Originally, Sony developed its first PS3 systems with Blu-Ray 1x speed drives, prototypes or developers models, etc, and actually planned on putting 1x speed drives in their PS3 systems.

Why would it matter?
For one, blu-ray movies read at 1.5 speed. So, if Sony was boosting blu-ray movies on a system that could not play blu-ray discs, I wonder what people would think of Sony.

Fortunately for the Sony fanboys, manufacturing costs of the blu-ray players came down, and Sony decided to use 2x blu-ray drives, which still only read at half the speed of the xbox 360.

Maybe this is the reason why Sony has mandated all blu-ray discs be manufactured using mpeg-2 as of right now, maybe it plays at a lower bitrate, some thing that a 1x speed Blu Ray Drive could read. Who knows.

First, Sony's root kits, and now this. IMO, Sony can't be trusted. They were very close to sh!tting on lots of gamers and potential blu ray enthusiasts.

This is like 360's backwards compatibility issue. Rush it to market and hold your breath. Then eventually force the consumer to download updated features on the websites.

No one seems to give blu-ray a chance. Maybe Sony spent too much time flaunting PS3 and not enough time experimenting with its almighty blu-ray feature by taking the time to correct such errors before releasing the final edition.

Now no one even wants a $1000 BD player that doesn't improve on standard DVDs. The same holds true for PS3; I doubt those people at Sony (or the whole BDA for that matter) spent much time working with this new technology, or they wouldn't keep fumbling with it. This more than likely delays the launch title lineup and changes the marketing landscape considerably. Talk about self-defeat.

Earlier this year, all I heard was "check out the new blu-ray format that will change the world" and that it is on its way out soon, nothing else.

I'm giving it a little more time, but the makers had better crank things up or blu-ray will be a forgotten memory.

I am kind of pissed that there isn't more backwards compatibility stuff going in to the 360 myself. It doesn't look like Microsoft's 360 spokesman is that worried about it.

I'm not sure how much larger the new 360 team is, compared to the original xbox, but if you've ever seen their interviews/stories, on icons or what ever show they did, where it told the whole story about the xbox and how it came to be, it's just some thing that probably shouldn't have even existed in the first place.

This guy just comes up with a "What if" blah blah blah - some how, I guess the right person at microsoft hears about it and says "Hey, let's pitch this idea to bill gates." They still don't take it very seriously, and are probably just messing around by even going forward.

So, they pitch some stupid idea to bill gates, with little or no research and bill gates says "yeah, let's do that." So, these guys pretty much crap on themselves, assemble a team, and have no confidence that they could ever even pull it off. That's pretty much how every thing went down until they got it done :/

Now, Peter Moore is on the xbox team, and I believe he was the president of Sega of America until the dreamcast flopped.

Microsoft is also in the process of building the XBOX 3 (don't know the project name) and the CPU is going to be built at microsoft headquarters. So, that means we're almost assured another system in 4-5 years from MS. Let's hope they do keep BC as a priority this time.

Wonder what the specs will be in 4-5 years: 20GHZ CPU, 12GB RAM, 10Terabyte Hard Drive, wireless system link, with up to 50 players, and also built in wifi for xbox live......................

True indeed.

But Sony and Microsoft and their actions have me scratching my head.