Microsoft has stomped down recent rumors that it will consider Blu-ray support with the Xbox 360 following the death knell of HD DVD, Gizmodo reports. News that The 'Soft may create a Blu-ray player for the 360 if consumer demand is high enough was countered by the company, which claims that quotes were taken out of context to create the story. In fact, Microsoft gave five reasons why the story is rubbish:

    1. The "headline misconstrued the context of what [was] said."
    2. Microsoft is "not thinking about it."
    3. It is "fairly definitive" Microsoft is not doing it.
    4. Microsoft has "no plans" to build anything Blu-ray.
    5. Microsoft is "totally committed to HD DVD."

Totally committed to HD DVD? Either Microsoft knows something we don't, or it's totally nuts. Stop me if I'm wrong, but hasn't HD DVD failed miserably up until this point? We're not going to tell Microsoft how to run itself, but considering that Blu-ray is looking like the way forward for hi-def formats, some consideration of support may be wise.

Then again, I really couldn't care less about the stupid DVD format wars, so maybe I have missed something that still makes HD DVD the way forward. Despite what MS says however, surely it has to be at least considering it, unless pride is getting in the way of sense.

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First of all I don't think HD-DVD had failed miserably, but yeah it does have 1 foot in the grave. Secondly, I have a feeling Toshiba kicked Microsoft in the butt and told them that they might want to start supporting the format they helped co-create a little more, and throw out some decisive words on their HD-DVD support.

If you hadn't guessed even I've jumped ship now. Even though I believe the HD-DVD is superior in terms of rights of use and features (C'mon, I don't want to have to downscale my film onto a DVD in order to play it on a friend's DVD player!). That and I'm completely against Sony lock-in (A PSP version is all fine and good but what if you have an iPod or a Zune?).

But hey, by the looks of things, supporting HD-DVD now is like burning money, there's no more future for the format.

Microsoft is going to try something big as a last stand, I think. It's too late though, those movie studios aren't moving back any time soon.