typical microsoft bulls**t

Blu-ray will be irrelevant in 12-18 months for the about 9 people that have a hgh enough bandwidth to support digital downloads.  So if that's the type of market niche they'd like to pursue, by all means, go for it.  In the mean time, I will be enjoying true HD movies with 1080p resolution and fantastic HD audio - neither of which HD downloads can support at the moment.

Thats dumb of them.  Most people like me like to have the actual thing they buy in their hand and not on some digital format.  that can be deleted within seconds.  and right now bandwidth isnt the best for hd downloading along with the ones that include the hD audio

How can they get off on saying this?  To this date Microsoft undoubtedly has a much bigger library of games to choose from.  So why is the ps3 starting to  sell more consoles worldwide?  The two biggest things that set it appart are 1) brand name and 2) blu-ray.  It is impossible to say exactly why the momentum is starting to swing Sony's way, but I think it is a bit ignorant to rule out the help of blu-ray.

Microsoft are so full of s**t! I predict that Microsoft will be irrelevant in 12-18 months - if only :o)

Try 4-5 years M$ if not more. I'm not gonna wait around for 2 days to DL the newest game, only to have my hardrive crash, or not be able to take it over to my buddys house. M$ doesn't realize by the time they get Digial Download up and rolling, PS3 will have surpassed the crashbox and it will be a thing of the past.

HA! like digital distribution will become Sooooo popular in the next year that it's going to put Virgin Mega Store, Best Buy and circuit city out of the hard copy media buisness? THEY'RE DELUDED! People want to collect movies that they like and they dont want to spend two hours downloading Blades of glory for 8 bucks because they have a crap connection when they can do it for free on bittorrent! and yes people fear harddrive crashes, even though some people are allowing you to burn disks but you still cant put a whole HD movie on a DVD, so you'll STILL need a larger writable disk media to archive your downloaded movies! M$ would STILL loose on that!

You know there was another company that ignored the upgrade to a new media format for games... it was Nintendo back in the N64 days, saying that we didnt need CDs for games...

I think we all know how THAT system turned out.

Microsoft has probably thought of contacting Sony, but realized Sony would demand an outrageous price or just say no. Microsoft just dosn't know when to say "We tried and we failed" like Sony admitted after a terrible start.

I agree with all of the above comments. How does this guy get to be an executive talking like that. All the things that were mentioned before are HUGE problems of why digital downloads will not be a serious competitor in the market for at least 5-10 years. Bandwidth, HDD crashes, DRM, etc. He might as well have said that we will be living on the moon in 12- 18 months.

On the flip side it gives me great comfort knowing that you can be that stupid and still be sucessfull. Means a normal guy like me can really go places.

12 months down the track? I dont think so. Try about 50-60 years, if it EVER happens. People dont want digital s*** - they want a product they can hold, a physical item - not some media stored on a hard disk.

I think Micro$oft is being stupid. I've never liked anything that MS has put out.  Digital distribution is cool for small games but when it comes to Gigabytes and gigabytes of data to download, where does it have to go?  a harddrive.  harddrives would have to be the size of my TV in order to hold a bunch of games.  it's better to have a game on a disc that way you can just put the game in and play instead of replacing the harddrive every 9 months to a year because you run out of room.   MS is stupid.  Long live Sony and the PS3!!!

pride is a very bad thing

microsoft just got mood on cause they backed the wrong format ,the majority of people can`t download hd films and games and wont be able to for many years plus people prefer to have the actual discs,i mean what happens if your comp gets a virus and you downloaded 50 odd films and games its all a waste unless u copy them on to a blank disc which then u might aswell bought the original game film etc from the shop....just aint ever gonna happen.

i prefer having my media on a hard copy

im sure many people like me enjoy opening a product we bought
i think going straight to downloading will kill that little feeling
like whats the fun of clicking on a link and waiting an hour or so to download an HD Video "Which is probally 720p or lower but just upconverted to HD with the device"

just go to the damn store and buy what you want lol

I don't understand why all these "media-heads" (word I made up) keep saying BluRay is already dead or going to die. Yes, CD sales are slow. Yes DVD sales have suffered blows. But hey, I like OWNING actual copies of things. I know I'm not the only one. I don't think they could make a hard drive big enough to put all the movies I may end up owning one day on. Especially if they're all in HD. Can you just imagine how long I would have to spend downloading it all? On top of that, you can't exactly take them with you. I still buy cds and dvds. I can't say the same for everyone else. I know with the whole digital distribution they'll have tons of restrictions people would probably rather buy the disc.

