Digital Home Thoughts: Peter Moore Clarifies Xbox 360 HD-DVD Add-On

"Speaking to GameSpot, Microsoft VP Peter Moore clarified a few lingering issues following last night's announcement of a HD-DVD accessory for the Xbox 360. Specifically, he confirmed that the device will be used for movies only and not games. He said, "Right now it's focused purely of movie playback. Think of the drive as something that lets you play high-definition movies on the Xbox 360. If you want to watch HD-DVD movies and if you own an Xbox 360, there will be no reason for you to go out and buy another player." Moore continues, "HD-DVD from the game play point of view is primarily about media storage as is of course Blu-ray. Our developers are very comfortable with the [Xbox 360's] storage options--I think they're utilizing Xbox Live very creatively, and, the hard drive, we have a very strong attach rate for the hard drive." Moore also confirmed that the company does not have plans to create a brand new Xbox 360 console based on the HD-DVD format, indicating that it would fragment the userbase even further."



So, it looks like the HD-DVD drive option will connect to the USB 2.0 plug(s) on the console. I'm still puzzled as to why they won't be supporting HD-DVD based games, as developers are already stating that they're reaching the limits of what they can store on conventional DVDs. The Xbox 360 is also going to have to support HDCP via DVI or HDMI output, and I'm still waiting to see how they plan to implement that. None of the reverse engineering I've see of the Xbox 360 shows an HDCP chip on the motherboard, so it will have to be done via software emulation (if it's possible at all). Then again, if they just decide to allow users to play HD-DVDs through the component video outputs...that could really shake things up! With more answers only comes more questions.