Asia Won’t Be Getting 360 HD-DVD Drives (Yet)

Bad news, Asia. Because there aren’t… ahem, “enough” HD-DVD format discs in the East, Microsoft will not be marketing the Xbox 360 HD-DVD external drive there. That’s according to an announcement from Microsoft Taiwan.

Essentially, the supply of HD-DVD movies in Asia is insufficient to justify selling the external drive there, MS Taiwan pointed out. For now, at least. (Effect: so, wait until the sales of HD-DVD hit a certain point, and then Microsoft ships the drive East). MS Taiwan also indicated that (we cite our source article) “Microsoft thinks that neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray Disc (BD) has not yet become a global industry standard, and the outcome of the hot competition between the two next-generation formats is still uncertain.” The source speculates that statement as a “suggestion” that if Blu-Ray becomes the industry standard, Microsoft is likely to adopt it.

Then again, to be on the safe side, from where we’re sitting, the source article didn’t clarify if by “Microsoft thinks…” they mean Microsoft itself, or it’s just speculation from the Taiwan branch, or some other random thing, which makes the further speculation too ambiguous to call. The only thing sure is… Asia won’t be getting the HD-DVD drive anytime soon.

Bad news, Asia. Because there aren’t… ahem, “enough” HD-DVD format discs in the East, Microsoft will not be marketing the Xbox 360 HD-DVD external drive there. That’s according to an announcement from Microsoft Taiwan.

Essentially, the supply of HD-DVD movies in Asia is insufficient to justify selling the external drive there, MS Taiwan pointed out. For now, at least. (Effect: so, wait until the sales of HD-DVD hit a certain point, and then Microsoft ships the drive East). MS Taiwan also indicated that (we cite our source article) “Microsoft thinks that neither HD-DVD nor Blu-Ray Disc (BD) has not yet become a global industry standard, and the outcome of the hot competition between the two next-generation formats is still uncertain.” The source speculates that statement as a “suggestion” that if Blu-Ray becomes the industry standard, Microsoft is likely to adopt it.

Then again, to be on the safe side, from where we’re sitting, the source article didn’t clarify if by “Microsoft thinks…” they mean Microsoft itself, or it’s just speculation from the Taiwan branch, or some other random thing, which makes the further speculation too ambiguous to call. The only thing sure is… Asia won’t be getting the HD-DVD drive anytime soon.