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XBox (Games)

Xbox 2 To Feature Removeable Hard Drive 69

Posted by Zonk from the backwards-compatible,-I-hope dept.
More details are emerging on Microsoft's next console, set to release this fall. GamesIndustry.biz has word that the Xbox 2 will have a removable hard drive as part of its feature set. From the article: "It's been assumed for some time that this means that Xbox 2 will be sold in at least two basic configurations - with and without a mass storage unit - and today's report seems to indicate that it will be possible to upgrade between those models by adding the hard drive."
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Xbox 2 To Feature Removeable Hard Drive More

Xbox 2 To Feature Removeable Hard Drive

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  • uh... (Score:1, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 )

    ... my Xbox already has a removable drive (well, 120 gigs held in by 4 torx screws) or you mean an official MS product?

  • Doubt this'll sell well (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ThePolkapunk ( 826529 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:34PM (#11756924) Homepage
    I doubt that a HD as an accessory would sell well. Take a look at the PS2 drive. The only reason to buy it is for Final Fantasy XI. If Microsoft isn't including the HD in all of their versions of XBOX 2, developers will be less inclined to utilize it, and it'll be just as useless as the PS2 HD.
    • The PS2 hard drives did sell well until Sony discontinued it due to the CDloader software. It allowed people to load games permanently on their HD.

      1.) You get super fast loading times

      2.) you never have to put in a CD, just load from disk

      3.) your playstation life span has expanded by many years since you no longer need to spin the CD.

      4.) you can just rent any game and OWN it

      5.) supposedly you can load some foreign/import games too

    • Re:Doubt this'll sell well (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Except FFXI sucked. Hopefully the XBox 2 will have games that make the hard drive worthwhile. There are tons of features that can make a hard drive worth it:

      1) Downloadable maps/levels
      2) Downloadable new models
      3) Downloadable new weapons/items
      4) Updatable games - get new features
      5) Custom music - upload your MP3s/WMAs and listen to them while gaming
      6) Larger save games, allowing more user-created content

      There's plenty that could be done with a hard drive. That Sony blew it and FFXI sucked ass is not a

    • The 'Killer App'... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by PhoenixOne ( 674466 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:58PM (#11757209)
      People will buy the harddrive if there is a good reason for all that space. If Microsoft makes the XBox2 a "Home Media Center" then you will want to buy the biggest harddrive you can to record your TV shows and movies.

    • Well if they build it right it would sell well... for example if Sony had enough forsight, they could have (and yes I am totally guessing here but it makes sense from what I do know) made the hard drive look like a memory card to the PS2, and allowed any game to make use of it... instead games had to be hard coded for it, but why invest the time for that feature if not many people have it to begin with?

      Sony had a chance with the Hard drive that they probably did'nt take enough advantage of... possibly an

  • Backwards compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Elledan ( 582730 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:36PM (#11756951) Homepage
    Now the real question is whether this HDD will be the missing link in allowing the XBox's successor to be backwards compatible.

    The article didn't mention this, but instead explored the rumours about an 'xPod' and the Xenon's marketing name.

    With MSFT acquiring hardware virtualization software not too long ago, there have been plenty of rumours about backwards compatibility in this console, but few facts.

  • Spintering a market? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SunFan ( 845761 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:36PM (#11756954)

    I thought the whole point to consoles was to sell a unified hardware platform. Making a hard drive an option seems like a headache for game developers. It would essentially make unit w/ harddrive a different platform to test with than unit w/o hard drive on top of the other platforms, such as Windows 98/2000/XP, next-gen GameCube, and PS3.
    • And you can only imagine, if this is all true, that developers will probably end up ignoring the hard drive. Especially given this quote from the article: "The report tallies with claims from developers working on the system, who have told GamesIndustry.biz in the past that Microsoft has disclosed that there will be a mass storage device, but that they should not rely on its presence for their games." Seems like a large step backwards.

    • Re:Spintering a market? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mausmalone ( 594185 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @03:04PM (#11757977) Homepage Journal
      I think the idea behind this is that everybody would have a portable drive, and you can carry your drive to your friend's house and plug it into their box, etc... like 5 GB memory cards.

      • If that's the case, I really hope they ruggedize them. Throwing a hard drive into a back pack, followed by throwing it onto the floor of the school bus or onto the floor of a friend's house gives me a chill.
    • You have a good point about testing on multiple platforms. What I find interesting is M$'s deviation from x86 and the PC market. When Xbox first came out, I really thought it would do well if only for the fact that it was PC-based hw. I figured all the PC game developers would immediately port their games to the PC to try to hit that additional market. This seems to happen more often in reverse order - Halo coming to PC.

      But then again - can you imagine playing HL2 or Doom3 on a 733MHz Xbox? OMFG, I g

  • I wonder..... (Score:3, Funny)

    by RootsLINUX ( 854452 ) <rootslinux@gmail.cDEBIANom minus distro> on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:43PM (#11757028) Homepage
    Which is going to be heavier. This removable hard drive or the XBox2 controller... ^_^
    • XBox 3: The Controllers will have removable hard drives in them. They can also double as rumble packs that way.

