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The XBox 360's HD DVD drive will sell for $AU250, on top of the $AU600 or more for the Xbox 360 itself. In comparison the PS3 comes with Blu-ray as standard but will sell for an amazing $AU1000! That's with a 60GB hard drive, the 20GB model will be closer to $AU800 but Sony is holding that out until later in the year so they can milk early adopters for everything they've got.
The XBox 360's HD DVD drive comes with a universal remote controller and a copy of Peter Jackson's King Kong in HD DVD. Sadly high definition won't help the fact that King Kong is about an hour too long. More pixels can't improve a bad movie.
Gamers with deep pockets and an eye for image quality might be excited about high definition movie playback on consoles, but no-one will be more excited than those selling big-arse, high def televisions. The introduction of digital television in Australia has been a disaster thanks to the luddites in Canberra, so retailers are relying on Blu-ray and HD DVD players to move high def televisions off the shelves. More high def televisions in Australian lounge rooms might in turn be the kick start digital television needs to make some inroads. Considering Samsung's first Blu-ray player sells for $AU1600 and Toshiba's first HD DVD player for $AU1100, games consoles would seem the cheapest way to get some high def action into your lounge room.
