Steve Ballmer confirmed to Gizmodo that they will be adding a Blu-ray device to the Xbox 360.

When I asked Ballmer about adding Blu-ray to the Xbox, he said:

Well I don’t know if we need to put Blu-ray in there—you’ll be able to get Blu-ray drives as accessories.

Though he says it with certitude, the timing of any kind of Blu-ray accessory is unclear.

Source

This is yet another victory for Sony.  The year of the PS3 continues…

Microsoft continues to show why they’re the laughing stock of the industry. Forza 3 is scheduled to appear sometime next year, but unfortunately it will be appearing on 2 discs. It’s going to be fun listening to the horde of Xbox fanatics that will justify switching discs mid-way through a race.

Perhaps someone should have notified Microsoft that they should be progressive with their design by implementing an industry standard Blu-Ray drive with the Xbox 360 instead of the archaic DVD standard they embraced for their premature next-gen system.

Paramount Home Entertainment has revealed the specs for the upcoming Blu-ray release of Michael Bay’s blockbuster hit ‘Transformers’, due to hit store shelves on September 2nd. On this two disc special edition, video will be presented in 2.35:1 1080p AVC and be accompanied by both a 5.1 PCM and 5.1 Dolby TrueHD lossless soundtracks.

Extras for the release are massive, and include:

Commentary: Commentary by Director Michael Bay
Featurette: OUR WORLD:
Featurette: The Story Sparks HD
Featurette: Human Allies HD
Featurette: I Fight Giant Robots HD
Featurette: Battleground HD
Featurette: THEIR WAR:
Featurette: Rise of the Robots HD
Featurette: Autobots Roll Out HD
Featurette: Decepticons Strike HD
Featurette: Inside the AllSpark HD
Featurette: Transformers Tech Inspector (TBD) HD
Trailers: TRAILERS (will play after the feature via a menu)
Trailers: Iron Man Trailer HD
Featurette: MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
Trailers: Transformers Teaser Trailer HD
Trailers: Rise of the Autobots HD
Other: Transformers H.U.D. (Heads Up Display)
Other: BD-Live Features (TBD)
Featurette: From Script to Sand: The Skorponok Desert Attack HD
Featurette: Concepts HD
Trailers: Trailers HD:
Trailers: Teaser Trailer 1 HD
Trailers: Theatrical Trailer 2 HD
Trailers: Theatrical Trailer 4 HD
Easter Eggs: EASTER EGGS:
Easter Eggs: Michael Bay Cameo HD
Easter Eggs: Girl in Dress HD
Easter Eggs: Bay Bot HD
Easter Eggs: Casting Mojo HD

Sorry HD-DVD and DVD owners…

http://www.toshiba.co.jp/about/press/2008_02/pr_j1903.htm

Toshiba Announces Discontinuation of HD DVD Businesses

19 February, 2008

Company Remains Focused on Championing Consumer Access to High Definition Content

TOKYO–Toshiba Corporation today announced that it has undertaken a thorough review of its overall strategy for HD DVD and has decided it will no longer develop, manufacture and market HD DVD players and recorders. This decision has been made following recent major changes in the market. Toshiba will continue, however, to provide full product support and after-sales service for all owners of Toshiba HD DVD products.

HD DVD was developed to offer consumers access at an affordable price to high-quality, high definition content and prepare them for the digital convergence of tomorrow where the fusion of consumer electronics and IT will continue to progress.

“We carefully assessed the long-term impact of continuing the so-called ‘next-generation format war’ and concluded that a swift decision will best help the market develop,” said Atsutoshi Nishida, President and CEO of Toshiba Corporation. “While we are disappointed for the company and more importantly, for the consumer, the real mass market opportunity for high definition content remains untapped and Toshiba is both able and determined to use our talent, technology and intellectual property to make digital convergence a reality.”

