Thursday, November 09, 2006

Sony Calls Microsoft's XBL HDTV "A Disservice"

Yesterday, Microsoft announced a plan to make a large offering of high-def movies and TV shows available on Xbox Live on demand. And of course, Sony was quick to respond to the unveiling with a few scathing comments.

"I think they are doing a disservice to their consumer base because they are ignoring all those people who bought the Core system," said Sony Computer Entertainment America PR chief Dave Karraker, speaking specifically about the lower-end $299 360. That system doesn't come with the attachable hard drive required to store content acquired from Xbox Live.

SCEA's lead spokesman was quick to point out that both PS3 models will have the hard drives built in. "We would never segregate or shut out any of our consumers from our entertainment experience because they didn't buy the top of the line system," said Karraker.

Karraker went even further to remind us that 7 gigabytes of the 360's 20-gig hard drive are taken up by any preloaded content. Of course, he didn't mention that 4 of those 7 gigs are available for deletion if you really don't want them there, and we really don't know how much of the PS3's hard drive we'll need. The two drives available are the 20GB in the $499 PS3 and the 60GB in the $599 Premium PS3.

Microsoft intends to launch their new video and movie service on November 22. At Sony's Gamer's Day, we learned that the company is planning to "eventually" tap into that massive library of music, video, and movie content for online distribution on the PS3, but we don't have a definitive date just yet.

"We haven't announced when other entertainment content, beyond games, will be available from the PlayStation Store," finished Karraker.

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