors was thought of for the CELL, and IBM and Sony are making money off those patents. It's not as much as they would have had the CELL become a common thing, but at least it's something.

Sony took the risk, but it didn't pay off for them the way they had hoped.

With Blu-Ray, they also took the risk, and included a rather expensive practically new tech which most people had never heard of, which cost them a lot of profit on the PS3. It helped them succeed in the format war, and going forward, that's good for them. Less directly, had Korean TV manufacturers not undercut Sony so much on their own TV's, they probably would have seen quite a boon from HDTV adoption, but ultimately, Sony couldn't be the one's coming up with all this tech, and at the same time profit off of it when the consumer was willing to accept something which was had perfectly acceptable(albeit not comparable) quality at 2/3-1/2 the price.

The market for electronics has changed a lot since Sony's hey-day. Sony was always a leader in the reasearch and advancement in technology, but the consumer really only cares about the price.

@Ultra

When Sony included the CD and DVD format, the prices for the hardware were already low enough to not be such an impact, but the technology was new enough that the hardware wasn't ubiquitous, so the consoles became a very good value. BR didn't have this advantage, as it wasn't ubiquitous, and was mostly completely new.

[DLConspiracy]

@UltraNova

I will provide several links.

"the console was also one of the first products that had to meet new environmental standards in Europe prohibiting the use of lead in solder."

http://www.theguardian.com/...

"The failure is from using the incorrect kind of lead-free solder, The use of lead-free solder was because of European Union requirements, for environmental reasons."

http://www.videojoes.com/3-...

"We knew it was heat related. We think it was somehow the heat coming off the GPU was drying out some of the solder, and it wasn't the normal stuff we'd used, because we had to meet European Standards and take the lead out."

http://www.eurogamer.net/ar...

There are more, but I included how to fix the 360 issue to help understand it more.

[miyamoto]

Blu-Ray was a brilliant idea , a brilliant long term investment for Sony for so many positive reasons today.

[UltraNova]

@DLC

Hmm ok. But how hard was to find a lead-free solder in the end?

[rainslacker]

When the 360 released, the laser diodes for either BR or HDDVD were extremely expensive. Even when the PS3 released the BR diodes were expensive, and the yields were not always great...and sometimes they had quality issues as well.

I'm not sure if it would have been technically possible for them to run games from the HDDVD attachment, and even if they could, it would mean segmenting the user base.

It was known before the 360 released that DVD wouldn't be a suitable medium going forward, and with MS sticking to it, they held back certain aspects of the generation which involved file sizes, and this made it's way to all the consoles. PC would have been affected by it too except it had gone mostly digital around the same time, and DVD is still a viable way to release games due to them installed from heavily compress discs...which wouldn't be practical for real time use.

In the end though, it would have extended the generation had MS or Sony waited for laser prices to reach a level where they were more practical for consoles. Sony pushed forward, and MS decided to stick with what was available cheap already in order to beat Sony to the market...although there were other circumstances which forced their hand such as the Xbox brand was not doing great to begin with, and then NVidia wanted more money for the GPU's, which put MS in a situation where they were forced to release the 360 early.

[T1ttyMunch3r]

Off topic but does anyone know how much can blurays support?

[ApocalypseShadow]

Back then, it was 5 to 10 times the size of DVD. And games on PS2 and Xbox were pushing DVD to the limit. So it made sense for a bigger format being made so that bigger games could be accessed directly from the disc.

Microsoft could have either waited for a bigger format or used HD-DVD and pushed the add-on for early adopters. But that would have split the console base of haves and have nots.so instead, games didn't fit on DVD and large DLC was created and sold to offset what PS3 did out of the box. GTA for example didn't need to be broken up on PS3. It would all fit on one bluray.

So we got developers cashing in on what would have been free on PS3 and Xbox. But Microsoft rushed to market to one up Sony. Which of course, caused RROD because of impatience. Sony didn't rush PS2 to catch Dreamcast. But Microsoft thought Sony's early lead before Xbox was why they didn't catch up.

There you go. HD-DVD was a bad idea. But good if Microsoft would have launched with it.

[Volkama]

Funny you say "Directly off the disc", that's actually one of the core weaknesses of Blu-ray for gaming. The slow read speeds are the reason so many PS3 games had mandatory installs, where the same game could be inserted and played straight from disc on the inferior DVD-based rival.

Sony didn't introduce blu-ray to the PS3 for the sake of "bigger games". They did it for the sake of boosting blu-ray adoption, so that they could get a bit of $$$ on everything that used the format.

That might be perceived as me being negative, but I'm actually personally very glad they did it. Blu-ray is still the best way to watch movies at home 10 years later. If Blu-ray didn't succeed we probably wouldn't be on the cusp of 4k blu-ray either. We'd be stuck with streaming services (with all their compression) as the best option.

[DLConspiracy]

@volkama

I agree. Games weren't even 50 gigs like they are this gen. Most games were about 4 to 6 gigs last gen. It grew as tech grew for software and games but blu rays weren't even using the entire disc most times for games.

[joeorc]

@Volkama + 4h ago
Funny you say "Directly off the disc", that's actually one of the core weaknesses of Blu-ray for gaming. The slow read speeds are the reason so many PS3 games had mandatory installs, where the same game could be inserted and played straight from disc on the inferior DVD-based rival.

