Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Gates announces Xbox 360 HD-DVD drive

During tonight's Consumer Electronics Show (CES) keynote, Microsoft's Bill Gates announced an external HD-DVD drive will be coming for the Xbox 360 in 2006.

The high-definition DVD wars are proceeding in earnest at CES, where Sony already announced the first 20 Sony-backed Blu-Ray format movies, and Toshiba announcing the first 2 consumer Toshiba-backed HD-DVD players.

I think it's good that Microsoft's giving Xbox 360 owners a way to play HD-DVD movies, but what I don't want from my 360 is another PC, with a ton of USB peripherals hanging off of it. And I'm concerned about the additional cost for developers and publishers. If they have a ton of HD content, are they going to have to press multiple Xbox 360 versions -- multiple standard Xbox 360 DVDs, and an HD-DVD version?

What I would like to see Microsoft do is extend their wireless controller protocol to peripherals like HD-DVD players and such; that would be useful ...

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