Xbox 360 External HD DVD? Not in Asia.
- August 29th, 2006
- Read 3189 times
- 1 Comment
According to DigiTimes, the forthcoming Xbox 360 external HD DVD will not be made available in Asia. Microsoft Asia has claimed that due to a lack of HD DVD movies on the continent, the external drive will not be made available in Asia, at least for now.
I thought HD DVD was being added mainly to expand gaming functionality, not just to add the support of HD DVD movie playback. This seems a little peculiar to me, but at least for once we’re getting something Asia isn’t. Anyone care to chime in with potential conspiracy theories and/or sinister plots?
Microsoft Taiwan: Xbox 360 external HD-DVD drives will not be available in Asia [DigiTimes Systems]
LKM (Who am I?)
1 year ago
>I thought HD DVD was being added
> mainly to expand gaming functionality
That would be the worst idea ever. In the whole history of console gaming, only two add-ons have ever been (moderately) successfull: Sony’s dual-analog controller for the PS (which was available pretty quickly and was then bundled with the console), and the memory expansion for the N64 (which was bundled with some games, I think) - at least I can’t think of any other successfull add-ons. For example, all CD drives for cartridge-based consoles failed. The reason is that the whole point of a console is to have unified hardware. You don’t want to split the people who own your console into two groups. You don’t want your customers to shell out money so they can buy games (since that’s where you make money). You don’t want to create games that only some of the Xbox owners can play.
Add-ons for consoles are a lose-lose-lose situation.
The HD-DVD add-on has never been about gaming. It’s always been about fighting Bluray on the movie front, bringing cheap HD-DVD movie playing capability to Xbox owners.