not keen to digital downloads prefer to build a tangible disk basedv library you  know one you can borrow to family and friends

how can he reach managerial status (greenberg) and still be that stupid, or are they just bitter, this is business not personal, pride has no room in it

Well I can see what MS is saying if we were not in the HD era,DVD movie being digitaly downloaded really would not be a propblem.But soon everyone will jump on the HD banwagon.And you cannot be expected to download a HD movie,because 1,it would take a few day to download it 2, it takes like 10 gigs of space to store it and 3,its just to  much of a risk of losing all that data if your hard drive decides to crash.

So sorry MS,you guys need to admit when you are wrong.Sony made a gamble and came out on top,end of story.

I honestly believe that Microsoft is thinking too far ahead with this. There are many hurdles to overcome and the largest of them, just by my opinion, is DRM Protection. Yes, it will be true that I could download to my computer, but I could not legally take my movie to a friends house and watch it with him/her. Are they really going to be able to convince companies to get rid of DRM Protection? The next hurdle is internet speed and if you do not have a legitimately high speed connection, HD downloads in particular will take forever to download.

Is there anybody out there that isn't associated with Micro$oft that agrees with the whole digital download thing? Anybody seen any articles that agree with them? I remember as a kid taking my copy of Tekken 2 and my memory card to my friends house. Why are we trying to deny our kids of this pleasure? "Okay, just let me get my 500 GB hard drive and bring it to your house, I got two games and half of a movie on it..."

So what 20gb xbox 360's are going to hold all of my top ten 2007,1080p HD videos. HAHHAHA you would need about a 50gb for just 10 HD videos.  If people want to buy a whole collection of videos you cant possibly them all on to say 500gb you need seperate blu-ray dics. Im talking about those people who have 1000 disc collections. NOw with HD the files arre larger, taking up more space. This is the most stupid plan ive ever heard!!!!!!!

If DLC was Microshaft's plan all along, I wonder how Toshiba feels about that.  M$ totally screwed them, not that it's a big surprise.  That's what M$ does, and they do it well.

Microsoft probably thinks digital distribution will be the Key to the "Future".

If that happens Sony wouldnt flinch knowing that ps3s can have any 2.5" hard drive in em. And Psn could offer all the content thats out there on the market such as full games etc. But everyone likes owning discs so thatll never go away really.

but i like having a hard copy plus if i want i can then sell it on ebay!

Discs irrelevant in 12-18 months? So I guess 360 users will have to begin downloading 10GB games onto their 20GB hard drives?

just MS trying to BS the crowds again. they're just sore losers.

Digital downloads have a future, just as the physical media.  The billion dollar question is how will the mix pan out.  There will be demand for both and since digital downloads are relatively inexpensive to implement, we will see it.  PS3 owners are already seeing this with Warhawk.  For movies and games, I'm more apt to go hard copy, I would probably download music and tv shows.  There's room for both.  To each his own.

That's right swanky....until they put fiber optics in every home to support large enough bandwidth, there will be no "digital distribution" future.  Cable companies already ration their bandwidth, and it should be illegal for them to do so.  However, until they make it easy, and cheaper for the consumer, they will have to have some sort of "hard disk" format, to get the content to the consumers....ala...Blu-Ray, that can support large enough files.

MS are comparing video downloads to music downloads which aren't quite the same in my book. Music downloads have taken off because of their portability. Its very easy to put something on your ipod and take it with you. But you cant watch a movie while walking down the street, or when driving, or when having a work out or in work etc.  As for rentals? fair enough it has its uses, Im tempted to rent transformers on Xbox live while we wait for the innevitable blu-ray release, but if i made a habit of it my download limit wouldnt last long.... Think i'll be stikcing to my amazon subscription for rentals thank you very much MS.

MIcrosoft are stupid as there ain't high enough bandwidth to support the downloads. Plus Hard drive space will be insuffienct to hold lots of high def films. Optical media is useful in many ways has you can take them every way efficienctly. Microsoft lack the intellegence for this to work.

wow you suck microsoft.....of course  they are trying to look less moronic..

psn id: gingo.... well microsoft will get nowhere with a rental service which is what they provide just now, hopefully when sony brings film downloads in it will be for keeps and not just for renting

have you lot ever been with a girl???

