The Inquirer: Last year we were writing that the war over HD optical formats would quite probably be decided by the console that wins the games war between Microsoft and Sony.That certainly seems to be turning out to be true, as new figures out today show that fully a third of HD-DVD players sold in the US are the Xbox 360 HD add-on drive.
The drive, which goes for significantly less than a stand-alone player, plugs into the 360 over USB and uses the console for processing.
HD-DVD’s promo group reckons it’s sold 750,000 HD players in the States, and NPD reckons that Microsoft has sold 269,000 add-on drives, making up the numbers.
This contrasts with Blu-ray, which has seen a lower stand-alone adoption rate thanks to the increased cost of the playing hardware. Three quarters of all Blu-ray players sold are Sony’s own PS3 console.
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