Microsoft sure has a crack team of wordsmiths in their PR department.
We do not believe the recent reports about HD DVD will have any material impact on the Xbox 360 platform or our position in the marketplace. As we’ve long stated, we believe it is games that sell consoles and Xbox 360 continues to have the largest next-gen games library with the most exclusives and best selling games in the industry. We will wait until we hear from Toshiba before announcing any specific plans around the Xbox 360 HD DVD player. HD DVD is one of the several ways we offer a high definition experience to consumers and we will continue to give consumers the choice to enjoy digital distribution of high definition movies and TV shows directly to their living room along with playback of the DVD movies they already own.
Downloadable content FTW!
All 360 are on regular DVD, of course they don’t care. Just like the PS3, playing HD movies on their console is a perk…except a perk that doesn’t come automatically with the console.
You are right about Microsoft having a poor PR department, but I assure you that they very much do care about HD DVD in the departments that are assigned to hi-def. It is not uncommon that one division of a large company has no idea what another is doing.
Last November and December, they had a program where they trying to find out why HD DVD combos were failing.
They ask for defective combos to be sent to them and they would analyze them and replace them with new copies for free. About 78 folks took them up on the deal. I sent them one (the only one that I ever had a problem with) and they sent me a new one.
Unfortunately, that one also had the same problem. So they asked if they could replace my Toshiba XA2, which they did! They used my old one in their tests.
This is Microsoft that I’m talking about, not Toshiba or Universal. Now why would they do a thing like that unless they really, really cared about the future of the format?