Microsoft Games' Global Marketing team has released another statement regarding the HD-DVD format and placed the final nail in the coffin. There will no longer be newly manufactured HD-DVD add-ons for the Xbox 360, though warranties are still good while they last. Head over to the full article for more details.

 

It can be recalled that around January last year, it was suggested by Microsoft's Peter Moore that the company might be willing to adapt to consumer needs. He hinted that the Blu-ray drive might be a possibility. Well, back then he was "overridden" by Microsoft. The company noted in a statement:

Microsoft firmly stands behind the HD-DVD format as the best choice for our consumers. As we've said before, we're confident that HD-DVD will bring the excitement of high definition movies to the consumer faster and at a greater value.

Well, Moore was overridden a year ago, and in light of Niel Thompson's comments last March and Peter Moore's "Xbox 360 flexibility" comments at CES in January of this year, it seems that Blu-ray support is again, getting the boot.  Microsoft notes in it's Gamerscore marketing blog:

We firmly stand behind the HD DVD format as the best choice for consumers. Current reports indicating that Microsoft has a back-up plan, which includes Blu-ray support are incorrect.  We’re fully committed to HD DVD and have absolutely no plans to support other optical formats.

Perhaps Microsoft should handle this PR problem at the root, and perhaps they should talk to their execs and tell people like Xbox UK Boss Neil Thompson to refrain from saying things like "Whatever format wins it is highly likely we will offer a solution."

That way the HD DVD Gods (the ones that hate that bloody hex-code) won't get angry at them.

I'm sure everyone of you would've noticed the recent bit of news floating around everywhere that Microsoft was planning to integrate the HD-DVD drive into the console itself. While the idea itself is great, the Gamerscore blog has flatly denied any thought of having an internal HD-DVD drive.

The blog entry stated that while they would add the HD-DVD player as an addon/accessory this holiday season, they didn't want to burden every customer with the cost of expensive technology which few people wanted to adopt at this time. There are lots of ways to spend your hard-earned money on an Xbox 360 this holiday season, and they want to leave that decision up to you. If you want to spend your money on the latest blockbuster titles, fine; you want to spend it on the entire Arcade library, it's still fine. The point they're willing to make is that they don't want to force every consumer to buy a nascent technology which is useless without further investments like HDTVs.

Well, we guess it's fine in a way...I was gonna buy an HD-DVD player anyways, so it would've been great to see that functionality built into the console itself. But then, some of you might not want to spend much on next-gen media formats, so this announcement would make them happy I guess. Anyways, stay tuned for the latest.