Neil Thompson, the man in charge of the Xbox branding in the UK, has spoken out about Sony and their decision to include Blu-Ray in the PS3 a mere three days after the console launched in PAL regions.
Many people believe the inclusion of a Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 is the reason behind the PS3’s price tag of £425 (£146 more than the premium Xbox 360). Thompson told GamesIndustry.biz:
“Do I want to make people pay £200 extra for a machine with discs that have storage space I don’t need? My answer’s no, I don’t need to do that today. And I don’t think I’m going to need to do that for quite a while.”
Thompson stated that Microsoft are hoping to make the Xbox 360 has flexible as possible:
“I’m not sure the market has moved to high definition [movies] yet. And if and when it does, then the way that we’ve constructed the offering we’ve made means we’ll be able to go whichever way we want.”
“I’d be really surprised if technologically, and we’re a software company, we couldn’t get to a situation where we can deliver whatever content we need to. This is about the architecture of the hardware. With the PS3 you’ve got a big, heavy truck that requires a big, heavy engine. With Xbox you’ve got a much more nimble box that uses software in the architecture of the box in a much more nimble way.”
“That’s the difference between us and PlayStation – we didn’t have a need to develop a really complicated engine to get Blu-ray players into the market. We wanted to deliver HD gaming. Judge us on what we’ve done.”
The war of words is well an truly underway in Europe. Let the battle begin!
Originally Written By: Scott Webber
