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PlayStation (Games)

No Hard Drive Bay On PStwo 94

Thanks to Gamespot for the notification. Sony has confirmed that the PStwo will not feature a hard drive bay. "...consumers who want and use the hard disc drive are typically the more 'hard core' gamers, ... we feel that a majority of those HDD interested consumers already have their PlayStation 2 units."
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No Hard Drive Bay On PStwo

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  • by feidaykin ( 158035 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @04:23PM (#10356920) Journal
    He said he felt that the main problem was the developers would start shying away from the HD due this... Which unfortuantely is probably true.
  • by Neon Spiral Injector ( 21234 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @04:27PM (#10356943)
    I would say that developers knowing that future PStwo systems will not have a HDD they will be less likely to support the add-on. I would say that, but to get less support for the HDD would be next to impossible considering there are what, two US releases with support? FF:XI which all HDD owners have because they are only sold together (the Linux kit HDD doesn't have the "browser" upgrade needed to allow games to access it). And Resident Evil: Outbreak. Which has such horrific loading times without the HDD that it should be required.

    Does anyone know any other games that can make use of the HDD? Also what Japanese releases would use the HDD that have had the feature removed for US release? I would guess that FF:X did support it. After using HDLoader to copy the game to my drive, I found that the shattering screen that marks the start of combat actaully displays over the loaded battle area instead of a black screen if it can get the data into memory fast enough.
    • This is solely my personal opinion.

      Frankly I'd be surprised if any developers were considering supporting it in more than a token sense even before this announcement. There are so few out there and the perceived benefit to customers is so low you'd never recoup the extra cost of testing, let alone development.

      Sony needed to release the thing in 2002 and to ship the SCPH-5000x (the 2nd-rev PS2 with the built-in IR/DVD remote) with the hard drive pre-installed if they wanted anyone to pay attention to it. T
      • by Naffer ( 720686 )
        I'm actually really disappointed that console makers aren't embracing the HD idea. A decent drive has a 9-12ms seek time compared to the 150-250ms seek times you see on a DVDrom. As is, far too many games ship with painfully long load times. Now I'll concede that the harddrive isn't a cure-all for that problem (look at Fable) but clever caching techniques could go a long way. Why not have a 20GB harddrive and allocate about half of it for use as system cache? Most people leave a single game in their sy
        • by grahamwest ( 30174 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @10:32PM (#10359485) Homepage
          Hard drives have a manufacturing cost floor. It's probably around $25-$30 to make the platters, the head, the voice coil, the casing and so on. Doesn't matter what the minimum capacity is, you can't beat those physical costs. Now, the hard drive manufacturer takes their profit and sells the device to the console maker. The console needs a few dollars more in parts (thermal, electrical, shock mounts etc) to integrate the drive. Altogether it's a significant amount of money against the wholesale price of the box.

          Microsoft are hurting like hell right now because they have to pay that cost on every Xbox they sell and Sony doesn't. This is why Sony came up with that PSX console/PVR hybrid - they could offer a lot more functionality, charge much more for it and more than cover the extra manufacturing cost.

          The 'sufficient' amount of RAM for a console is a function of many things. Sustained read speed from the optical disc, system bus bandwidth, processing power of the CPU and GPU. No point filling memory with data you can't express on-screen or that can't contribute to your simulation of the world. People also don't want to wait 2 minutes for memory to fill from the disc. If all of the other things could scale up, RAM would too - but then the system would be even more expensive.

          As for the caching, Xbox already provides scratch space for games - 3 sets allocated on an LRU basis.
          • "Microsoft are hurting like hell right now because they have to pay that cost on every Xbox they sell and Sony doesn't."

            MS - "hurting like hell"? Dude, they're sitting on 50 billion+. They still haven't gone through the couple of billion that they originally allocated for the Xbox. They are not "hurting" by any stretch of the imagination.
            • The Xbox division is losing a lot of money. Microsoft allocated seed capital to the division to get it going but it must have had the intent that the business would one day be profitable in its own right. Currently they're losing money on the hardware and they're not making nearly enough on game royalties to offset that. It looks like they need each Xbox owner to buy about twice as many games as they do now to hit break-even.