Wow. Who's arrogant now?

These guys aren't stupid.....in the media world this is called "SPIN". Where you take a negative and turn it into a positive for your product or opinion or whatever. If you work in PR you would understand this. Microsoft isn't stupid "incompetant maybe" but not stupid. They know Blu-ray is the successor to DVD and will be around for movie format for the next 10 years minimal and as for computers....BR-ROMs will be the standard in the industry for maybe even longer. Microsoft understand that most people that invest in their company are average joes. Average joes that don't have analyst telling them how to invest....avg joes that think well Microsoft is a billion dollar industry and is a safe bet. Microsoft isn't going to let those avg joes believe that the digital media is years if not easily a decade away from being mainstream are they? No...of course not. They are going to spin this news that blu-ray has won the format war by simply stating that the format war was irrelevent. These PR guys aren't stupid..just doing their job. Trying to make their company look the best they can to ease investor insecurity and raise consumer confidence in their products and services. They are well aware that digital bandwith in this country is no where near it needs to be to be a viable alternative to Blu-ray. Many people use dial-up or dsl because they have no means to cable internet and those that have cable internet don't even receive the service quality and download rates they are promised. When was the last time your isp lived up to the connection that you were promised? This is just PR spin....nothing less nothing more.

Downloading 50 GB movies becoming standard in 12 months ? I think not, not even 5 years from now really....

I won't argue with the fact that digital downloads are indeed the future, but so is virtual reality and flying cars, but they are all  far into the future ( though obviously some further than others) ^_^

Their arrogance is astounding! The world is NOT ready for high-definition downloadable content. Most countries simply don't have the broadband capacity to allow for it, with most ISPs enforcing some form of cap or traffic shaping at around 3GB - less than the size of the average DVD. That situation won't change in the next 2 years.

The only thing that's going to be irrelevant in 12-18 months is the 360.

LMAO! OMG. That's MS for ya. Good luck downloading HD movies uncompressed on those sh|tbox 360s guys. You might get 1/2 of one to fit on the harddrive! Not to mention it's not even 1/2 feasable to download upwards of 25gb of data for one movie.

I thinks it's Microsoft who is irrelevant in 12-18 months.

at this point MS doesn't know what to say to discredit the succes of sony's blu-ray

Why would Microsoft support digital downloads onto the 360 so strongly? Because of the 33% fail rate and their policy of not being held responsible to replace lost or corrupted data.  Without a hard copy of data, whether it be movies, games, save data or anything of the like I (and I think most people) would feel uneasy as computer technology is still apt to fail or to randomly misplace files much like my vista installation decided to go corrupt one day without any warning to me lol.

Oh well...Microsoft can think what they want....If they dont adopt Blu-Ray its better for us PS3 owners as we have no one to compeat with, and the PS3 still has one of its major selling points. Microsoft are only saying that because they want to be big and clever and not be under Sony (under as in have to pay Sony for each Blu-Ray they use) ... Plus developers will already have knowledge about how to develop on PS3, thus giving us more exclusives becasue they dont want to do digital downloads lol.

Isnt this story over a week old? Its still stuid, just late

MIcrosoft will say anything to make themselves feel better. If they think that Blu-Ray will have no impact on the PS3's success they are sadly mistaken because having Blu-Ray in the PS3 is just another reason to own a PS3 and the PS3 is the only console that supportes HD movies.

In the future (probably 10-15 years) yes, most movies will probably be avaliable for download, but really, I don't think that disc media will disappear entirely because people like to collect movies and buy disc copies and it just wouldn't be the same if you just downloaded the  movie.

Microsoft is just denying the truth and will say anything to keep themselves from admitting defeat. I also agree that Microsoft probably never fully supported HD-DVD. Microsoft probably only came up with the HD-DVD attachment just to compete with Sony's Blu-Ray. It's funny because only 300,000 people bought HD-DVD and Blu-Ray just destroyed HD-DVD.

Blue Ray is irrelevant as the RROD For Microsucks. Mediocret company like Microsusck always try to make sense with nonsense.

Blue Ray is irrelevant as the RROD For Microsucks. Mediocret company like Microsusck always try to make sense with nonsense.

