According to Gamesindustry.biz, retailers are hinting at pricing for the Xbox 360 HD DVD drive, and the pricing should make the console bundled with the HD DVD drive competitive with the rumored launch pricing of the Playstation 3. UK pricing is rumored to be around 130 GBP, making a US-based competitive price more likely than not. Since the UK pricing at current exchange rates prices the console at roughly a 30% premium over the US price, assuming the UK numbers are correct, this would make the cost of the HD DVD in the US around $200; certainly a competitive bundle with the low end PS3. This would place the premium US bundle plus the HD DVD drive at around the same price as the high end Playstation 3, however, without any current support for HDMI, and nothing official on the horizon, this would leave Xbox 360 consumers with a crippled HD DVD solution versus the full Blu-Ray plus HDMI PS3 offering. $200 for a HD DVD solution, that at this time at least, doesn’t offer a path to full HD resolution on content protected HD DVDs seems like a lot, and probably won’t convert many of the HD DVD early adopters to the format. A price significantly higher than $200 in the US would probably mean that there would be a lot of HD DVD expansion units sitting on shelves.

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