10 Biggest Xbox Fails Microsoft Wants You To Forget

10. External HD-DVD Player For The Xbox 360

One of the things that gave the Xbox 360 the edge at the start of the last-gen console war was the fact that it came in at a cheaper price than the PS3. This was partly because Microsoft was selling Xbox 360s without Wi-Fi cards, decent hard drives or access to online gaming, but also because they didn't include an in-built video disc player. You had to splash out $200 on an official external HD DVD player instead. You may vaguely remember HD DVD in the same way that you remember Betamax cassettes if you're an old-timer, or UMDs if you're a newer-timer. It was the optical video disc format supported by Toshiba and Microsoft - whose HDi implementation was used for the menus and interactive elements of the discs - and the main rival to Blu-ray, which emerged around the same time. HD DVD was a slightly inferior format to Blu-ray, and its cause wasn't helped by the fact that it wasn't built into the Xbox 360, while the integrated Blu-ray player on the PS3 is essentially what shot the Blu-ray format to fame. HD DVD was all but redundant by 2008, just a couple of years into the X360's eight-year lifespan, while Blu-ray went on to flourish. This was almost certainly one of the reasons that the console war swung in the PS3's favour in the later stages.