Blue Ray is irrelevant as the RROD is For Microsucks. Mediocret company like Microsusck always try to make sense with nonsense.

Blue Ray is irrelevant as the RROD is For Microsucks. Mediocret company like Microsusck always try to make sense with nonsense.

Most people would rather pop in a BD than wait two hours for a movie to download.

Why would you want digital content on an Xbox 360? With the high failure rate (RROD), you send your 360 in to get fixed, they send you a new machine and you lose everything you downloaded. Besides, I'd rather have my stuff on an external media than have the chance of my Hard Drive crapping out and losing everything.

Besides, who has time to download a 50GB HD movie???

For the time being a great game doesn't need more than 8 gigs so the DVD is good (for xbox360)... but what about the next year or the year after when a great game will exceed that ... then what !!!! ... make the game on 2 discs HUH remind me of the gamecube when they made the discs smaller but on 2 discs.

So I belive PS3 will be the winner in movies AND games and i think gaming companies will be more than happy to work with PS3 instaed of X360

So Instead of talking about downloadable content over the internet, better make a deal with sony to save your stupid X360

Im back he he he u sstink all

Man, the way people in our OWN camp complain about how long it takes to download a firmware update or a game demo...there's NO WAY digital downloads will be the media of choice in 18 months.  That's just crazy.  Shoot, Blu-Ray has ALREADY HAD an impact.  If this is all they can do to save face, they're in trouble.  I said it last year...The 360 was what it was going to be for the REST OF ITS LIFE, but we are still waiting to see what the PS3 will become.  We COME TO SITES LIKE THIS to find out more good news about the system.  All 360'ers have to look forward to is another FPS announcement. 

i have both 360 and ps3. they believe that digital downloads are the future i would have to say no because when you buy a movie off xboxlive it cost like 12 bucks and your only renting for 24 hours. i could rent it in BLUE RAY for 6 dollars and have it for weeks. so its sad to say but microsoft is wrong on this front. and another thing blue ray discs can hold like 4 times the space that a regular dvd format can. Meaning ps3 can have more extras in games and graphics then xbox..

i hate the idea od having everything digital. If i spend $60 on something i want to hold it in my hands were no software glitch can take it away from me.

Swanky2167 said it best.  When people's hard drives start to fail and they lose all their precious iPod music, they will learn why physical media is better.

I dont care what is used  - I'm going with whatever option is cheapest.

If the cheapest is buying Bluray then Yay Bluray!, if downloads is cheaper then yay downloads!, if buying games on 3 x DVD's is a buck cheaper then yay DVD!

I dont care.

Bluray irrelevant? 10 million PS3's and being the winner of the HD war says otherwise. You know what IS irrelevant? Microsoft!

Ah so I will steam movies even though I have a poor internet connection which is soooo slooooow and drops offline for a hobby. When I questioned the companies concerned below where the replies.....

 QUOTE by BT: We will not replace any cableing in your area as there is no reported fault!!!!

 QUOTE by Virgin: We will not supply you with a cable connection as its too expensive to dig up the road!!!!!!!

The futures bright : the futures Blu-Ray

Digital distribution wouldn't work here in the uk based on how our broadband is setup.

Its slow(8meg is about the norm) and expensive for what it is plus near enough all companies set a download limit.For some strange reason the company that lays all the lines(BT) opted against replacing the copper phone lines with fibre optics so our broadband will never be able to reach superfast speeds.

Plus why would people want to download everything when there's a chance your hard drive could get wiped and you'd lose all your films?

If downloads are the future then why did you first produce the 360 without a hard drive you complete r*tard !?!

Also you'd need a hard drive with ridiculous amounts of space to save an entire collection of DVDs on especially if you're downloading in HD.

davin_g, I don't believe a word of that. Microsoft is really idiotic. They think they have the compacity to take on Sony when that company has had at least 10+ years experience with the gaming industry. While they're good with software, they simply cannot compete with Sony.

End of story.

MS you go for the streaming HD content route..........and are you going to go around everyones house and supply super high speed broadband so that they can use it?? Nope.  Carry on sh$tebox

So M$ wants us to download games with 50 GB!?!? GTFO!! Man, if they're so strong believers of DLC then why missed the first Xbox SKUs a HDD? And if we're really going to download games with 50 GB, then we need Terabyte HDD for free and internet connection which are so awesome it's unthinkable!