XBOX 360 HD-DVD player add-on
 

I do not have the link but there is going to be a Hd-DVD player add-on for the Xbox 360 and it is only $200.00.

There may have been a post about this somewhere else but I wanted to bring up an interesting point that was brought up on HDforIndies.



I guess to date there has been 6 million XBOX360 systems sold.

Both systems meaning the XBOX360 with the HD-DVD drive and the PS3 with it's bilt in Blu-ray drive will cost around the same so for new buyers it is kind of a toss up which one they would rather have.

What I find interesting however is the total amount of XBOX360 systems sold to date. When christmas comes this year there are already 6 million people out there that now only have to spend $200 to be able to watch HD movies. The PS3 people will have to fork over a cold $600 to watch HD movies. That means HD-DVD could very well have 6 million new users when SONY just gets started with the PS3. For 6 million people it is going to be hard to justify buying yet another $600 system when they already have a XBOX 360.

I still think these systems are over priced for people to go out and buy one on a whim. It isn't like the old days when people had extra money and only needed to go out and buy a system for less than $200.00. Today the world costs more but people do not make more compared to how much things cost. $600 is a lot for the average Joe to go out and buy just because his kid got a good report card in school. I do not think the PS3 will sell like hotcakes as much as SONY would like to think.

With that said 6 million people already own a XBOX 360 and $200 for a Hd-DVD add-on isn't a bad price for a christmas present.

further thoughts on this
 

Tons o'thoughts on this over at:

http://www.hdforindies.com/2006/09/m...dvd-price.html

...including 26 comments as I write this post here.

Basically, yeah, it is an influence, but what are the attach rates, what difference will it make, what are the expected sales rates of both systems, how constrained will they both be during the holiday rush, what are the relative merits of the two formats, etc. etc. etc.

-mike

The low end version of the PS3 will be priced at around 410 to 425 dollars in Japan and it was confirmed by Sony that it will have HDMI output just like the 600 dollar model. This makes the PS3 a much better value.

Also the games are multi-region.

XBOX360 has the head start, but let's not underestimate the PS3. Sure, it will only cost $200 more to add the HD-DVD add-on for the XBOX, but current users already spent $400+ on the console so there wasn't any cost advantage overall.

I was in Circuit City today and I saw dozens of blu-ray movie titles. They were placed near the entrance so the marketing is heating up. And Blu-ray recorders and media are in retail stores, too.

I'm not favoring Blu-ray but this has been my observation in stores.

Add-ons have never been popular for game systems, at least not for Sega and Microsoft may suffer the same fate. The games on the PS3 can be extremely massive. You have about 9 gigs of storage for XBOX 360 games and 50 gigs of storage for PS3 games. That is a very big difference.

Correct, add-ons of this type have generally been a miserable failure. PS3 is poised to squash the 360, we'll see if they deliver.



ash =o)

I've noticed this over the past couple weeks at all my local Best Buy, CC, Ultimate Electronics, etc... These stores are really pushing Blu-Ray. Most have pushed HD-DVD off to the side in favor of Blu-Ray and I don't know if Sony is applying more pressure or if there's greater incentive (profit margins) for the retail chains with Blu-Ray or what. But for some reason, it seems to be getting the royal treatment compared to HD-DVD lately. I've noticed a lot of others commenting online that they're seeing the same thing in other areas. Hmmmm.... I've also noticed that my local BestBuy is selling Blu-Ray movies about $8 cheaper on average than HD-DVD titles. And I overheard both a regular BB employee as well as one of their Magnolia operatives telling different customers that Blu-Ray is better and even though the players are twice as expensive [as HD-DVD], that with the cheaper disc prices, if you buy 30 movies or more, the price difference is essentially negated. Of course, anyone with a rudimentary set of math skills would realize that it would take about 63 movies with an $8 average difference to make up for the difference in player cost, but hey that's retail marketing at work...

Sony marketing dollars at work?
 

Jeff -

I wonder if, and I have no hard data, Sony is paying for placement, or offering spiffs, or other sales enticements to the staff at the big box retailers? Certainly the possibility of higher profit (margin and gross) would be of interest to the big box retailers. Anybody have any hard data on any of this?

-mike

Yeah I talked to the guy at Best Buy where I recently bought a DLP HDTV. When HD-DVD came out first they had those but as soon as the first Blu-ray players came out the HD-DVD display just totally went away. You really had to try hard and ask a lot of people in order to find the HD-DVD player which they had crammed in the section that looked like a dark alley.

He said SONY must really be pushing this new format but he himself told me he didn't see what the big deal was. He was actually recommending people wait until next year to see how things go. He did say that he was kind of upset about this whole format war and sees no reason for it at all. It just makes his job harder and puts places like Best Buy in the front of confusing the consumers and trying to clear everything up as to why there are two formats.

The contest between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is far from over.

As of right now, Toshiba has completely sold out of its current range of players. HD-DVD software is outselling Blu-ray software by a factor of 11:1. HD-DVD titles are regularly in the Top 50 DVD chart on Amazon.com - Blu-ray titles aren't.

The supremely lacklustre MPEG2 Blu-ray titles coupled with the disappointing Samsung launch player have actually pushed many of the purists away from BD altogether and taken them to the HD-DVD camp. The purists' fave movie - The Fifth Element - looks so poor that the Superbit DVD release isn't a million miles away quality-wise. Generally speaking, right now, HD-DVD has better picture quality and better extras. The technologically inferior format is miles ahead of its competition.

