Saving your pennies for a new Xbox 360 with built-in Blu-ray technology? Spend them elsewhere.

Microsoft Corp. has no immediate plans to incorporate Blu-ray in the game console following HD DVD’s recent demise, according to an Xbox product manager, though it would like to bring Blu-ray aboard Windows PCs.

The company recently stopped making the console’s peripheral HD DVD drive.

“Xbox is not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray Association to integrate Blu-ray into the Xbox experience, said Aaron Greenberg, in an interview with Reuters news service.

Instead, Microsoft will put more effort toward producing high-definition downloads for its Xbox Live online service. That service already has HD movies and television programs in its inventory.

Greenberg’s comment follows speculation that the “format war” between Blu-ray and HD DVD as an HD medium of choice was window dressing anyway, what with increasing interest elsewhere in streaming digital content online, and HD DVD lead developer Toshiba dug in for a siege merely to buy time for Microsoft to improve its download service.

But the optical disc as a storage medium isn’t dead yet, and Sony’s rival PlayStation 3 console has built-in Blu-ray technology. And so it’s very likely, in our view, that Microsoft at least will introduce a peripheral Blu-ray drive for Xbox, perhaps within a year, to keep from losing ground against its primary game console rival.