Blu-ray drives for your Xbox 360 console, finally

Apr 2, 2008 06:24 GMT  ·  By

Ever since Bill Gates had a speech at CES this January, people started to talk about a new Xbox console, but Microsoft insisted and kept saying "No!". Still, things have changed, since the High Definition war got a winner, Toshiba kissed goodbye the HD-DVD format and the Blu-ray Discs danced in jubilation. This meant that Microsoft had to change their strategy a little bit - and a lot of contradictory official opinions surfaced the Internet: one second the company was willing to begin talks with Sony, the next second they weren't even thinking about it.

Well, it seems that Microsoft has finally made up its mind and decided that the only way to win this war is by adopting the Blu-ray format, so it has contacted a worldwide known peripheral manufacturer - Lite On - and they quickly started building Blu-ray discs for the Microsoft Xbox 360. This further means that the Xbox will get a step ahead of the PlayStation, since the implementation of Blu-ray discs is considered by many a huge and really important change. Digital Digest had the first information about Microsoft's decision, and they even announced that Lite On will begin shipping the drives to Microsoft by the end of the year.

Of course, as much as we'd like to tell you this is 100% percent true, we can't - there were no official statements regarding this, but they will most likely appear later today or by the end of the week. Still, I am sure you agree that switching the Xbox 360 to the Blu-ray format was probably the only thing left for Microsoft to do. We only wonder how did they manage to negotiate with Sony (because they most likely did) without a single leak until now - because I really doubt they would start building on the Blu-ray drives for the Xbox 360 without reaching an agreement with Sony.

So... what's your opinion? A war-winning move from Microsoft?