    • Re:I wonder..... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Golias ( 176380 )
      Dude, if you think the X-Box controller, even the big meaty original one, is in any way "heavy", you really need to stop playing the PS2 and get some exercise. Little girls can probably beat you senseless right now.
    • Which is going to be heavier. This removable hard drive or the XBox2 controller... ^_^
      Pah! You kids don't know the meaning of heavy.
      When I were a lad I had t' play games with t' Jaguar controller in each hand for 23 hours a day.
      And they were made of solid iron.

  • Maybe... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drewmca ( 611245 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @01:52PM (#11757137)
    My gut instinct, or rather hope, is the thing will come with enough mass storage to handle a lot of game saves and fulfill the purpose of the hd in the current xbox as far as streaming and other things are concerned. There are rumors that flash storage will be used, and this kind of makes sense as a smaller, 1-2GB drive in the base unit. That way, you can still use tricks like hd streaming, you can still expect that everyone can save to the HD, you can still (potentially) support backwards compatibility, and you can still expect that everyone can do custom soundtracks (and you have a place built in for settings like live accounts and what not).

    Then the HD add-on really only becomes important when you either want to load up a bunch more soundtracks or you want the box to become more of a media server, storing a lot of content or perhaps doing tivo-like stuff. That way, the HD isn't an "option" doomed to failure because of lack of dev support, but actually a real value-add feature that makes you box do entirely new things. Note that both Sony and MS are rabidly pursuing that whole tivo/media center angle in the next generation.

    The only question I have about using flash storage in the base unit is the speed of storage. I don't know how fast flash storage is in comparison to a low-end hard drive like the one in the box now. If it's a lot slower, then maybe the base unit is a bit more limited, at least as far as streaming and backwards compatibility are concerned.

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:2, Informative)

      by normal_guy ( 676813 )
      My 1GB flash keychain reads/writes at ~10MB/sec. Certainly fast enough for caching and savegames.
    • Has anyone heard anything more lately about backwards compatibility?

      It seems like a very difficult problem to me to run an x86 emulator on multiple PowerPCs to run Halo 2 in real-time. But if anyone has the resources, its Microsoft.

      As a EE, I find this all fascinating... but then again, I'm a Playstation fan so I'm just hoping for M$ to fail - Bwuhahhaha!

    • Re:Maybe... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Necroman ( 61604 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @05:11PM (#11759318)
      One problem they run into is finding a hard-drive manufacturer that still produces low capacity drives. Hard drive makers end of life series of hard drives as time goes on. It costs them money to maintain multiple designs of hard drives, so they tend to only keep a few in production at any given time.

      But with the almost guaranteed sales associated with the X-Box, I could see a hard-drive manufacturer bending over backwards for MS.
      • Maybe MS should just use the Seagate/Hitachi mini HDD, like the ones featured in Apple iPod.
      • iPod mini style drives would be perfect for this. Although perhaps a tad expensive.
      • But with the almost guaranteed sales associated with the X-Box, I could see a hard-drive manufacturer bending over backwards for MS.

        I foresee hard drive manufactures making the higher density drives and remarking them as smaller drives. That way I can subside the production of the larger drives at Microsoft's expense. All it takes is a little bit of firmware to make a HD think it's something different than it really is.
        • Already happens. I recently had a warranty replacement drive returned to me from Western Digital - it was marked as a 80GB disk, it looked identical to an 80GB disk, it *was* an 80GB disk, but it only showed 40GB to the system and OS (which was the size of the disk it replaced). I couldnt see any way to get it to open up the 'missing' space.
    • The speed is not the issue with flash. As a form of semi-permanant memory flash is much, much faster than any rotating magnetic disk, speed won't be the issue. My problem with flash is that it has a limited lifetime. You can only erase a flash device so many times before it starts to break down. Sure the limit is rather high but there is a chance you could reach this limit if you are streaming files from the device (basically using it as temp storage).

      You are right that a hard drive as an addon is prob
  • I really thought that the release of the Xbox would establish hardrives as a nesesity for all consoles that would be released after it. The hardrive is: 1) EXTREMELY convienient, I only know of one person who has bought a memory card for the system. 2) Super fast. Having a hard drive reminds me back to the cartridge days when saving your progress took no more than 3 seconds. 3) Allows for downloadable content on xbox live. If the next xbox has a version without a HD then it will make it impossible to rele
    • Yeah, it was great until you wanted to transfer your saved games. Many hard drive saves could not be put onto memory cards, so if you wanted to take your game to a friend's house, or transfer them from one xbox to another, you were out of luck.
    • The hardrive is: 1) EXTREMELY convienient, I only know of one person who has bought a memory card for the system.

      This is reason enough for MS to get rid if the hard drive. Think of all the lost sales of memory cards!

  • Easier to use your torren^H^H^H^H^H^Hlegally backed up games! And shar... I'll stop there. Whatever, I'm happy :D
  • Just consider it a very large memory card.

