Xbox 360 HD DVD drive to cost just $200?

Well, well, isn't this a pleasant surprise. With prices for Microsoft's impending Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on having being quoted as high as $500, it's certainly reassuring to hear DigiTimes confirm reports that the movie-playing optical drive will cost just $200 at its holiday release. Now it's not clear if this will be the price for stand-alone units or those that come as part of a "value" bundle (perhaps the one that Richard Teversham recently referred to?), but either way, the low cost would definitely help reinvigorate interest in the 360 in the face of fresh competition from Sony and Nintendo. So please, Microsoft, do us cash-strapped gamers a favor and make this happen -- we promise that we won't even feel too guilty if you're taking a huge loss on the hardware.

[Via HDBeat]

[James @ Aug 14th 2006 6:45PM]

Why would it be a huge loss? The is strictly a HD-DVD ROM drive and not a burner. We all know ROM drives are much cheaper than recorders when they first come out.

[Joshua Ochs @ Aug 14th 2006 6:48PM]

Since when has DigiTimes gotten anything correct? These are the guys who post wild and outlandish Mac rumors and "confirmed specs" only to be wrong time and time again.

[Jonathan Keim @ Aug 14th 2006 6:49PM]

The Hd-dvd player (not burner) from toshiba is $500

[Craig reidel @ Aug 14th 2006 6:53PM]

Remember when people said the price of the PS3 was too high?

Xbox Pro $399 + HDDVD drive $200 = $599.

PS3 w/BluRay = $599

Things that make you go hmmmmmm.

[weatherman @ Aug 14th 2006 6:59PM]

Craig: and you're forgetting the fact that you get a bigger HD and WiFi in the $600 PS3. Actually if you wanted to do an apples-to-apples comparison, you'd be better comparing XBox 360 + HD-DVD = $600, against the PS3 "Core" = $500.

[Sinclair @ Aug 14th 2006 7:03PM]

"Remember when people said the price of the PS3 was too high?
Xbox Pro $399 + HDDVD drive $200 = $599.
PS3 w/BluRay = $599
Things that make you go hmmmmmm."
The difference is M.S I'm not beeing forced to pay for the HD-dvd drive. So lets see spend 600 bucks for a ps3 and get a drive I could care less about or spend 399 on a xbox 360 and save 200 bucks.

[Craig Reidel @ Aug 14th 2006 7:06PM]

Sinclair

Of course, but I was just trying to compare if you want to play HD movies on your next-gen system. No doubt the Xbox is the cheaper game system, but if you want to play HD movies, it's a level playing field (if the rumor is true).

[Archer @ Aug 14th 2006 7:07PM]

At least with the 360, the HD-DVD drive is optional so if people would want to wait out the outcome of this format war, they're not forced to get a drive that may be obsolete in a couple of months.

[James @ Aug 14th 2006 7:08PM]

Jonathan,

Don't you know there's actually a Pentium (4) processor and basically a computer motherboard w/ memory inside a heavy metal chassis of the Toshiba HD-DVD player? As for the HD-DVD addon for the 360, it will include no onboard video processing. Everything will be offloaded to the 360 to process. Please don't assume that the Toshiba HD-DVD player being $500 would make the cost of the 360 HD-DVD add-on $500 also. The Toshiba HD-DVD player includes many more components than the 360 HD-DVD addon.

[Guruboy @ Aug 14th 2006 7:10PM]

That's a pretty high price. It's the maximum that I had in mind.

Neglect buying an HD optical drive now, but you'll pay for it later, when a majority of movies are being released on HD DVD or BD. You're obviously getting a better deal spending a maximum of $200 extra for the PS3 drive (remember that there are more features other than BD that constitute that price difference).

It's going to be a long while for HD DVD and Blu-Ray players to drop to $200. And no, the 360 HD DVD player doesn't count because you need a 360 to play movies with it - and without HDMI all the same.

[TeleCustom @ Aug 14th 2006 7:11PM]

almost willing to bet that Halo 3 will require the HD-DVD drive.

[Les Doodis @ Aug 14th 2006 7:11PM]

They should really make this unit $150 so that the overall package is lower than the $600 PS3. Otherwise, they've got no edge.

