Blu-Ray and consoles: Makes sense doesn’t it?

It has been reported this week there is a big possibility that Blu-Ray will see a release on the Xbox 360. Of course, Microsoft have not commented on this and was Steve Ballmer who spilled the beans on the possible development. But if this is true then what could this mean for a unified format in games or will it just be for the movie and TV side of things and Microsoft’s machine will never use the larger capacity format.

It is well know that Blu-Ray has won this format war, if you didn’t know this where have you been? But with the format being Sony’s baby it has not appeared on any other console system, but this possible announcement opens up new avenue for both Microsoft and gamers. This is a slight flight of fancy as the architecture of the Xbox 360 would not allow the use of Blu-Ray discs for games without a redesign.

So let’s the obvious out of the way first, if Microsoft did incorporate a Blu-Ray player then they would no longer have multiple discs for the bigger titles like the Upcoming Final Fantasy 13 and older titles like Lost Odyssey. Which does, at least in my opinion, bring the Xbox away from the look of older technology with the old school disc swapping of the 90’s. This also could mean that developers could improve more on what they already offer on the console and give us gamers a better experience. Finally, there is one of the biggest things for me; the Xbox would get some of those games that developers said were too big for the 360, like other parts of the Metal Gear Solid Series.

With the obvious out the way, what else could be achieved with a 50GB disc on the 360? Well, what about having complete collections of some of the Xbox’s most notable series. Say having the entire series of Halo on one disc, going from Halo 1 through to ODST or Fable 1 and 2 and all the DLC. Giving you all the classics in a streamline collection. Also using the Blu-Ray Live service we could have live streams of updates for games instead of having to update them before playing, the update would download and install as the game starts up, brilliant.

Having the Blu-Ray drive on a Xbox 360 I believe would be a great development for the console, giving developers more of a freedom on what they include in their games and less that they have to cut (which is good for both consoles, if the PS3 gets a port of a Xbox 360 game). There are so many different reasons that having the drive will expand the uses of the 360 for new users, the biggest would be that if the drive was placed at the right then it would undercut the Playstation at offering a true HD disc based experience and a games console in one.

What do you think about the possibility of the Blu-Ray coming to the 360? Leave your comments below.