  • Doing a Sega? (Score:1, Insightful)

    by chrisbeatty ( 811646 )
    Sega split their market with the Mega CD/32X addons back in the 90's, different platforms under similar guises lead to much confusion with Joe Public. This began to move Sega onto a slippery slope which ultimately leading them out of the console hardware business.

    Why don't MS just stick with a HDD as standard in the next gen Xbox, it's not like they're that expensive is it??
    The article states the developers "should not rely on its (the HDD) presence for their games" so why bother buying an expensive model

    • Market Economy (Score:3, Interesting)

      by 2bluemike ( 588800 )
      Why don't MS just stick with a HDD as standard in the next gen Xbox, it's not like they're that expensive is it??

      Because HDDs are PC commodity items - and therefore driven by the PC market. Can you walk into Fry's right now and buy an 8GB hard drive? 3 years from now when MS will be expecting to be making huge profit from Xenon, will you be able to walk into Fry's and buy an 80GB hard drive??

      My guess is that they will use your home network for these types of tasks (and stream the video/audio/etc). J
  • While not acknowledged in the posting, supposedly the name of the console will be Xbox 360. Is it just me, or is this a huge give-away that the console will be circular in shape? Why else have such a ridiculous name.

  • Cost cutting (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Momoru ( 837801 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @02:39PM (#11757686) Homepage Journal
    Well its a good way for them to save money, i know my Xbox hard drive is only 2% full or something...i just hope the removable hard drive doesnt use some proprietary connection, because if its just a standard hard drive this would make it easy for anyone to add an 80GB drive, which cost about as much as an 8MB memory card from Sony these days. Really what Microsoft should do is make the Xbox work with thumbdrives standard, that way i can bring a gig of data from my xbox to a friend's as easily as i would on a memory card...plus it would hold enough for me to store downloaded levels etc...

    • Re:Cost cutting (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GeckoX ( 259575 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @03:30PM (#11758255)
      The only xbox owners I know that have anything significant on their HD have them filled with pirated games. I am entirely unsurprised at this move by MS.

      • Re:Cost cutting (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Momoru ( 837801 )
        the other cool (legitimate) thing to do with the hard drive is rip CD tracks to it...some games allow you to change the in game audio to this music you ripped.
    • Really what Microsoft should do is make the Xbox work with thumbdrives standard, that way i can bring a gig of data from my xbox to a friend's as easily as i would on a memory card...plus it would hold enough for me to store downloaded levels etc...

      And it would allow you to copy your friends' MP3 and TV Shows (speculation?). Hello DMCA?? Are you out there?!?

      Dont get me wrong, I think its a great idea, but the big players in the industry have billions riding on this, you can bet they will try to stop i

  • Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Wednesday February 23, 2005 @02:45PM (#11757752)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Also totally customizable. (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    That's not all it will have. Kotaku [kotaku.com] reported this last week, as well as the fact that the whole box will be customizable with snap on skins and even a customizable dashboard. They also reported that it will come in two flavors, have wireless controllers and some other details.
  • ...not really on purpose though. I bought one of those PSO USB Keyboard Adapters when they were selling them online for like 2 bucks. A few weeks ago I plugged in my 1gig Lexar USB Key into it and like magic the Xbox formated my USB Key into a 1 gig Xbox memory card.

    Not exactly what I was going for but it was cool to see so many free blocks on the memory card port from the Xbox menu.
  • I think, while the whole 'segmented market' argument is somewhat valid, you've got to think about the fact that, if this is true, the harddrive will be released at the same time as the console, and not afterwards as an add-on, the type that's never faired particularly well. So, you go into a game store, or check ebgames.com, and you'll be contanstantly harassed, from day one to buy the damn thing by retarded EB employees.
  • Given that Microsoft must already know the danger of splintering the market by offering the HD as an add on, I would say that it's just a marketing hedge. They don't want to really support a hard drive at all and probably won't develop any games that would require such an add on. For end users the Xbox hard drive was great, no memory cards to buy and a really hackable games console. For MS, this was a big headache! The HD coupled with its PC-based hardware and development model made Xbox piracy relatively e
  • ...is user created content. It would be great if games released for the xbox came with tools that will let users create thier own levels/weapons/items/etc. Each developer can also allow users to upload their content so other users can download. It works great on PC's and console really need it. Would definitely extend the life of a lot of games, and us gamers wont have to wait for devs to create official extra cotent.
    • You won't have to wait long -- two upcoming Xbox shooters will feature mapmakers: Timesplitters Future Perfect and Pariah. The former looks to have a much expanded version of the mapmaker found in Timesplitters 2 (i.e., tile-based), and will allow you to share maps over Live (apparently through EA's servers) and play user created maps on Live. I assume there are some size contraints, but hopefully Free Radicals will take full advantage of the Xbox hard drive and let you store as many user created maps as
  • All this bull shit with xbox next and such. I am really disenhartened by the gaming community. who needs a tivo i know i dont. i have a computer and a dvd burner. hmm lets guess what i do? i think that microsoft should just build in the hdd and make everybodys life easier. because you all know that there will be some PIBKAC that tries to put the drive in backwards or actually opens the xbox to install the drive and then will fu*k up his xbox.(lawsuit to follow) lets face it people most average comput

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