No HD for XBOX 2?! (1 Viewer)

[Trevor_J]

According to this link at IGN, XBox 2 will not ship with a HD. Say it ain't so! IMO, the HD is probably the BEST feature of the Xbox. I can't imagine going back to memory cards.

 

[Carlo_M]

Still at the rumor point, but yeah, the tiebreaker as to why I bought an XBox (since I mostly play crossplatform games so it didn't matter which console I bought) was the hard drive (along w/ more 16x9 support and the cheap HiDef pack).

They better package something else in there that makes it appealing to buy XBox2 or I may not spring for it.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Honestly, I can understand exactly why they did this, but I also want to hear the whole story before passing judgement. Let's face it-hard drives are expensive, and if Microsoft wants to be able to set a competitive price point for the Xbox 2, then they'll have to scale things like this back. They have talked about flash memory I believe, but notice that they haven't said anything about not having any on-unit storage.

That being said, I am a fan of having large on-unit storage. I found that I kept running out of playstation memory (until I got my DexDrive), and liked the idea of not having to even think about saves with the Xbox.

The one thing I really didn't understand about the article is the desire to make the Xbox smaller. Is there something wrong with having a big, imposing, "this is not a toy" box? Personally, I like the fact that the Xbox is a monster-looks great on the component shelf!

 

[Carlo_M]

Actually, having just read "Opening the XBox" (good book for anyone interested in the topic of the creation of the XBox) I do understand the cost implications.

I will soften my stand to say that if they do offer an add-on hard drive, available immediately on release (as opposed to the oft-rumored, still no-show PS2 HD) that I will be content with that. I would rather pay for a HD rather than mem cards. Oh, and that HD should be transferable (i.e. I can take it to my friend's place and plug it into his XBox2).

I can appreciate cost cutting out of competitive necessity. But they should keep the HD option alive via add-on peripherals.

 

[Michael Pakula]

I wouldn't worry about the hard drive issue too much as they did say if the playstation 3 includes a hard drive than XBOX 2 will also have one. So this pretty much means we could have a hard drive for the XBOX.


-Mike

 

[Scott L]

No biggie for me.

 

[Mike LS]

I can't buy that the HD is a big reason that the XBOX is so big. Anybody ever seen a laptop HD? Tell me they couldn't put one of those in the XBOX 2? Granted, I do understand the price issue, but if Sony is going to include a HD with the next PS, then it makes no sense that MS would drop that feature.

 

[Luke_Y]

I think that piracy on modded x-boxes is the reason they will drop it.

 

[Joey G]

Luke_Y has a point. The current Xbox with a mod, you can copy the whole game onto the hard drive and play it like that with no CD. It is possible they took the HD off on the Xbox2 as one of those reasons.

 

[Neal_C]

I think modding is the major reason why the rumor is out that there will be no HD. You can pick up 80GB hard drives for $40 or less sometimes after rebate. And if Microsoft called up Western Digital or Seagate or IBM and wanted 500,000 hard drives, I doubt that it would even cost them $20/drive.

Flash memory is definitely faster, which has its good points. But they will need to be sure to have plenty of it.

Heck, leave the hard drive out and give me the Xbox2 with an Intel P4 3.4ghz with hyperthreading, a GeForce 5950 Ultra, plenty of RAM, and lots of games that support 1080i, for under $400, and I'm in.


Neal

 

[BrianB]

Heck, you're in for a lot of dissappointment going by the specs that have been rumoured so far

 

[Neal_C]

Well, I don't know...three 64 bit IBM processors isn't so bad. An ATI chip faster than the R400...not shabby at all. I do hope they include 512Mb of Ram instead of just 256. And if Blu Ray could get to market in time, that would be awesome.


Neal

 

[Scott L]

Haha what about the noise? Damn it all to hell for faster gaming??

 

[Sean Moon]

Blu Ray? in the next XBOX? I honestly think that the liklihood of seeing blu ray in any form on a game machine in the next generation is slim to none. There is really no need for that kind of storage capacity on games at the moment.

And the HD didnt make too much noise either. I only hear it once in a blue moon on my system, but of course I am ten feet from it and listening to the game and not the system.

 

[Neal_C]

Just like all the other specs, Blu Ray has been tossed in the rumor mill. It could give game developers the ability to make games more and more in depth, add tremendous detail, full high def support, etc. The benefits are definitely there.

 

[Sean Moon]

With games though HI Def support is more dependant on the Graphics Chip and processor, not the storage medium. Sure with more storage you could have greater resolution textures without compression, but then that eats into the RAM being used while playing. And BLU Ray drives would be too expensive to put into these machines anyways when they come out.

And also before they move to Blu ray(which doesnt Sony own a patent on that anyways?) they only did a handful of multi DVD games. And there are few games out there that have ever fully used the 8.5GB available on current DVD.

If the current XBOX can reach 720p and 1080i with current technology, its the chip, not the disc that is making it so.

 

[Neal_C]

Yes, the chip has to process the info, but the programmers must write the code to make the game high def. Having things on Blu Ray might encourage them to make more and more games this way.

A Blu Ray DVD player will no doubt be expensive when it comes out. But Microsoft doesn't need an entire DVD player.

 

[Trevor_J]

While I think that the Piracy issue is a good point for them to not include the HD, I don't think that removing the HD from the specs would eliminate piracy. All that would happen is they would find another way to pirate the games, i.e. creating a hack that allowed you to load the games from your PC Hard Disk over the network .

 

[Neal_C]

For everything new, there will always be someone that finds a way to hack it. But by not having a hard drive, Microsoft is atleast forcing people to find a new way to hack it and not just throwing a product on the market where the ground work is already laid out.

By the way I saw that storage won't be an issue with flash memory. The company MS is working with, M-systems I think, just released a 90GB flash chip. And they are working on something completely different for the XBox2. I'm all for faster loading and access times with flash memory.

 

[Trevor_J]

That's great that they were able to create a flash chip of 90GB in size but at what cost? The last time I checked ordinary flash memory, i.e. Compact Flash, was many times more expensive per meg than a HD. I'm not sure what the cost of this particular technology in question is, but from what I've read it's likely more expensive than the run of the mill offerings. Add to the fact that MS will be slapping their logo on it and the price will be even higher.

A quick check at Circuit City's website shows:

80GB HD=$100
1.0GB CF=$299

I know CC is not the cheapest place to find these items but the point is that if MS is trying to keep costs down by removing the HD from the design, but in turn intend to keep most of the functionality of the original Xbox by allowing you to load patches and save games via a flash memory card then I think they're making a big mistake. They may save money in the short run but I for one would be turned off having to purchase high priced high capacity flash cards.

This of course is all speculation......