Comment: Microsoft's battle for digital media faces a HD hurdle
When Sony's development boss, Phil Harrison, told us this week that he doesn't believe the "HD Era" will start until the PlayStation 3 is on the market, he set tongues wagging across the Internet, and across the industry. It's not the first time that Harrison has directly thrown the gauntlet down at Microsoft over the company's claims regarding Xbox 360, but it's still rare to see Sony executives so openly calling their rivals out over such issues, and Harrison's comment was beyond a doubt deliberately and knowingly controversial.
The question is, is his comment also true?
That, in fact, is a tougher question than it seems. Harrison claims that the Xbox 360 is not a true High Definition device because it doesn't have a next-gen DVD standard, so it won't be able to play back high definition content. The argument has been sidetracked slightly by his other claim, that the high-end 1080p standard represents "true" high definition, but at the heart of what he was saying was the quite logical argument that unless you have all the parts of the chain - HD content, HD player and HD display - you don't have a real HD system.
On the surface of it, Harrison has a point. The Blu-Ray drive in the PS3 will allow it to play back high definition movies which simply won't fit onto a conventional DVD. Ergo, looking at the movies side of the equation rather than the games, you could make an argument that the PS3 is a proper high definition media device, and the Xbox 360 isn't.
However, the real argument is more complex than simply deciding that something isn't truly HD because it doesn't have a next-gen DVD drive. After all, there's more than one way to distribute HD content. Even disregarding efforts at fitting HD resolution video onto standard DVDs - which are bearing some fruit, but seem doomed to fall into the same trap of being not noticeably cheap enough to allow for the quality difference, just as VCDs did before them - many commentators and companies, including Microsoft, don't believe that the future of media lies on shiny discs anyway.
This, supporters of Microsoft's position would argue, is where Harrison's sweeping statements fall down. There's nothing to stop the Xbox 360 from being able to play HD movies that have been downloaded from an online distribution service onto a host PC - the model for media consumption which Microsoft believes all of us will be using in years to come. In this model, Blu-Ray is irrelevant, and the Xbox 360 is unquestionably a HD device.
It's a good comeback, and it's a tantalising vision of what could be possible with the media functionality both of the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. However, there are still tough questions to be asked about the capacity of this system ever to get up to speed on platforms like Xbox 360 - not least the question of whether Microsoft will ever be able to effectively provide a service like this which consumers will actually warm to.
Once again, in the online video space as in the online music space, Microsoft has been thoroughly leapfrogged by one of its oldest rivals, Apple. Consumers can download up to date episodes of hugely popular TV series from Apple's iTunes service already, and the amount of content available is expected to grow massively now that this proof of concept has been successful. Sony, too, is progressing with experiments in online video distribution, mostly aimed at the PlayStation Portable but surely with the PS3 in the back of its mind at all times.
In other words, while the potential certainly exists for Microsoft to turn the Xbox 360 into a true HD media device and prove Harrison's comments incorrect, the company has yet to prove its ability to exert that kind of leadership in the media space. Digital media has been a frustrating game for Microsoft so far; the iPod and iTunes have demolished its efforts in digital music, it appears to be backing a loser in the next-gen DVD standard wars, and Apple (and to a lesser extent, Sony and Google) are taking the lead once more in digital video. The firm has a lot of ground to make up if it's to make the Xbox 360 into a truly convincing HD media terminal, and properly silence criticism like Harrison's.