[mcloki @ Aug 14th 2006 7:12PM]

But the $200 question is will the HD DVD be used for games and game info. If not the Xbox could be content starved. Also What size will game developers make a game to fit on a DVD or HDDVD? Not everyone will be buying the Xbox upgrade. 3 million xboxes don't equal 3 million PS3's when it comes to the HDTV Format wars.

[Raider @ Aug 14th 2006 7:14PM]

Well if you really want to compare a similar configured Xbox 360 to a Premium PS3. It would be more like this.

Xbox Premium.$399
HD DVD drive..$199
WiFi adapter......$99
card reader.......$19
-----------------
Total...............$716

[iceanfire @ Aug 14th 2006 7:16PM]

ps3 will sell like crazy because of blueray
blueray will sell like crazy and become the standard because of ps3's market penetration.

Anyone else see a problem with the above logic? I would stick with the xbox360 and not buy the HD DVD and just wait out the format wars.

[brad77 @ Aug 14th 2006 7:17PM]

I don't think that there's much of a loss here. I don't know what the component costs are, but most of the "guts" found in the $500 Toshiba player can be found in the Xbox 360. It won't cost them nearly as much to make. From the Business Week article you quoted in the Toshiba HD DVD story:

"What's at the root of the costs? Inside the player are chips from companies like Intel (INTC), Broadcom (BRCM) and Analog Devices (ADI). The Intel chip is a Pentium 4, which goes for about $65. The Broadcom chip is used for high-definition video decoding, or presenting the data from the disk as video. ADI's digital signal processor chips (there are four) convert real-world analog data into digital information and vice-versa. The unit also contains memory chips from Hynix Semiconductor, Spansion (SPSN), the former memory units of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), and M-Systems (FLSH)."

I would bet that almost all of these components, save for some onboard memory (for caching) will not be found in this accessory. That will lower the manufacturing cost quite a bit, possibly putting it in the sub-$200 range.

[brad77 @ Aug 14th 2006 7:21PM]

@James, you beat me to the punch! Well said.

[Sinclair @ Aug 14th 2006 7:22PM]

Craig,

I hear you. But i don't think anyone will be buying a xbox 360 or a ps3 as a movie player first and a game system second. If past history has show us anything is that these game systems aren't the best as dvd players. If your looking for a good HD-DVD or blueray player spending 600 bucks is kind of expensive for a what could turn out to be a dummed down hd-dvd or blueray player.

[Bill @ Aug 14th 2006 7:32PM]

I **SERIOUSLY** doubt that any upcoming 360 games are going to require this peripheral, not even Halo 3. That would severely limit the market for the game, peeve a whole lotta people, and would be overkill in any case. You can fit a LOT of game onto a standard DVD (8GB). On my PC, Oblivion only occupied 4.6 GB, and this game has much more content than any other game to date. I doubt even Halo 3 will touch that. It doesn't need to to be a great game.

M$ is providing this drive to compete with Sony and expand the usefulness of the platform. But when it comes to games, they are going to keep it simple and accessible to everyone.

[WakkaWakka @ Aug 14th 2006 7:33PM]

Those of you are saying 'Halo 3 will require the HD-DVD drive' or that the 360 will be 'content starved' without games stored on HD-DVDs clearly have no clue about the capacities required for modern games. A game has not yet exceeded 9GB on disc. Frankly, if Oblivion, with all its high definition textures, thousands of voice files and miles of rendered scenery can be fit onto a DVD9, then damn well anything can at 720p or 1080i/p.

Blu-Ray is NOT required for games. It'll merely drive the price of manufacturing them up with very little gain. If we're really lucky, we'll see more 'extras' like developer diaries and so on and so forth on the disc, but I doubt even that in all honesty.

[spallen @ Dec 10th 2006 8:40AM]

BD is needed for games resistence: fall of man on ps3 is touching the 20giga bite mark and son are working on 100 and even 200 giga byte versoins, for ps3 that means huge maps and much more intelligent ai had dvd and dvd are no match for it

[Ayrkain @ Aug 14th 2006 7:49PM]

Isn't it funny watching people on a gadget blog arguing for LESS technology? :)

[Anon @ Aug 14th 2006 8:07PM]

DVD9 all you could need for 720p/1080i games, where do you guys get this from?? As a developer for a joint 360/PS3 title, I can certainly say that the difference between DVD9 and bluray storage is far more insignificant!! It is really not very difficult to think up ways to use this extra space to good effect... If you take your average PS2/XBOX title and double texture dimensions (say 256s become 512s) thats 4x the storage requirements for your textures. In addition- bluray has faster read speeds, v important if your game relies on streaming or you're not a fan of long load times.