              Even a company with as much cash as Microsoft doesn't keep throwing money down a b
    • I know many Socom 2 players that are buying the hard drive just to play the three new maps that are coming out starting in October.

      Also, I may be mistaken, but I believe the upcoming Front Mission Online may utilize the hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the game never saw North America though, considering the lack of HD support on the PSTwo.
      • I had heard that the SOCOM maps would just be distributed on disc and not make use of the HDD at all.

        It looks like Square Enix is building support for Front Mission Online into the PlayOnline loader that resides on the HDD so I wouldn't guess that is uses if not requires the HDD. But as you said, it may not see a North America release, but not because of the lack of support on the PStwo, but just because of the lack of installed drives period.
        • Yea, they come on discs, but how are you supposed to have the SOCOM II map disc in and the SOCOM II game disc in at the same time? That's where the HDD comes in, buddy. You copy the map to the HDD, pop in your SOCOM II game disc, and play the map. The issue with the maps was that they were originally supposed to be downloadable, they touted that term ALL THE TIME! But now we find out they didn't make it possible to download the maps, thus forcing you to buy OPM or pretty much not get the maps at all...
        • Boy I am really worried now. I plan on buying this new smaller slicker unit with network adapter and I was serious NOT aware it can't have a HDD. Now I might consider buying the regular unit again. I don't know what to do?!

          • Buy an older unit.

            To start with, stores may very well mark the old units down (Target is a prime example of one that does this). You may be able to get the PS2 w/ Network Adaptor (I hate that spelling, but it's on the package as such) for closer to $120 or so. Also, I recently saw that the FFXI package at Best Buy was around $88 now (not a sale price, from what I could see). Plus you should be able to find a vertical stand for the unit on eBay for relatively cheap and, if the pictures at engadget.com a

    • Methinks Sony learned a lesson from the X-Box... The HD made it extremely easy to mod the console and swap games. I bet it's as much about preventing piracy as anything else.
    • A *lot* of Japanese stuff supports the HD. Xenosaga and Ace Combat 4 right off the top of my head. Both of which had the support removed from the US release-- Sony's delaying the release of the HD over here and subsequent demand that developers remove the HD support really didn't help the situation.

      Had it been where gamers discovered a lot of their collection supported HD installation after they got the HD, I think things would be quite different now.
  • Yeah yeah yeah. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SynapseLapse ( 644398 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @04:35PM (#10356980)
    How many failed/vaporware add on's now does this make in the past few years? I know that FFXI and HD loader are around, but still. There's the 1394 port on the PS2, notable absent on later versions. The GC still hasn't used one of it's expansions bays. PS1 never used the parallel port (Officially) and barely supported the serial port. N64's disk drive system also MIA. This doesn't even include things such as light guns that are woefully under developed for. We could go on back much further... It just makes me wonder why doesn't Sony/Nintendo add some sort of incentive to get them to use available technology. Like 15% off licensing fees if it uses the HD/1394/eyetoy/whatever. It worked to get developers to release quality games for the NES.
    • Oh yeah, the NES, Rob the Robot had so many hot titles.
    • Yes, the Power Glove, Power Pad, and Light Gun were all really well supported... *COUGHBULLSHITCOUGH*
      • The Power Glove was not an official peripheral, it was made by Mattel. You could use it with just about every game, not that you'd want to though.

        Just substitute ROB the Robot with his gyromite spinner, and you're on the right track.
    • Which is my exact point. Why can't the companies use the incentives the use to make better games, to make better supported peripherals? Not that there aren't a huge share of stinkers on each system. Anybody remember the U force? UGH, hat deserved to NOT be supported.
      • because not all consumers want to buy all the peripherals? And if they don't buy the peripheral, they aren't likely to buy a game that supports it either, therefore making a pressure towards lowest common denominator?
    • I'm just commenting on one section. The GC has uses for all of it's expansion ports. And you can fill them all up if you want. There are two serial ports, one low speed (which you can stick a modem in, I believe, it's empty on mine), and a "high" speed which you can stick an ethernet adapter in, which are actually pretty hard to get ahold of and sell out whenever the get into stores (from what the managers have told me), the ethernet is supposidly 10/100, but all games only use it at 10. The other expansi
      • 1) Actually, the modem and ethernet adapter use the same slot.