No that is not completely true. For instant, it depends on many factors of the optical drive.the optical drive in the xbox360 vs the optical drive that was in the PS3 was not Apple's to Apple's first of all the optical drive in the xbox360 is a (CAV) optical drive vs the blu-ray optical drive that is inside the PS3 was in fact a (CLV) optical drive.

That is just a very important factor in determined speed of the optical drive also bit rate for both optical drives.

It had more to do with game engines at the time than the optical drives of both consoles than the fact the PS3 game engines at the time for in-house vs 3rd party were one geared for ps3 while 3rd party game engines were not constructed for the ps3 architecture. That's why there was such problems out side of 1st party vs 3rd party the optical drive of the ps3 was a (CLV) drive which is actually a benefit because its read speed was (constant) liner speed from Start to end of the read.

While CAV is not Constant read speed across the entire disc

[DLConspiracy]

25 gigs for a single layer disc and 50 gigs for a dual layer blu ray dvd. So essentially 25 gigs a layer.

[IceKoldKilla]

Exactly. Up to 128GB I think, last I checked... a few years ago.

[IceKoldKilla]

Do you know how to use Google?
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=how+mu...

[rainslacker]

In theory, or at least by current specs, it can support up to 200GB. However, I'm unaware of any 200GB disc being produced for media distribution. I believe, although I'm unsure, that the spec allows for even higher data storage, however, I'm not aware that the process or ability to handle that much data has been implemented yet.

Any movie or game released currently is either single layer or double layer, which can support 25 or 50 GB respectively.

The BR format itself was built to be able to grow as media changed, to prevent having to come out with a new format in the future which would just put people off of having to upgrade again. In theory, any BR laser can read any size disc which meets the BR spec standards, however, some players may require firmware updates should the actual media encoding change to support different resolutions or features.

[tigertron]

Sony took a huge risk, but it paid off. Microsoft were wrong to support HD-DVD.

[Gazondaily]

I wouldn't call what MS did with HD-DVD support. They dealt with it so half-arsed and then left it to die with no real effort to support it whatsoever. Silly really. Along with the HD-less console.

[Volkama]

Silly, but probably less silly than going all-in and including HD-DVD in the base console. DVD was the right choice for the 360, in terms of being competitive on price and capability.

[DragonDDark]

They were wrong to support HD-DVD. End of story.

[Gazondaily]

@Volks

Ah yeah absolutely agree. Glad the format wasn't tied into the console. And yeah DVD was the right format for the 360 for sure.

[joeorc]

@Septic + 4h ago
I wouldn't call what MS did with HD-DVD support. They dealt with it so half-arsed and then left it to die with no real effort to support it whatsoever. Silly really. Along with the HD-less console

While I do understand why Microsoft went with HDDVD, because of iHD software adoption, blu-ray had the vast majority of optical drive manufactured optical drive companies backing blu-ray & not HDDVD
It was 22 to 1

There was really no chance HDDVD was ever going to win the format war, because blu-ray was only limitation in market adoption was price but there was so many manufacturer optical drive companies making players it was only a matter of time for price parity in the market. That HDDVD price reduction could not come fast enough in time to increase its adoption rate vs blu-ray.

If Sony had not done what they did and put blu-ray into the ps3 the time would have increased the time for adoption to increase and give HDDVD Toshiba & NEC to gather more optical drive companies making HDDVD drives. But that was not the case.

It was a 22-1 in favor of blu-ray.
The chance for HDDVD to success over blu-ray was very doubtful. Toshiba loosing NEC so early really killed their only chance to beat blu-ray to the punch.

[IceKoldKilla]

Sad to think one day digital will be the way. I think physical games might exist just like CD and Vinyl with music. I want the option. It'll mean harder to find if not bought around launch, for sure. Digital has its perks. No losing games, no damaging games, easier to carry if you own many games and just wanna carry the system when traveling, etc. Now, of course the main problem is what happens if PlayStation ceases to exist one day or if they decide to stop supporting the servers that allow us to access it? Do we lose our games forever? I would like to think a heads up would be given and allow us to download them all onto storage. Let us carry the HDD or whatever around. But licenses are tricky. Maybe they'd only let us download onto one system? By that time we might have re-re-remasters or backwards compatibility for the system of that era ASSUMING consoles still exist. If the company goes under then let us download it all and let us copy & paste the files on the other consoles or storage. We'll see... in 50 years.

[RetroStory]

I really enjoyed this peice. Listening to the stories that previous and current heads at Microsoft tell about the start up of XBOX is pretty awesome. I have some great memories on both the OG Xbox and 360.

I'd love to see more interviews like this with heads from all major game companies.

[Destiny1080]

heres a interesting interview with some xbox bosses

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

Nintendo Reggie Fils-Aime

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

[mochachino]

Kinect was worse. It was the coup de grace for a lot of people that supported xbox since xbox original.

No MS funded games except Kinect games for years.

[Azzanation]

Well considering the 360 was a more successful console for most of last gen, the problem was HD-DvD had to be sold separately where as Blu-Ray was built in. Blu-Ray was pushed and forced on its customers with every PS4 sold which increased the console price by a great margin. Where as HD-DvD wasn't and was just an accessory for those wanting to watch HD movies.

If HD-DvD was built into the 360, then we might of had a different format today. I never owned one either.