I'm surprised and not surprised by this...

1. Using Blu-Ray they have to pay a license to Sony?

2.Blu-Ray is the standard now.

I'm not surprised either. Especially as the price of Blu-Ray's are dropping like crazy -- and I mean like like CRAZY. I bought a pretty nice network LG Blu-Ray player for $189 a month ago. That was the cheapest by nearly $50 over other retailers at that time. However just noticed that same player selling for $152. A near 25% drop in less than 30 days!

I'd imagine it will be the same cost as the HD-dvd addon was originally. Personally I'll be buying a Toshiba Blu-ray player when it's released.

Why bother getting a add on when you could just buy a stand alone? It's not like you will be able to play bluray games on it so why should it be an add on?

There will not be a blu-ray add on.

Having a Blu-Ray drive for a game system is not just about the movies. I for one am sick of paying for a $60 game and beating in less then a few days because most of the disc is used to make the images look pretty and so the game is short. With a Blu-Ray drive the games can become HUGE and still have beyond awesome graphics. Yeah the movies are becoming cheaper and are great to watch but look at the other advantages of a Blu-Ray disc. More graphics, more content, and more enemies to kill on bigger maps!!!

That's not how it works. Huge beautiful games can fit on a standard DVD.You don't need Blu-Ray for that. Look at Oblivion. And compression and procedural synthesis only improves as time goes on. If a game is short it because the programmers made it short.

Personally, I wouldn't want to use the 360 as a Blu-Ray player (although it is my HD-DVD player). It lacks a very important feature (that I do miss on my HD-DVDs). With it's HDMI 1.2 port, it can't output at 24Hz, which means you don't get the smooth motion that 120Hz TVs offer on Blu-Ray (and HD-DVD) content.

Now, if they release a 360 with a 1.3 (or 1.4) port that will output movies at 24Hz, I would concider this, but with the fantastic Panasonic DMP-BD60 doing 24Hz on both Blu-Rays and DVDs and being fully 2.0 spec at only $140, it would have to be one cheap add-on to get me to buy it.

Totally agree with Guest post on Nov. 4. With the wireless adapter being $100, I can't see M$ charging less than $150 for a Blu Ray option which, given the bottle-necking at its HDMI port, would be a waste of money. Personally, I'm going to invest in a Blu Ray player in my next laptop and use its HDMI port to hook up to my TV. (Perhaps worth noting here that Win7 actually does not have native Blu Ray support seeing as M$ outsourced the Blu Ray playing to Cyberlink so all Win7 Home Premium PCs with Media Player use Power DVD)

All of this Blu-Ray news is nothing but HYPE from Sony. MS should focus more on broadband streamin in HD than actual physical meida. The only benefit Blu-Ray has is storage thats it.

Depending on how much its going to cost, i'd say getting a PS3 MIGHT be a better bargain. If they charge 150-200$, that's absolutely way to much money for an add-on... I might as well spend a little more for a PS3.