        2) And the ethernet adapter senses which type of network you are on. There is no such thing as programming a game to use it only in 10 mode.

        3) It is not a GBA emulator. That piece of hardware the GC sits on, is an actual GBA that pipes its video and sound through the GC.

        So, not all of the slots on the GC are used.
    • "N64's disk drive system also MIA."
      The 64DD had a limited release in Japan only, several years later than it had originally been due. ;)
    • 1394 on the PS2 was an astoundingly bad choice, and I think they now realise this.

      Bit late though, isn't it?

      Dave
      • It wasn't a bad choice as much as it was just a flop.

        Of course, unless you worked at GameStop you should have been smart enough to see that it would flop. As much as geeks love LAN parties, the number of people who are going to arrange to have two TVs, two PS2s, and two copies of a game in the room are fairly slim which combined with the large amount of developement work that goes into creating games which take advantage of the link, direct link not being a marketing point, and the eclipse from online pla

        • Well, the thing about 1394 vs. USB for networking is the fact that USB has 5v 500ma current flowing through it. If you do a direct wiring between the two systems you'd create a short and fry the machines very easily. (Anyone who works in PC repair department can tell you that this happened a lot when it was revealed that two usb ports could be used fairly easily for networking. A lot of people went out and bought male-to-male adapters (as opposed to proper routing boxes) and fried their systems. As far
    • I won't comment on the other add-ons but the Gamecube has done a pretty good job at offering some connectivity. The empty slots at the bottom at used for an add-on modem and ethernet adaptor but supply is insanely low and I suppose theres a demand for it somewhere (the only to my knowledge that uses them is Phantasy Star Online and that still sells for $~50 so someone out there is buying it). Also theres also the Gameboy Player which connects to the bottom of the GC, which I'm sure gets plenty of use.

      As for

    • Speaking of never-used ports... My excellent 8-bit NES had a knock-out panel on the bottom. I remember opening the unit to find a wide (parallel?) port inside the machine. "Wow!" I was thinking as a 13 y/o "I found a top secret upgrade port! I wonder how Nintendo plans to use this hidden feature!? Ohhh I can't wait..."

      Needless to say, I'm still waiting. That (along with the repeated cancellations of bringing back a REAL Knight Rider TV series) is why I don't give a damn about ANY add-on product vapor-ware

    • I know most of you will hate me, but praise Microsoft for actually developing for the shit they sell us.
  • With the increasing density and decreasing cost of flash memory, why install a hard disk? It adds expense, noise, power consumption and reduces system reliability.
    • Re:Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gl4ss ( 559668 )
      because flash is still hideously expensive for the uses you'd use a hd for?(storing tens of gigabytes of data)
      • On a video game console?
        • ** On a video game console?**

          well doh, if you'd use it as a hd replacement, it would need to be hd sized!

          most(like every game out there minus 1 or 2) current games save to that little flash cartridge("memory card") though on a ps2.

          • Re:Flash (Score:2, Insightful)

            by Detritus ( 11846 )
            As a software designer, I'm wondering what's the point of "tens of gigabytes" of HD storage.

            I'm assuming that each console has a reasonable amount of flash memory, say 512 MB from looking at current prices. That's enough for tons of saved games, patches and added features. The game disk has 9 GB of space, assuming dual-layer DVD. If that isn't enough, the game could be split onto two DVDs. How many of my customers have Internet connections, have their console connected to the Internet, and have a broadban

            • Simple. Loading time. Loading times are getting worse again in the cyclic pattern it traditionally does. First generation games are typically either very good or very bad for loading time because while they haven't learned to optimize for the hardware they don't have to worry about them pushing so much data onto the disc for the loading times to be so bad.

              Second generation games and onward we start to see a slow creep towards worse and worse loading times as the data increases but the disc data throughput
    • Re:Flash (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lazyhound ( 542184 )
      ...and that it dies after 100,000 write cycles?
      • "...and that it dies after 100,000 write cycles?"