Toshiba will continue to lead innovation, in a wide range of technologies that will drive mass market access to high definition content. These include high capacity NAND flash memory, small form factor hard disk drives, next generation CPUs, visual processing, and wireless and encryption technologies. The company expects to make forthcoming announcements around strategic progress in these convergence technologies.

Toshiba will begin to reduce shipments of HD DVD players and recorders to retail channels, aiming for cessation of these businesses by the end of March 2008. Toshiba also plans to end volume production of HD DVD disk drives for such applications as PCs and games in the same timeframe, yet will continue to make efforts to meet customer requirements. The company will continue to assess the position of notebook PCs with integrated HD DVD drives within the overall PC business relative to future market demand.

This decision will not impact on Toshiba’s commitment to standard DVD, and the company will continue to market conventional DVD players and recorders. Toshiba intends to continue to contribute to the development of the DVD industry, as a member of the DVD Forum, an international organization with some 200 member companies, committed to the discussion and defining of optimum optical disc formats for the consumer and the related industries.

Toshiba also intends to maintain collaborative relations with the companies who joined with Toshiba in working to build up the HD DVD market, including Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, and DreamWorks Animation and major Japanese and European content providers on the entertainment side, as well as leaders in the IT industry, including Microsoft, Intel, and HP. Toshiba will study possible collaboration with these companies for future business opportunities, utilizing the many assets generated through the development of HD DVD.

In a stunning, but not surprising, announcement early Friday afternoon, Warner ended the format wars by vowing exclusive support to Sony’s Blu-Ray format. The details of this announcement are sure to resonate across the industry as Blu-Ray now holds 80% of the studio support, leaving Universal and Paramount the only studios left on HD-DVDEAD’s payroll.

Luckily for HD movie fans, Warner sided with logic rather than moneyhats that Micro$oft uses in their subversive attempt at stifling the adoption of HD movies. Warner, keenly aware of Micro$oft’s motivations in supporting HD-DVDEAD, sees that the future of creating one format for the next-generation optical disc format is crucial to sustaining the $40 billion dollar industry. They understand that Micro$oft never wanted a clear HD victor; rather, they wanted to make sure that Blu-Ray would never become popular, thus undermining one of the main strengths of the Playstation 3 and keeping consumers away from the product. Once the stalemate was assured, Micro$oft would attept to woo studios over to their failed digital distribution plans. Warner made the right move by turning down over $500 million dollars in moneyhats from Micro$oft and effectively ended the format war, free of charge, in Sony’s favor.

And who can blame them? Only Micro$oft shills supported HD-DVDEAD from the start. It’s not rocket science to see that Blu-Ray is the true successor to DVD: it sports pristine 1080p quality that is delivered through 50 GBs of data and 54 Mbs bitrate while HD-DVDEAD was a stillborn format with specifications that barely beat out DVD — only a paltry 30 GBs of data and 36 Mbs. Moreover, Sony has always had the majority of studio support on their side: Sony, MGM, Lionsgate, Fox, Disney, and now Warner. The trojan horse of the Playstation 3 has compelled the industry to support Blu-Ray in record numbers as the onslaught of the new media format outpaced its rival by more than 2:1.

The Micro$oft shills kept on proclaiming the next big thing would win the war — “Chinese players”, they said, would mark the end of Blu-Ray and victory for Micro$oft. Once the Chinese players never materialized, the roaring crowd of mouthbreathing Micro$oft shills proclaimed that “Paramount will decide the war”, and so Transformers and Shrek came and went with HD-DVDEAD never managing to outpace Blu-Ray for a single week. After this failure, the fans yet again stated that “$99 dollar HD-DVDEAD players would win the war”, and so we saw that standalone Blu-Ray player, despite being priced far above their HD-DVDEAD counterparts, outsold the competition in December.

