As an observer it looked to me more like Microsoft was hoping to just play two rival physical formats off against each other for as long as possible and were hedging.
Unconditional support would have meant putting HD DVD drives into the XBox 360 when it actually mattered, rather than some ugly external player. I bet that Toshiba asked for it - BEGGED for it. In one fell swoop they would have negated the major selling point enjoyed by Sony. It's not like they didn't have an opportunity to do it either since the Elite would have been a perfect premium console to include the drive. There were rumours before CES2008 that if WB had gone red, that a Toshiba 360 would have appeared but that was far too late.
Instead it looked more like arm's length support - close enough to have a stake if it succeeded but not so close that the 360 brand went down with the HD DVD ship if it didn't.
Now that we've thrown 'em off the trail, use the form below to get in touch with the people at Engadget. Please fill in all of the required fields because they're required.
Unconditional support?
As an observer it looked to me more like Microsoft was hoping to just play two rival physical formats off against each other for as long as possible and were hedging.
Unconditional support would have meant putting HD DVD drives into the XBox 360 when it actually mattered, rather than some ugly external player. I bet that Toshiba asked for it - BEGGED for it. In one fell swoop they would have negated the major selling point enjoyed by Sony. It's not like they didn't have an opportunity to do it either since the Elite would have been a perfect premium console to include the drive. There were rumours before CES2008 that if WB had gone red, that a Toshiba 360 would have appeared but that was far too late.
Instead it looked more like arm's length support - close enough to have a stake if it succeeded but not so close that the 360 brand went down with the HD DVD ship if it didn't.