        Well, in Sony's case, few would actually get that far.
    • Re:Flash (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Blakey Rat ( 99501 )
      Because the current PS2 has a hard drive option and people who buy the PStwo (or whatever the hell they call it) might want to play Final Fantasy 11? But they can't. I guarantee this'll bite a few people in the ass... "Mom! I saw Final Fantasy at Bobby's house and it was an MMORPG, can we get it for our PStwo?" kind of situation.

      Now if they were announcing the PS3 doesn't have a drive, then you might have a point.
  • If the PStwo comes with ilink(firewire) and/or usb ports, then there is still hope. Sony may enable use of external drives. Then again maybe not, for fear of piracy, arrrrrrrrrrr. (Sorry, I missed talk like a pirate day, arr)

    Also I think ps2 mod chips already let you "make use" of external usb storage.
    • It has low speed USB just like the PS2 (for keyboard, mouse, head set, etc.). No iLink, that has already been removed from the current rev of the PS2.

      Most of the code based cheat devices (Action Replay, Code Breaker, Game Shark), let you copy save games to USB devices (or copy codes/saves from their website to load onto the PS2).
  • by BlakLanner ( 743891 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @05:08PM (#10357148)
    One other big problem is that the current Playstation 2s are notoriously unreliable. While a user may have already purchased their system as well as the HDD, the odds are fairly good that they will need to replace their system within a few years. If they have to after the release of the PSTwo, there is a good chance that they will not be able to get a replacement that will allow them to use their HDD. Unless they have some form of external drive support, this is a very bad move on Sony's part.
    • I was thinking the same thing. I'm on my second PS2, after the first one stopped reading discs. I do play FF:XI on my PS2, it would suck if my current machine died and I could only get a PStwo (I don't buy used systems, a.k.a. other people's problems). But at least if the optical drive dies, I can still just load FF:XI right from the hard drive, no disc required. But HDLoader copied games still need the HDLoader disc to bootstrap (which I think is a built-in limitation, that didn't need to be there).
      • I think that the HDLoader disk limitation is because the BIOS has no conception of booting off a hard drive. It probably does need to be there.

        Dave

        • The Browser upgrade that comes with the official HDD has no problem loading games from the HDD. I think there are at least three "tags" that can be placed on HDD data. Unloadable, it just tells you this data cannot be directly loaded. Executable, when you select the icon the program loads, this is how the Final Fantasy, PlayOnline Viewer works. Plus an additional tag that just tells you to insert the disc. This is what the HDLoader puts on the game data. RE: Outbreak also uses this tag. This one is t
        • Question about the HD Loader: Could I throw in a 120GB HD, copy games to it, AND run HD-dependent games like FFXI? Or does that last one require the official Sony drive?
          • You'd need an official Sony drive anyway, AFAIK it uses a custom interface in the first place, PS2's as a base have neither Ethernet nor any kind of hard disk interface, they have to be bolted on. It might be possible to replace the hard disk once you get the adaptor, but I'm not expert, and I can't be bothered to check as a) I don't have a PS2 and b) I live in Europe, and AFAIK, Sony have said they're not releasing the hard drive here.
          • The Sony-backed HD has a slightly modified firmware that allows the PS2 to detect an official HD through software. All "officially" installable games like FF11 and RE Outbreak will try to check the HD and fail if it's not the Sony one. Modchips can get you past this, but then you run the risk of additional headaches if Sony/Squeenix decide to add additional 'copy protection' checks via downloaded code from the server (like X-Box Live does).

            If you want to play FF11, you'll pretty much need a Sony HD.

            HDLoad
  • Doom and gloom (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    The HD held some possibility of revitalizing a somewhat tired console. No more. So now it's up to PS3, which may be a while in coming and sounds fiendishly difficult to code for (thought debugging obscure locking problems was hard on SMP *nix? just wait 'till Cell).
    • When the PS2 came out it was labeled as being "fiendishly difficult to code for" as well by a few developers who took at look at the development kit, and it still turned out ok. ;)
  • I cant help but think this is a bad idea. Having a built in harddrive (laptop sized?) would have been the obvious choice to go for. What they have effectively done here is killed any possibility for any new PS2 titles to take advantage of the hard disk. I cant beleive sony are making such a grand error...

