Mass storage in next generation consoles.

[Johnny Awesome]

Here's what I think the situation is with the X360 hard-drive: MS is prepared to eat the cost in order to get the Xbox faithful to adopt the X360 early-on. Hardcore Xbox users want a hard drive. They are telling developers not to assume that an HD is in the system so that they can take it out when they need to cost reduce the system for late-cycle casual gamers.

 

[Nite_Hawk]

The thing I really don't understand is why MS is bothering with 20GB harddrives. The cost to go from 20 to a 40gb is pretty negligable these days for the manufacturer because you can do both with a single platter and head. Hell, some of the newer drives out are 133GB/platter, so you could do a 60GB drive with a single head.

It just seems silly to go with 20GB drives unless they are trying to differentiate a high and low end product.

Nite_Hawk

 

[koldfuzion1]

Has anyone considered the possibility that much storage may be remote? Particularly for online play and such, Sony could store user related data including downloaded content on a remote server. This may not work for huge transactions, like downloading a level, but would certainly make it easy for someone to say, track cash in GT4 and remotely store their garage of cars.

Ken K. seemed to allude to this in his recent interview with Honda (see his reference to "Cell Storage"). I would think centralized storage would be much more cost effective than dropping 40 gig hardrives in every machine, where 1/2 of the users would never use up the space. Plus they could minimize the investment in microtransactions which is still an unproven business model. Especially since many people will likely connect Xbox/PS3 to their PCs anyway, since both are network enabled (and it looks like it is pretty damn easy to pull off, even for me--I haven't even bothered with wi-fi or any of that garbage yet since my apartment is so small). I would think both Sony and MS would much prefer a sort of Hotmail megastorage approach than bulking up their consoles with storage capacity when they could spend the money on improving performance and price instead. Unworkable?

Just an idea.

 

[jvd]

The thing I really don't understand is why MS is bothering with 20GB harddrives. The cost to go from 20 to a 40gb is pretty negligable these days for the manufacturer because you can do both with a single platter and head. Hell, some of the newer drives out are 133GB/platter, so you could do a 60GB drive with a single head.

It just seems silly to go with 20GB drives unless they are trying to differentiate a high and low end product.

Nite_Hawk

the 20 gb drives may have been a good deal . The supplier may have had a few million not sold and gave ms a really good price ?

why would they increase the hardisk size in coming years?

the cost over a 20gig to 80gig isnt big for a manufacturer or a wholesale buyer

Most likely in the coming years 20 gig drives will be phased out .

Not only that but it looks like an increased value for the system to the average consumer .

Instead of droping the price to 200$ with a 20 gig hardrive they can drop it to 200$ with a 40 gig hardrive and the average consumer will see they are getting a better deal as there is more hardrive space for less money than before . Sorta like packing in a game .

Not to mention as I said above they may be getting a really good deal on the 20 gig drives from a wholesaler who got stuck with alot of them.


Look at the xbox the last of the systems were shipping with bigger drives as the old drives wren't produced anymore .

 

[_phil_]

They are telling developers not to assume that an HD is in the system so that they can take it out when they need to cost reduce the system for late-cycle casual gamers.

now that's a screwed theory .
Dvd is already from the start a cheap choice capacity wise ,how are devs going to do without a HD to at least cache their files ?
.not even talking about online content...

would MS put all the costs of the 360 in the cpu+GPU, and save monney on everything else ? (cheap plastic ,cheap connectics ,no hd ,...)

(am i missing something ,?)

 

[Joe DeFuria]

The thing I really don't understand is why MS is bothering with 20GB harddrives. The cost to go from 20 to a 40gb is pretty negligable these days for the manufacturer because you can do both with a single platter and head.

Is this true for lap-top drives?

 

[mmp121]

All you people are assuming that the HDD on the XBOX360 is a 3.5 inch drive. From what I have read, its most likely a 2.5 inch laptop drive. The costs of which are obviously higher. Granted there are now 100GB laptop drives out, but a 20GB laptop sized drive is a good starting point considering where the HDD industry is. Not to mention the drive has to be quiet, which means it will probably be a low RPM drive, 4200 RPM. Maybe some of the scenarios you all are proposing might come true with a 40GB or 60GB drive available standard during the holiday '06 timeframe.

 

[AzBat]

All you people are assuming that the HDD on the XBOX360 is a 3.5 inch drive. From what I have read, its most likely a 2.5 inch laptop drive.

You're assuming it's actually a platter/spindle magnetic drive and not something entirely different. We have yet to hear anymore on the M-Systems deal.

Tommy McClain

 

[jvd]

I think it makes sense to offer higher capacity packages . ITs a quick way to get people to buy the more expesnive one . You can pack in something extra like a halo 2.5 and sell it for another 100$ . I'm sure a 40 or 60 gig hardrive doesn't cost 100$ more than a 20 gig hardrive and there will be people that buy it right off the bat .

Then sell 40 gig or 60 gigs for x amount of dollars for those who bought 20 gigs that now need more room can buy . They will most likely make a good amount of money

 

[BigGamer X]

I would like if xbox360 and PS3 came with two versions at launch.
One with and the other without HD.

would be good for u but splits the user base which is bad for sony and ms . But more importantly ms who seems to be pushing this as thier thing . If it is a 20 gig at 300$ though i don't see a big deal . Just ditch it and buy the upgrade (which isn't going to be a standard drive just look at the casing )

It would also be bad for the X360 games themselves. If every developer knows the X360 will always have a HDD, it can be used for cache.

 

[Acert93]

I am also sure that Sony would be happier with people buying Sony brand memory sticks because they make a killing on them.

Why would you buy expensive memory sticks when PS3 also accepts CF and SD?

Because Sony will sell "Sony PlayStation" brand PS3 Memory Sticks right next to the PS3 display in GameStop, EB, Walmart, Target, etc...

"Official" brand memory Nintendo and Sony make a nice profit off their memory, and if Sony can push "PS3 Memory Sticks" right next to the console that just expands those sales.

Also, if you have a Sony PSP, digital camera, MP3 player, or whatnot that uses Memory Sticks you might as well get a memory stick so you can use it on all of your devices.

Now I want a HDD in the PS3, but I can see how selling large Memory Sticks could be a nice boost to sales. Why compete with that?