[TheGuy @ Aug 14th 2006 8:20PM]

First of all, I doubt the HD-DVD add-on drive would cost $200 by itself. Even if the drive directed all processing to the 360, the technology is still new and very costly. Just look at the Toshiba player, it costs $500 and is still selling at a loss. Even in a bundle, I doubt the drive would cost $200 since it would be too much of a loss for Microsoft. To be honest, I'm not even sure why Microsoft wants to sell an HD-DVD add-on for the 360. It seems to be the main reason they're doing so is just for the sake of it, just to combat the release of the PS3 with its built-in Blu-ray drive. And what's the incentive for people or current 360 owners to buy an HD-DVD add-on? There's no plans to release any HD-DVD games and I doubt they would risk a possible backlash if they released hot titles like HALO 3 on HD-DVD. Plus, it doesn't even have an HDMI port, so there's no protection from future image-downsizing (I know the same applies to the lower-end PS3 model, but my motto is higher-end model or nothing). Anyway, those are my two cents.

[RazorElite @ Aug 14th 2006 8:28PM]

The HD-DVD addon will strictly be for movies. With many 360 games still coming in at 5GB and under anyway, there's no need for more storage just yet. Maybe coming onto the end of the console's life cycle, we may find games really requiring that extra space. For right now, I don't think its worth the extra $200. But maybe when the PS3 comes down to under $300, and games actually really start needing 9+GB is when it might matter. But suppose thats in 5 years....when the next gen of consoles is due, still wouldn't matter.

[Guruboy @ Aug 14th 2006 8:31PM]

I really still think that there's a gamble involved with limiting a next gen system like 360 to under 9 Gbs of storage. I know think Anon here is telling the truth about being a game designer, but he's certainly correct when he refers to disc capacity problems being easier and more prevalent to any of the newest games. I'm sure that next-gen console games will be much more complex and simply take up more space than current latest PC games.

[Rayonic @ Aug 14th 2006 8:36PM]

@Anon :

According to Wikipedia, the PS3's 2x Blu-Ray drive is significantly slower than the 360's 12x DVD drive. (9.0 MB/sec vs 16.0 MB/s)

And why would the PS3 be able to *use* better textures than the 360? Concensus says that the PS3 has a worse video architecture.

[Bill @ Aug 14th 2006 8:59PM]

While I believe what Anon says, that programmers COULD easily take advantage of the extra storage if it was there, I don't think it's necessary or beneficial to gamers at this time. Heck, give me a 5 car garage and I'll find a way to fill it with junk. But should I? Is it worth the cost of the additional garage space, or should I just optimize.

Granted, double rez textures would be nice but the 360 has limited texture memory anyway, and it would slow the frame rates and the load times to implement them.

I think the 2G and 3G games will focus on more polys, more effects, better AA, etc., which are relatively independent of storage space. It's more about using the 3 cores to their maximum potential.

However, there may be one benefit to loading your regular games through the HD-DVD drive... they may load much faster, as Rayonic alludes to.

[James @ Aug 14th 2006 9:20PM]

The HD-DVD addon is an option not a requirement. It's only for movies and not for games.

Sure, it may be nice to be driving around with 24" rims on your Escalade, but for those that don't want the accessory and not want to pay for it, if the dealer selling the Escalades includes those 24's as part of the package, you really don't have that option to tell the dealer to remove those 24's and stick the stockers on and pay less for that new Escalade.

For those that are too dumb to understand analogies, it's the analogy of Sony forcing the consumer to have Blu-Ray without letting them have a choice in the matter.

[georgedakota @ Aug 14th 2006 9:25PM]

You people comparing this to ps3 price now are complete and utterly pathetic morons. First of all geniuses sony is forcing everyone to purchase a blu ray player that they may not want at all. MS is giving us an option and a cheap option which if hd dvd does fail and i doubt it will then at least we arent stuck with a $500-1000 player that is now useless. Some consumers are mindless drones just following what these huge corporations tell them to do and buy. Consumers should have an option

[Karl @ Aug 14th 2006 9:31PM]

Well, this certainly is interesting. If the market life for one of these products is about 5 years, the PS3 certainly has the edge. Remember when DVDs first started being used in games, nobody saw how they could use a gig for a game? In 1-2 years, PS3 owners will be able to gloat about many more capabilities that XBOX360 owners don't have.