    I think they should be petitioned about this !

    Nick..
    • It's Sony, champ. Their "grand errors" don't shock mot of us anymore.
    • Re:Bad Idea (Score:4, Informative)

      by WasterDave ( 20047 ) <davep.zedkep@com> on Sunday September 26, 2004 @07:48PM (#10358284)
      Games consoles, in fact any consumer electronics are rediculously cost sensitive. To the point where I was *amazed* they felt it was OK to put a blue LED in the PS2 when it was launched in 2000.

      Suggesting they spend another USD100 on a laptop hard drive in each of the remaining 10 million PS2's they're going to sell is a bit like suggesting they just kinda randomly give away a billion dollars for no apparent reason. As we all know there's only one company who'd consider doing something like that in order to win a games console dick war - and even they are starting to have second thoughts.

      Dave
    • Not a Bad Idea (Score:2, Interesting)

      by gorim ( 700913 )
      Not a bad idea from their perspective. Right now, only 1 game requires the HDD (FFXI). If I might have missed 1 other game, my point still stands. Other games that USE the HDD can run just fine without it. Other than possible speedups, and possible large gamesave areas, there might not be other use for the HDD. Those two factors are actually not terribly compelling for a HDD. People will still buy games despite not having those features. In return for dropping the HDD, Sony can save a little bit more mo
  • Fine, drop the HD... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Sunday September 26, 2004 @08:10PM (#10358505)
    But is Sony going to come out with legitamite memory cards that store much more than 8meg? If one argues that the PStwo is to compete with the Xbox or XBox2, with games that have larger world saves (such as GTA or some RPGs), as well as dynamically patching games like SOCOM2 via a patch stored on the memstick, 8meg is woefully undersized.

    I doubt it's the technology, more so how the save/recall API for memcard stuff is written. I suspect most of the current more-than-8Meg cards out there that are !Sony have hardware hacks that avoid issues many older games have with writing to 8megs, though there's still a few.

    Of course, I'd have no problem paying $50-$70 for a 128M storage card for the PS2/two. But to continue to act like 8megs is enough, particularly when most current games have no idea about the 2nd memcard slot, is silly.

    • I DO have a problem with paying 50-70 dollars for a memory card.
      $300 - Console
      $30 additional controller
      $30 Component video output cable (or Svideo, whatever floats your boat)
      $60 memory card?
      Include tax and you're paying almost $450 dollars and you don't even have a game to get you started! If cheap computer companies can sell $500 computers with 2Ghz chips, 256 megabytes of RAM, a CDRW, and a 60 GB harddrive, sony should be able to provide decently priced hardware as well.
  • by NonSequor ( 230139 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @12:10AM (#10359981) Journal
    I mean, how are you supposed to refer to this thing if you want to distinguish it from the PS2? Should we call it PS word two and call the PS2 PS number 2? Or maybe we should pronounce it Psstwoh or something like that.
    • That's a null issue, as it's still offically a PS2 (and I'm sure that the lack of a hard drive was confimed when it was launched). It's just a load of morons in the media who've latched onto the PStwo monikor, which is a stupid way to differenciating the models anyway (outside of text), seeing as you point out, they're pronounced exactly the same way.

      Names like mini-PS2, tray loading PS2, networked PS2 or ickle-PS2-chan would all be more appropiate.
    • Just like they called it the 'PlayStation', followed by PSone, this is the 'PlayStation 2', followed by the PStwo. Simple enough.
  • The lack of HDD has been mentioned before, and I'll repeat the old post I did: Haven't you thought about that PSTwo obviously will support external USB harddisks?
    • Re:Obvious solution. (Score:4, Informative)

      by Fred Or Alive ( 738779 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @03:43AM (#10360665)
      PS2 has USB1 (unless the mini-PS2 has a boost), the hard drives will be about the same speed as the DVD drive. That'll be fun, at least for loading times. The only hope for an external hard drive really is if theres still some sort of higher speed expansion port.

