With the recent announcement that Toshiba themselves has pulled out of HDDVD (HDDVD is Toshiba’s format), the war is now officially over. What will Microsoft do? Theres no doubt that an XBOX 360 ultimate was going to be announced at CES this year until the Warner announcement to support only Bluray was made. The Xbox 360 Ultimate was rumored to be the 360 with built in HDDVD drive and other features, probably would’ve cost an arm and leg.

I said a couple days ago that Microsoft has to add Bluray functionality to the 360 or it was over, and there are a lot of rumors that the Bluray powered 360 Ultimate will still release. Was talking about this with a friend. First I would like to say that I completely believe that a Bluray 360 will be released, Microsoft would be very stupid not to include one now that Toshiba has deaded HDDVD once and for all. But in that conversation with a friend, he talked about how Microsoft wouldn’t go Bluray because it would look bad for the company. They were behind HDDVD, spent a lot of money on HDDVD and now to go Bluray, they would have to support Sony. Sony will be getting paid from PS3 sales and 360 sales if Bluray was included. At first it made sense. Then I thought about it. Sony isnt the only company behind Bluray. Yea Sony owns the logo, but here are a list of companies that has contributed to the development, and are also getting a part of the royalties

  • Phillips
  • Thompson
  • LG
  • Pioneer
  • Hitatchi
  • Matsushita
  • Sharp
  • Samsung

So while Sony is the forerunner, and the most visible, there are a lot of people involved. Still, Microsoft will be paying Sony in some form if they decide to include Bluray in the Xbox 360. Just as I was thinking about how the money was being spread around I remembered one little tidbit that puts Microsoft right back into the mix. The most used Codec on Bluray and HDDVD is called VC1. Guess what, that is Microsoft’s codec. Microsoft will get paid also. Looking at that little tidbit of info it makes me realize that this has really been a "no loose" situation for Microsoft. Bluray winning the format war isnt a win for MS but its still not a loose since MS had their hands in both pieces of pie.