It seems like a string of bad decisions on Microsoft's part: make money, so they need to ship first. To ship first, they need to cut future technologies (the ones that really allow for expansion options in the future), that means cutting HDDVD. That means that games developers won't be able to use the extra HDDVD space, because its not guaranteed that a 360 will have a HDDVD drive (and USB may slow things down). So consumers get an inferior gaming experience because Microsoft wanted to make more money.

Of course, prices for consumers have to be accounted for, but when Microsoft will charge $100 for a WiFi adaptor, it becomes clear that they see the 360 as a money cow. How much do USB WiFi dongles go for these days? How many USB ports does the 360 have? Seems like a no-brainer, except when you have Microsoft as a brain.

[JustMe @ Aug 14th 2006 9:40PM]

I would have done everything possible under the sun to make this be 149.95. (Does it not have HDMI though??) Or, in addition, even make a bundle package for 449.95

This way they can still have the price advantage over Sony (for those who will invariably do the comparison.) Even though they will be forgetting then, that this is not a Mandatory purchase from MS, as it is with Sony.

The ability for it to play games will be a nice feature... if down the road that becomes more prevelant.

[matt @ Aug 14th 2006 9:47PM]

Karl, your right. Microsoft only cares about money, not like Sony who really cares about us right?

What world are you living in???

[killer 1nstinct @ Aug 14th 2006 9:56PM]

if you are shelling out this much money, you might as well buy a PC

[la @ Aug 14th 2006 10:10PM]

The extra space on blu ray discs at the moment are being used to include ALL the regional versions of some games well at the moment only one. That would be resistance fall of man. With the extra space they are going to release one version of the game with ALL the audio track s and video versions on one disc. Which means on your american PS3 you can play the game in japanese if you wish. It will save LOTS of money by just pressing one version of the game. Now thats out of the way.

I really hate it that PS3 owners will have to settle for scaled back versions of games. By that i'm refering to GTA. As much logic as some would love to give against that statement. You cant possibly say to yourself that having 50 gigs to play with vs. 9 gigs is actually a plus. Somewhere down the road we will either see a) XBOX 360 games on more than one disc or b) games that require installation to the hard drive that only some people have to play.

I just cant see games fitting comfortably on 9 gig disc in 2011. But of course you more likely to see another xbox before then anyway. Reason being I can still remember when a 4 gig hard drive was too much space. Now i own 4 gig memory sticks, it doesnt matter what format wins Blu Ray or HD DVD, releasing the 360 without a next gen drive was just stupid.

[hemmy @ Aug 14th 2006 10:20PM]

@Rayonic:

"According to Wikipedia, the PS3's 2x Blu-Ray drive is significantly slower than the 360's 12x DVD drive. (9.0 MB/sec vs 16.0 MB/s)"

There is a difference between CLV (PS3 Blu-ray) and CAV (360 DVD) drives you want to look up. You will not get a consistent 16MB/s off the 360's drive, that is an optimal throughput - about 15% of the outermost ring is where you can get that kind of throughput. Secondly, the 360's DVD drive reads *DVD9* discs at 8x, not 12x. That's right. Dual layer discs on a modern 12x DVD drive will read no faster than 8x (and for 16x DVD drives, the max throughput for dual layer discs is 12x).

End result? A DVD9 on a 360 will generally read slower than a 2x Blu-ray BD25 or BD50.

Drive caching renders this comparison moot anyway. (Well, not for core 360'ers unfortunately)

[ccunning @ Aug 14th 2006 10:25PM]

@Rayonic...Interesting. I don't know if that spec is a typo, or the one further down the page is where is says 1xBD=36 Mbps and 2xBD=72 Mbps. Blu-Ray is either MUCH faster or a little bit slower.

According to this:
http://www.blu-ray.com/faq/#bluray_speed
its MUCH FASTER though.
You decide.