Make no mistake about it — HD-DVDEAD was truly HD-DOA. Blu-Ray outsold the now confirmed dead format 52-0 this year. That’s right — Blu-Ray won every single week of ’07 in terms of media sales. The writing was on the wall. You truly do have to laugh at the clowns that decided to buy into the whole “360 add on”. What a waste.

This revelation made such an impact on the industry that HD-DVDEAD has canceled its HD-DVDEAD CES 2008 press conference, likely in preparation of raising a white flag. In the coming weeks and months you will see Universal go neutral, Paramount find a backdoor clause in their contract so they can abandon the dead format, retailers abandoning red covered titles in order to make space for their superior blu counterparts, and the industry will be in harmony once again with Sony as their leader.

It’s been an amazing ride so far in ’07, but for the new year Sony has already started out with a bang — a bang that has killed their biggest rival and set the path for over $20 billion dollars in potential profits from their Blu-Ray incentives. With the killer lineup of exclusive Playstation 3 titles in ’08 coupled with the victorious format in Blu-Ray, Sony is poised to reclaim not only the next-gen media throne, but also crowned in the videogame arena. We are one step closer to Micro$oft’s inevitable death in the console arena, and we couldn’t be more pleased.

The spiderman series sold 225,000+ units on Blu-Ray this week, an extremely impressive showing for the Blu camp. Meanwhile, HD-DOA with its firesale of the unsuccessful A2 Brand, couldn’t even manage to put up a better fight.

Next week is Ratatouille and Cars, which will provide yet another devastating blow to the stop-gap format known as HD-DOA.

Recently Toshiba decided to opt out of the high definition market when they put their A2 line of HD-DOA players on clearance throughout walmarts across the country. This lead other retail outlets such as Best Buy and Circuit City to start selling the HD-DOA player at clearance prices as well in order to clear out inventory for DVD’s true successor, Blu-Ray.

While it’s not surprising to see Toshiba release their players at a clearance price, SDF did not expect the decision to come so soon. Perhaps after the news that Transformers did nothing to stimulate interest in the dying HD-DOA brand, they felt hopeless up against the release of Spider man 1, Spiderman 2, Spiderman 3, Ratatouille, Cars, Pixar’s Short Film Collection, the Die Hard series, and Pirates 3.

With the remaining HD-DOA players leaving the shelves, this will allow retailers to clear up valuable space for Blu-Ray players and the extensive Blu-Ray software lineup. This act of desperation on behalf of Toshiba only spells immediate doom for the already dead and dying format.

Luckily, consumers are smarter than to pick up HD-DOA players at anything more than the prices they’re now being offered at. Nobody in their right mind wants to be stuck with an inferior stop-gap format that can only support 30 GB discs, 36 Mbs, and feature weak studio support. Playstation 3 will steamroll the competition this season with their competitive $399 SKU and will provide consumers the only true way of playing movies that feature: 1080p, 7.1 lossless, 50 GB discs, 54 Mbs, and a stellar lineup of movies.

Live report from Capcom Gamer’s Day in London, Capcom announces Lost Planet: Definitive Edition for PS3:

- Available early 2008
- All bonus characters from PC version
- All downloadable content from X360 version
- All extra content made possible thanks to Blu-Ray
- 16 player multiplayer on dedicated servers on PSN

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Don’t say we didn’t warn you. It seems the developer of Assassin’s Creed is having trouble squeezing in all the game data onto a DVD. It looks like PS3 fans score another victory with yet another superior 3rd party port. I wonder what features they’ll have to cut out to get the game on the DVD? Will the 360 version run in sub-HD resolutions like Halo 3 and other 360 titles?

The game’s creative director, Patrice Desilets, told Pro-G in an interview that one of the biggest challenges the team is currently facing is fitting everything into a 360 DVD disc compared with Sony’s Blu-ray format.
[...]
“Right now we have a big challenge on the 360 to make it fit on a DVD, to put five languages, to put all the data on eight gigs. On the Blu-ray side we’re really good, but then the memory is quite different. “

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