Upcoming games that makes me glad I'm a species born with opposabl

[Chesspiece_face]

Nice sarcasm, but the fact is, businesses are run by realists. They license stuff all the time, if it is to their net benefit. If Blu-Ray gets to be a dominant standard, can you say MS won't offer something to support it? Steve Ballmer may throw a chair or two, but the checks get signed.

Actually Microsoft has stated that if blu-ray becomes the dominant standard they would support it. my point is just that there is no reason for them to do it now. especially when it's quite possible that blu-ray is the noose Sony uses to hang itself.

Agreed. I just don't think they've succeeded in merging the battlefields. I think that standalone players will be much more of a factor in the HD fight.

Standalone players most definately will be the biggest factor when it comes to the HD war. the real decider of which will come out on top is what happens when HDdvd players drop down to 200-250. The problem for Sony, at least, is that they have hinged the success of their console on the success of blu-ray. if blu-ray doesn't succeed than the 10 year plan for the PS3 goes down the toilet and takes any hope for Sony to have a dominant console with it (along with a good portion of the company). That being said, why would Microsoft do anything to support blu-ray? Until blu-ray is unarguably the dominant media you won't see MS support blu-ray at all because it benefits their console not to.

OK, let's take as a given that the addition of HD movie capacity is a move to sell more consoles. Wouldn't a larger range of content compatibility sell more consoles? If the eventual goal is to dominate the console space, wouldn't that be worth much more than some licensing fees?

Regardless, they're not making a Blu-Ray add-on. And they're paying Paramount/Dreamworks to support HD-DVD. So let's consider some possibilities:

Like I mentioned above. It was Sony who hitched their console strategy onto the success of blu-ray. Microsoft will support HDdvd until one of two things happens; either HDdvd becomes the standard and Sony crumbles with blu-ray (best case scenario for microsoft) or Blu-ray becomes the dominant force and in that case Microsoft didn't lose much overall. Their console is only built to last 5 years (unlike Sony's investment of a ten year plan) so if blu-ray does come out on top in the next couple years they can just build it into the xbox 720. This investment of 150 million to get paramount is actually a good risk/reward proposition. 150 million isn't all that much money in the long run for these media giants and if HDdvd does win out than the xbox will most likely be able to secure the success status that the PS2 had long into the future.