[chris @ Aug 14th 2006 11:01PM]

umm how will this connect to the xbox? i dont have an xbox or a xbox 360. i was just wondering how you would connect this mofo to it. as a contoller? through USB? cause if it was USB couldnt you hook it up to your computer?

[CUBS RULE BEARS RULE @ Aug 14th 2006 11:06PM]

i like that the 360 has an option with hd dvd drive and when they come out with a bigger hdd even though adding it together be more expensive than the ps3 but people i know have no clue what a blue ray or what hd dvd is. only people on here know what it is and when i told my friends who own ps2's what the ps3 will cost they said no way they will pay it

[CUBS RULE BEARS RULE @ Aug 14th 2006 11:08PM]

also 360 is cheaper to manufacture so it will have price drops faster than ps3

[Bill @ Aug 14th 2006 11:12PM]

Karl, what makes you think the Blu-Ray drive is going to make PS3 games better? Both the 360 and the PS3 only have 512MB of RAM on board, and half of that is for video. I don't care HOW much data you can cram on the disk, the machines can only make use of a small portion of it at once. So more storage does not necessarily equal more details or complexity in the games. It could be used for more levels or a bigger world, but once again I go back to my Oblivion example. Oblivion is HUGE and EXTREMELY DETAILED, and it uses only 4 GB. This game took like 5 years to make. So by the time a game company finds a way to fill the 25 GB on a Blu-Ray disk, the XBOX 1080 will have been out for two years.

Yes, you're right, one day games will outgrow a DVD9. But not in the lifetime of these systems.

[James @ Aug 14th 2006 11:14PM]

Its situational.
I have had my 360 since launch, and consider it a standalone machine. I actually use it as a media extender 90% of the time.

When the drive launches it will have been a year, and $200 dollars as a seperate purchase seems cheap. Point being I would have to make a seperate purchase for HD-DVD, I just consider it luck that I already have the 360 and can pay less that $500.

[Balls @ Aug 14th 2006 11:15PM]

$200 is garbage.

$100 is the sweet spot.

More than that and MS is being greedy.

[Ian @ Aug 14th 2006 11:19PM]

I don't plan on getting into the format war for quite some time but I was hoping that the price would be more like 179 or 149 or even 100 bucks. If I do buy into the war anytime soon (read: after I get an HDTV) then I would probably pick up this when its on sale or pretty cheap some where.

[paolo @ Aug 14th 2006 11:28PM]

@chris

yes it hooks up through USB

[Joe @ Aug 14th 2006 11:32PM]

Well this doesn't make sense for ms. They had 2 edges, the way too early release and the cheaper than ps3 console. If this thing does cost 200 bucks they've lost that edge. Even if it costs 100 bucks at that point the xbox is not that much cheaper considering how expensive they already are and blu-ray is superior anyway.

[_man1c_ @ Aug 14th 2006 11:53PM]

i dont think not having hdmi is an issue here. heck the 360 uses the PPY connection, and you can switch which resolution you want from there. im assuming since this is running from the 360 there wont be any picture loss what so ever without an hdmi connection. and only way id buy this is if it upconverts my dvd collection to hdtv quality. thats not a bad alternative to me since im not a videophile, but do want to take the most advantage out of my Sammy 1080i lcd-hdtv.. :)

[Jason T. @ Aug 15th 2006 12:19AM]

Even @ $200 its a bad deal.

So $600 for a HD-DVD 360 w/ 20GB HDD, and without HDMI.

20GB PS3 Blu-ray w/o HDMI is $500, plus you don't have to deal with an ugly external drive attached to the system. For $600 PS3 offers BD, 60GB, HDMI, and all that other extra crap you don't need.

MS should just forget about this whole HD-DVD thing.

[icemorebutts @ Aug 15th 2006 12:21AM]

Note that Microsoft isn't selling this thing at a loss, and at 200 smackers I can get into HD-DVD real nice and easy. The fact is it's a high-def disk player that looks much better than the stuff on cable and it hooks up to my 360 which has given my wallet 9 months to fatten up again. I'll buy it on launch day.

[icemorebutts @ Aug 15th 2006 12:28AM]

Another thought: When has Sony ever had a sucessful format? Beta-Max nope,Mini-Disk nope,UMD nope. Why should they start now? (BTW I do own a PSP and am saddend that the UMD is dead)