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The head of Xbox in the UK, Neil Thompson, has confirmed that rather than including Sony’s proprietary format in an update (just as they did for the now defunct HD-DVD drive), they were going to be concentrating on downloadable content in future.  This doesn’t come as much great surprise to me, given how successful Xbox Live has been so far.

Thompson has highlighted that they didn’t ‘force’ anyone to purchase the HD-DVD drive, but personally, I feel that this is a poor excuse for the lack of support.  Then again, if Toshiba isn’t supporting it, maybe there’s nothing at all that they could have done.   Perhaps it’s better that it wasn’t as dragged out as the Betamax VHS of the 1980′s here in the UK.

So, Microsoft (at least in the UK) is going to be focussing purely on the ‘digital domain’.  We can only hope that it is going to lead to bigger and better things – after all with the likes of Ikaruga heading that way, it has got to be a smart move.  But what about those who did buy the drive?

Well, Microsoft isn’t going to give you a free game.  It is effectively falling back on the old adage of ‘you pays your money you takes your choice’.  Acceptable?  Well that’s up to you.  It does kind of make me feel that I backed the wrong horse though…