      In Japan they did release (or at least show) an external hard drive at one point, as eary PS2 models didn't have the hard drive bay, but they still plugged into the back of the console.
    • A) as someone else mentioned, the PS2/Two only supports USB 1.1 - IOW, very slow.

      B) The current PS2 doesn't support external drives, what makes you assume the PSTwo will?

      Face it, Sony is cutting their losses. The HD is essentially dead.
  • So what's the point?

    It comes with the ethernet built in, but they drop the HDD?

    So I can play Madden, but not FFIX... Smooth
  • HD Loader (Score:5, Informative)

    by Xian97 ( 714198 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @07:54AM (#10361433)
    I think a major reason behind the lack of hard drive on the new unit is due to the release of HD Loader over the summer. The HD Loader software allowed you to install a hard drive in the PS2 and run games from it without a mod chip. No soldering was required and the case did not have to be opened so the warranty was not violated. The hard drive attached to the network adapter and fit in the expansion port. Sony moved quickly to have the distributors shut down, but not before a lot of people had obtained the software. They were afraid of people copying friend's games or rentals to their hard drive.

    I bought HD Loader and found many legitimate uses for it. I have young children and using HD Loader I copied all of my original games to the hard drive so they do not have to handle the game disks and take the chance of scratching them. I just leave the HD Loader disk in the tray so that everytime they boot they are presented with a menu of games to run. Load times have noticeably decreased. One of my kid's favorites had nearly a minute load time between levels. Running from the hard drive that was reduced to less than 10 seconds.
    • Here's a tip for you, then.

      There are more than a few games that won't install directly from the PS2 for one reason or another. Also, installing from the PS2 can be really slow. There's a single solution for both of these.

      If you look around, there's some software you can download to let you install discs from your PC to the HD. A simple case of hooking the drive up to your PC for a bit and installing from there. Many games will still be incompatible, but I've found a few in my collection that just wouldn't
    • The HD Loader software allowed you to install a hard drive in the PS2 and run games from it without a mod chip.

      This method of piracy is so popular that I none of my piracy savvy friends network has ever bothered to use it! Not to disagree with you that it exists, and seems pretty handy. It's just I sure hope Sony isn't shooting themselves in the foot to prevent what from my point of view is a form of piracy I've never seen anyone use. (They can already burn pirated CD-ROMS- and they hardly even care eno
  • by blueZhift ( 652272 ) on Monday September 27, 2004 @10:12AM (#10362676) Homepage Journal
    As always, the decision to drop support for the HD bay and by extension the HD itself, in the PStwo is just about money. No, it's not really about stopping people from using HD Loader. Most console users are not interested in or technically capable of using the various tools that, among other things, make playing pirated games possible. If that were the case, Sony would have done something a lot sooner.

    The likely fact is just as it was said earlier, the consumers with interest in the HD already have it. They've milked it for all they can get, so continued support at this stage would cost more than what it is worth. Why? Because they had plans for the PStwo all along as a stop gap between now and the PS3 release. The PStwo gets the platform back in the news in time for XMas. They'll pick up some new sales and some repeat sales as either gifts, spares, or replacements. And best of all, for Sony, the PStwo hardware is probably going to sell at a profit for them. To make this possible they had to drop everything that would increase the cost of making the console, so bye bye HD.

    This probably also means that those HD using goodies that were promised will not be coming, at least not to North America or Europe.
    • When is it NOT about money? Sony is a company whose primary reason for being is to make money. Don't kid yourself into thinking that Sony created the Playstation and PS2 out of the goodness of their hearts to give something back to the gaming world. Its always been about money.
  • ...the best thing that could ever happen to FFXI would be to drop the PS2 players... Yes, I'm being selfish in saying this, but FFXI on the PC doesn't come close to looking as nice as most other PC MMOG's I've played (Dark Age of Camelot, Earth and Beyond, and the beauteous Anarchy Online) due to the fact that the developers have to keep the PS2 in mind with its limited resources. But that's just my opinion.

    Had Sony not ditched the firewire ports on PS2 back with the previous revision, it seems that they m

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