There’s a bit of a misnomer that Blu-Ray technology has been a Sony exclusive, or at least some sort of Sony technology. In fact, the technology is owned by a multitude of corporations, from which Sony is just a key player.

It may seem like ages ago, but at one point Microsoft’s HD-DVD was competing against Sony’s bid on Blu-Ray. At that point, while I was working in retail, I would literally tell people to not invest in one or the other, as one would go bankrupt and the industry would adopt the other as a standard. That just so happened with Blu-Ray, so now it has been adopted as a standard.

Now that Xbox One has the technology integrated into their games and video playback, this has led to lots of fans wondering if they have to pay tribute or some sort of royalty to Sony in order to use the tech. In fact, it was much easier than any of us thought:

Not at all.  It’s not a technology that’s taken or given by anyone. It’s a licensable standard for high capacity optical media playback and we’re very excited that people who have amassed big libraries of Blu-Ray disks with their favorite feature films can play those in Xbox One as soon as they get it home and hooked up.

The above statement is from Xbox One Engineering Manager Jeff Henshaw, when asked if licensing the technology was “tricky” at all. You have to factor in that Microsoft will be paying royalties for each blu-ray disc based game sold.