The format war has been over for a while now with Blu-ray ending up as the supreme victor. However, if the following is to be believed, that doesn’t seem to stop Microsoft from implementing the “if you can’t beat them, join them” strategy. Rumors have been buzzing about a possible Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360 for a while, and now a Chinese newspaper is adding to the speculation.

The paper writes that a company called Pegatron got the green light from Microsoft to develop a 360 with an equipped Blu-ray drive, also saying that shipping is expected to begin in the third quarter of this year.

Not too long ago Xbox group product manager Aaron Greenberg contested similar arguments: “I can tell you that we’re not currently in talks with Sony or the Blu-ray disc association regarding integrating Blu-ray to the Xbox 360 experience.”

We’ve seen rumors come true before, but I just don’t know about this one. Maybe Microsoft is denying this in order to drop the bomb later on, which would be sticking to how they like to do things. Time will tell, but let’s call this one a rumor for now.