Sony/Madison's sales agent tried to get me to take a month's free trial of the Blu-Print BD authoring tool... and I refused as it *still* doesn't mux anything other than MPEG2, so assuming Sony is using their own authoring tool, all the Sony releases for the time being will continue to be encoded into MPEG2.

So, onto PS3.

The lack of blue laser diodes has caused the November worldwide launch to be split - PlayStation's biggest market, Europe, won't get the machine now until March 2007. Production targets for the launch in November have been cut to 25% of the initial total. The likes of Panasonic and Pioneer are having to delay the launch of their own players because PS3 is getting all the blue laser diodes.

And of course, there is no guarantee at all that PS3 owners will be fervent Blu-ray movie buyers as it is, after all, primarily a games console.

The one advantage you can say with the 360 HD-DVD add-on is that it's being bought purely for movie playback, so there will be an attach rate in terms of movie software being purchased. Its pricepoint also makes it a cheap way for 360 owners on the fence about the whole HD 'thing' to sample the software and see how it looks.

Now, I am not saying for one moment that HD-DVD does not have its problems - the lack of hardware production partners along with key studios that have not committed is clearly an issue. I am merely trying to introduce some facts and balance the opinion expressed in this thread.

Personally from where I'm sitting I think that Sony is adopting a very risky strategy. They're betting the farm on a games machine being used as a movie player. The standalone players are twice the price of the standalone HD-DVD players, and they're being delayed and released in smaller numbers because of PS3. And as a game machine, here in the UK, the 'cheap' PS3 is almost twice the price of the cheap 360.

Blu-ray should in theory be the winner of this format war, but it seems to me that Sony is doing everything in its power to make things as difficult for itself as possible. Its one key advantage is support from Sony movies studios (duh!), Fox and Disney. But these people are looking to make money. If HD-DVD continues its current momentum, and PS3 isn't getting supreme attachment rates as a movie player, it will make no sense for the studios to reconsider their allegiances.

The games are indeed multi-region but the Blu-ray movies are not. Conversely, an Xbox 360 owner can buy an HD-DVD add-on from any region in the world and it will work on his machine - and crucially, so will any HD-DVD from any region in the world too. In terms of game software, just about any game that isn't from Microsoft, Capcom or EA is region-free too, and I daresay that Microsoft would pressure them to go region-free if it gave 360 a level playing field with PS3.

While the DVD Forum may introduce HD-DVD region coding at some point, it cannot be retroactively installed on the current HD-DVD players, which will all remain region free.

Another HD-DVD curiosity: some titles which are BD exclusive in the USA - including some Sony titles - will be released on HD-DVD in Europe (as distribution rights differ in various regions). Based just on the UK launch titles for HD-DVD, there are six titles which 'should' be Blu-ray exclusive, with thanks to the AVSForum for the cut 'n' paste:

3 movies from New Line: Domino, Nightmare On Elm Street, Take the Lead
2 movies from Lions Gate: Saw, Saw II,
2 movies from Sony: Donnie Brasco, Basic Instinct 2
1 movie from Buena Vista/Disney: Valiant

Well said Richard. Also note the high-capacity Blu-Ray disks have not materialized and have been saddled with mpeg2, whereas the HD-DVD titles are VC1 encoded onto currently higher capacity disks, and you have one possible explanation for the reported better picture quality of HD-DVD.

As you noted, the problem for HD-DVD remains perceptive and the lack of player manufacuring partners.

adding that reputation of sony sunk with the battery recall case.
seems Sony made too many mistakes a looks like a greedy company now.
HD-DVD is not linked to a name like blu-ray is linked to sony.
people likes to choose, and i do not think sony will have any success in "branding" movies like Apple made it for music with ipod.
If by any chance they were able to flood the market with cheap blu-ray reader, they would have a chance, but it seems this will not happen.
my opinion is that blu-ray is dead already and hd-dvd will be a limited success.
people do not need discs to read movies (even in HD). they download from internet, copy from cable TV, or satellite channel, burn on DVD, store on hard disk or even on HDV tape.
They do not care about this silly war of format.

Sony is following the same strategy as PS2. When the PS2 launched it was one of THE cheapest DVD players and for the first year, that is what MOST people used the PS2 for. I think they averaged 1.6 games sold for every unit sold...

I dont think either side will win, right now, people dont care about HD movies, the difference at normal viewing distances between 480P and 1080i is not even detectible by most, add a $150 upconverting DVD player and you really are talking video-philes as the only people who will notice much difference.

Blueray has the PS3, data burning, etc. behind it. The sales numbers are 99% meaningless right now. Almost everyone who is planning on blueray is waiting for PS3, period endstop. There are only a handful of supergeek, wealth technofiles who bought the first gen players.


ash =o)

I’m sorry that I had to bring this thread back from the dead but here is an article.

XBox HD-DVD comes at a heavy price
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=35551

I hope Microsoft release a new XBOX360 in a few Months because their current one had too many problems and it lacks an HDMI input. Its amazing that the fate of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray lies with the XBOX360 and the Sony PlayStation 3. Both companies know that fully well.

If I can magically make my college loan disappear then I wouldn’t mind owning both of them.