Xbox 360 games will never be released on HD DVD: Maruyama

Yoshihiro Maruyama, Microsoft Japan’s Xbox operations chief, has told Japanese magazine Famitsu Xbox that future Xbox 360 games will not be released in HD DVD format.

Maruyama did not, however, rule out the possibility that future versions of the console may ship with a built-in HD DVD drive.

In a partial translation of the Famitsu Xbox interview from US gaming site GameSpot, Maruyama had the following to say about Microsoft’s plans to include a HD DVD drive in the Xbox 360 console:

“It’s a possibility, but it won’t have any relationship to gaming. If the Xbox 360 uses a next-generation DVD drive in the future, it will only be used for watching movies that run on next-generation DVDs.

The format for games will remain as [standard] DVD. That’s not going to change.”

It’s likely that by forcing Xbox 360 game developers to stick to the current generation DVD format for games, Microsoft is attempting to avoid having games released later in the console’s life cycle that are incompatible with initial versions of the Xbox 360 hardware.