PS3 Blu-Ray vs. XBox 360 HD DVD

By The Manolith Team on October 21st, 2008

As of January 2008, a major technological war has ended. This was a battle between the two high definition disc formats: Sony’s Blu-Ray and Toshiba’s HD-DVD. When the dust settled in this “format war,” Sony’s Blu-Ray was the winner. HD-DVD is now a dead format that is no longer supported by any major media outlets.

This is pretty good news for Sony and its seventh generation console, the PS3. It’s not so good for Microsoft’s Xbox 360. While the 360 did not have HD-DVD playing capabilities built-in like the PS3 does for Blu-Ray, it did feature an add-on that allowed HD-DVDs to be played. Unfortunately for Microsoft, that add-on is now obsolete. This is also quite unfortunate for anyone who went out and purchased this add-on for his or her Xbox 360.

HD-DVD’s decline was a pretty rapid one. In early 2008, Media giant Warner Bros. realized that people just didn’t understand or care about the differences between HD-DVD and Blu-Ray. They decided to stop producing HD-DVDs and simply stick to Blu-Ray. Netflix soon followed suit, and they stopped shipping HD-DVDs to their customers. One of the biggest blows to the format may have come with Walmart withdrawing support for HD-DVD as well. Eventually, even primary manufacturer Toshiba had to admit defeat and stop producing and shipping their HD-DVD players.

However, Sony has apparently decided that selling more Blu-Ray players is more important than keeping Blu-Ray exclusively with their gaming console. By the end of the year 2008, its expected that Microsoft will produce Xbox 360s that feature Blu-Ray disc drives.

So, there’s really no decision to be made for console owners anymore. Getting rid of those HD-DVD add-ons is pretty much a must. If you want to experience the newest movies in cutting edge high definition, there’s only one format: and that’s Blu-Ray. Playstation 3 owners are already in luck, as the Playstation 3 comes with a Blu-Ray player built-in.

It is most certainly a big victory for Sony – though it arguably started off as a major gamble. If the tides had shifted in another direction, Blu-Ray might have been defeated in the format war. Since Sony had been touting the PS3 as a Blu-Ray player (and had been using that to justify the console’s hefty price tag), they’d have been in trouble had HD-DVD emerged victorious.