Steve Ballmer Says Microsoft Will Support Blu-ray
By Chris on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 9:22 AM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Hardware, Microsoft, Microsoft
If there was any strand of doubt still lingering as to whether or not Microsoft plans on supporting Blu-ray now that HD DVD is dead and buried, the company’s chief executive, Steve Ballmer, went ahead and laid things out very clearly at the Mix08 conference.
“We’ve already been working on, for example, in Windows, device driver support for Blu-ray drives and the like, and I think the world moves on. Toshiba has moved on. We’ve moved on, and we’ll support Blu-ray in ways that make sense,” he said.
He didn’t go into any specific plans and there was no mention of how the Xbox 360 would be involved – if at all – but this confirms that Sony and Microsoft are talking about Blu-ray, as Sony’s Stan Glasgow stated last week.
My prediction is that we’ll have a Blu-ray add-on for the 360 by this fall, with a new high-end SKU (replacing the Elite, perhaps?) with a built-in Blu-ray drive by the end of the year.
This is the only thing that made business sense for Microsoft. All the friggin’ fanboys that were on their “oooo, Microsoft hates Sony, they would never support Blu-ray” horse completely missed the point that this is about business, not about d*** measuring or bragging rights. Microsoft was always going to make the smart business decision, and supporting the ‘winning’ hi-def format was the smart business decision.
Sucks that HD-DVD is dead. I can’t wait for them to hack Blu-ray again.