Why Microsoft Chose HD DVD over Blu-ray for Xbox 360

[Weapon 117]

César Menendez, a member of the Xbox Global Marketing team, was curious about Microsoft’s decision to develop an external drive that employs the HD DVD format instead of Blu-ray Disc. That’s why he took the time to contact the team at the Xbox Advanced Hardware Group to find out about Microsoft’s preference for HD DVD.

He posted his finding at the team’s Gamerscore blog:

Why HD DVD? Why not Blu-Ray? (for the purpose of this post, I’ll lovingly call it ‘Beta-ray’)

I found out a few interesting things on why we’re so confident of HD DVD:

Price: One company out there has a $1,800 Beta-ray player (no release date) – one that doesn’t even play CDs! For 1,800, you could get a $500 Toshiba player, and about 40 HD movies.

Industry support: Looks like the pendulum is swinging back in HD-DVD’s favor. As an analyst quoted in the article says: “It's only a matter of time before people start backing out of the Blu-ray camp." If that’s the case, it might be because of. . .

Beta-ray’s own difficulties: Microsoft had serious doubts around the technical feasibility and pricing of Beta-ray for some time and our fears now seem well founded. Sony is hinting PS3 will be delayed because of Beta-ray, and that’s with Sony driving the Beta-ray standards. If even Sony can’t get it to work right, it raises lots of questions. A little reported fact (and one that the New York Times was confused about) is that the first Beta-ray discs will actually hold less: only 25GB compared to HD DVD’s 30GB. That means less room for high definition extras and interactive features, which HD DVD says they fully intend to support.

[Finjitzu]

The most likely reason is that Sony is the manufacture of Blue Ray discs. Microsoft will not help Sony making their new discs a standard.
I have read this article about the 'real reason'

Microsoft dosen't back Blu-Ray because it wants it to fail. But HD-DVD only has two real big supporters, Intel and Microsoft. They would rather provide some compitition to Blu-Ray with HD-DVD. But with only two supporters HD-DVD will probably fail as well.

So if both formats fail who wins?

Microsoft and Intel.

EA just made an announcement that media distribution will be obsolete in 10 years, favoring digital distirbution. Downloading will take over the discs. What do you use to download? Computers. Who are the two largest PC companies? Microsoft and Intel.

It makes perfect sense, get ride of the disc's and get everyone downloading, games and movies. Apple did it for music. Why can't microsoft do it for movies.

If both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD fail then the door will be open for downloadable content.

[Phaethon360]

I don't think they'll fail. Many people thought that DVDs would fail, and look how dumb they look now. HD-DVD has the price advantage, and I think that will give it an edge as far as stand alone players go. For everyone other than 360 owners, the add-on wont entice anyone, might not even entice 360 owners. An ugly, box infront or behind of my sleek console. Add-ons always fail on consoles.

Blu-Ray has size and image resolution on its side, and it has the PS3 on its side as well. Not to mention more than twice the hollywood supporters than HD-DVD. 25gig on one layer. They have to get it straight. 50gig will be its current constraint AS OF NOW. Sony is working on quad layer discs, and so far they have successfully written 100gig to a disc. Not to mention it supports 1080p. Sony has a clear advantage as far as getting the blu-ray media to more people than HD-DVDs with the 360 and Stand-alone players combined; the PS3. Keeping the Blu-Ray player in the PS3 will not raise the price as much as many would say, due to the fact that the Cell Chip and RSX replaced the majority of the parts required for a stand-alone Blu-Ray player to function.

As the HD-DVD market will unveil its 360 addon and $500 standalone players, many will opt for the better format at the same price by going for the PS3. Whether or not the laser will burn out 5hrs into reading those discs, is another story :P.

Either way, I think it will end up being up to the consumer's knowledge, and their HD setups. I don't think that image resolution will matter to someone who's DLP monitor only supports 720p, therefore they may go for HD-DVD. Someone who wants more on a disc (assuming blu-ray will offer more on a disc than HD-DVDs do) will go Blu-Ray. And then, a cheap ass who wants a new console and high def movies will most like go Xbox 360 or PS3.

I fall into the cheap ass category :P.