Bill Gates announced during his keynote speech at CES 2006 that an external HD DVD drive would be released for the Xbox 360 during 2006.

Peter Moore had stated that if HD DVD loses the format war, Microsoft may also release an external Blu-ray drive.

All future iterations of the Xbox 360 console and dashboard maintained compatibility with the HD DVD player.

It also includes a clip for attaching the wireless network adapter to it, much like what Xbox 360 consoles of the time had.

In addition a software player capable of playing HD DVD titles is required for playback of video.

Windows XP does not have a built in UDF 2.5 driver, instead requiring a third party one to be installed to access data on HD DVDs.