Without harking back to last week's Xbox mess, a Microsoft executive has defended his company's backing of the HD DVD format.
Kevin Collins, director in the Microsoft Consumer Media Technology Group, said that the decision was made three years ago to support HD DVD because of its lower cost of manufacture, greater availability of manufacturing plants, mandatory managed copy, and interactive features. Blu-ray has now just about caught up.
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment worldwide president Mike Dunn made a veiled reference to the Redmond-based giant, claiming that they were simply trying to confuse consumers into not supporting either format and just downloading high definition content instead.
Collins went on to say that Microsoft had chosen not to bundle the additional HD DVD drive with the Xbox 360 because gamers are primarily just that. There was no justification for "disenfranchis[ing] our customers" by making the unit too expensive.
“If you look historically at the attach rates (i.e. the number of DVDs purchased per DVD player) you will see that game consoles have a single-digit attach rate, while dedicated DVD players have an attach rate in the mid-20s,” he said.
He also took a swing at the PS3, but again this seemed much more to do with Sony's belief that people would want to use the console for watching movies.
“We believe that the PS3 will follow the same course and that this holiday, when compelling games come out, PS3 customers will be drawn to be playing more games. In fact, if you look at the recent press releases, execs in Hollywood have attributed the declining box office revenues to the “Halo effect,” where customers are staying at home playing Halo 3 instead of coming to the movie theatre," Collins said.
(Via All Things Hi Def)
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