I sort of agree.  With the economy such as it is, I think the market for hi-def players and expensive hi-def movies are going to take a hit.  Microsoft probably would be better served to get the price down on their current product line.

I disagree many gamers loved having a hd-dvd add-on drive as on option. I loved it because It meant I could get hd movies on all my extenders :)

I think it being done internally won't happen but I do see an external blue ray drive coming out and I think it would sell. I would by when and then when the 720 did come out I would just move that usb drive to my computer :)

Those many gamers where actually 300,000 gamers (or non gamers as it might have been).  Given the Xbox 360 has sold 18 million units, HD DVD units were only purchased by 2% of Xbox 360 owners (if my math is right).

I think most of us here loved the concept, but I think applying it to Blu-ray and saying Microsoft must... or Microsoft will... would be a mistake.

Also, a comment I posted on my blog yesterday is good for thought.
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Thinking about this more, BD specs mandate that a player must support multichannel PCM, something that the Xbox 360 can't physically support on current hardware.

This means that Blu-ray would have to either come on a brand new Xbox 360 SKU that basically has different hardware within, or the Xbox 360 isn't ever getting Blu-ray and it would be the Xbox 720 that has the first chance of getting it.  This would also mean that an external Blu-ray drive for current Xbox 360's would actually violate BD's specs (although, I think HD DVD was the same [??], but it could of just required 2 channel - I check on this)

Edit: PL1 HD DVD Players were only required to support 2 channel PCM.

And as per above on things like TrueHD, the Xbox 360 only has HDMI 1.2 so you can't even output the bitstream!  HDMI 1.3 is needed for it, and no Xbox 360 has HDMI 1.3.
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