Microsoft's Greenberg lays into Blu-ray

Xbox 360 group product manager Aaron Greenberg has put rumours of Blu-ray on 360 to bed and had a dig at the HD disc format in the process.

"We have no plans to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience," Greenberg told Major Nelson, cementing the corporate response given earlier.

"We believe that we shouldn't force consumers to pay for things they don't want. We also believe that the future's digital, and that's why we've invested in a massive library of entertainment content."

Despite promising to keep the "gloves on", Greenberg proceeded to question not only sales, availability and price of the format, but also its long-term future.

"No one knows," he said, "no one knows what Blu-ray will be. It's pretty clear it is not the next DVD, right? The days of one physical format being the standard are gone.

"Let's say right now we're not sure if it's the next UMD or the next DVD," added Greenberg, suggesting "it got Blu-rayed" will be the expression for future products in this perceived grey area.

"I went to Sony's [TGS] booth, and their Blu-ray presence...It used to be like their whole booth was Blu-ray. It just keeps shrinking down. Now it's just this little corner and there's no one there," he said. We can think of a couple of counterpoints, but we're not touching this one with a bargepole.

Aside from Blu-ray, Greenberg nattered about the Microsoft TGS conference and how John Schappert nearly lost his voice before the event.

He also touched on the improved performance of Xbox 360 in Japan, where the console has outsold its PS3 rival for the last few weeks.

"Never before have I seen - in the eight years I've been coming to TGS - this sort of shift from, frankly, the PlayStation brand to the Xbox 360 among third-party publishers. We're the platform they're looking to to help grow their franchises around the world," he concluded.

The Microsoft TGS keynote was delivered by John Schappert early yesterday morning, and revealed a 19th November date for the New Xbox Experience, announced the standalone Halo 3 Recon expansion, and confirmed Tekken 6 for Xbox 360.

Following the conference, we caught up with Xbox Live boss Schappert put a few questions to him.