Could MS release a 360 with JUST a Hard Drive?

[expletive]

I went over to the MS homepage to try and make sense of all the different versions of Vista and came across this:

http://www.windowsmarketplace.com/content.aspx?ctId=377&tabid=1?WT.mc_id=0806_02

Which kind of got me thinking... If MS is getting towards the model where full 'AAA' PC games are downloadable, could they do the same with 360 games? Could MS release a 360 with no optical drive?

Benefits:
1. Roughly same price as a core (i.e. cheap)
2. Core price but with all the benefits of a HD like demos, trailers, movies, XBLA, etc
3. No memory card necessary making this core $40 cheaper
4. Cheap media extender but with lots of functionality
5. You could always add the HD-DVD drive later, (still no confirmation if it can be used for games though)
6. Your XBL profile would show all the games that you own and you could re-download them at any time if you needed to make space (but no pre-owned or trade-ins...)
7. Maybe cheaper games?

Basically the question is if MS could offer full AAA 360 games online for download. Seems like theyre doing already in the PC space. I figure youd want at least 100G maybe 150G drive for this so it wouldnt be until those size drives came down into the same price as the DVD drive (25-30).

Also, devs would probably need to alter the game so it would work off an HD and not off an optical disc. I think they would be glad to do this though to avoid trade-ins and whatnot.

Possible? Sensible?

 

[scooby_dooby]

What's the point though? The cost saving for cutting the DVD drive would be like $20 a unit tops, and they would have to heavily discount it to convince people it's worthwhile.

 

[Sis]

What's the point though? The cost saving for cutting the DVD drive would be like $20 a unit tops, and they would have to heavily discount it to convince people it's worthwhile.

Well, I think the trend is heading this way. If not this generation, most likely the next.

The problem with not offering an optical drive is that 1) the cost savings is not significant and 2) you cut out consumers/markets where broadband is not pervasive. So really what we're talking about is running a game that we purchased off local storage, regardless of whether it got on to that storage by way of pulling it off an optical medium or downloading it from the clouds, kind of like Steam.

Another way to put it: there's a reason why MS is releasing a game disc filled with Xbox Live Arcade titles...

 

[expletive]

What's the point though? The cost saving for cutting the DVD drive would be like $20 a unit tops, and they would have to heavily discount it to convince people it's worthwhile.

Basically you have a 360 at the price of a core, but with the added functionality of the HD that you DONT get with the core (because theres no HD). Plus, this would be discounted in a sense becuase you wouldnt need a memory card for it either.

EDIT: In case i didnt make my point, the HD would replace the DVD drive on the BOM. The cost/price could be the same as a Core 360. Imagine a $149 core with only a HD, but now think of all the added functionality you get because you have a HD instead of just the optical drive.

I agree with Sis its headed here, but can MS do it later THIS gen?

 

[Guden Oden]

Basically you have a 360 at the price of a core, but with the added functionality of the HD that you DONT get with the core (because theres no HD).

What added functionality? The HD adds zero functionality on the 360, it just gives more storage than the current model of flash memory units.

EDIT: In case i didnt make my point, the HD would replace the DVD drive on the BOM. The cost/price could be the same as a Core 360.

An optical drive is far far far cheaper to manufacture than a HDD. Most of the guts in an optical drive is plastic, there's almost zero precision devices in it apart from the optical pickup; the head actuator's mostly just a regular stepper motor and some PLASTIC gears for chrissakes... Not even a real servo mechanism.

There's no way it could be made for the same price, unless the core version with optical drive's artificially price-adjusted according to the price of the version with the HDD, and that seems kind of backwards don't you think?

This would never fly, by the way. A full 360 game is many hundred megabytes to several gigabytes in size, it'd take too long to download that much data for most people. Especially if you have hundreds of thousands of HDD-only customers hammering the content servers all at the same time when a new title is released. Imagine downloading for 2-3 days to play a new game when you could have popped down to the games store and bought it and been back home inside of an hour?

Net connections need to be like a magnitude faster overall before a scheme such as this becomes feasible. I'm not sure even the next generation of consoles after this one will do away with the physical media. There's just too vast a stretches of the world where the internet infrastructure doesn't carry the kind of load current, and much less future games would put on it...

 

[Graham]

Well you wouldn't be able to copy from the disk to the drive. That's just opening up way too bigger bag of piracy worms.

Guden, your main problem with the system already has a very simple solution. Use the steam model, preload the content as encrypted data prior to release. Then people all over the world can be playing the game the *second* it is avaliable. No spending an hour getting the game at your local store ;-) assuming they even have it yet.

I'd bet my cat that microsoft have this planned. It may not happen in this current generation (I expect it will in limited markets, ie, the US), but you can bet your cat too that it will happen in the next.
Consider steams 'free weekends', and other similar promotions. These significantly increase sales. And bandwidth is still, overall, cheaper than a packaged distributed product (at least outside of NZ ;-).

Steam shows that having many thousands of people downloading multiple gigabyte programs can work. If anything microsoft can do it better, we are already nearing 2gb demos. And don't forget that utterly ginormous server farm they are building just out of seattle (I forget how many acres it covers...).

I could also see it working using networked hard drives. Imagine a 500gb HDD addon for the 360. ;-)
In some ways this would be ideal, as your game collection grows, you can add more HDD addons. Heck, preload the HDD with 40 popular games (and sell them at discounted prices). Give each game half an hour free play to hook you

bluray? pah.

 

[PiNkY]

What's the point though? The cost saving for cutting the DVD drive would be like $20 a unit tops, and they would have to heavily discount it to convince people it's worthwhile.

I think that's even overestimating it. Just googled and some of samsung's 16x dvds are retailing for like €12 in non oem versions. However saving $5 per console is quite a lot if you produce them in the millions.

 

[a688]

What added functionality? The HD adds zero functionality on the 360, it just gives more storage than the current model of flash memory units.

Caching? Backwards compatible gaming? Custom music (if you don't have anything to stream from)?

An optical drive is far far far cheaper to manufacture than a HDD. Most of the guts in an optical drive is plastic, there's almost zero precision devices in it apart from the optical pickup; the head actuator's mostly just a regular stepper motor and some PLASTIC gears for chrissakes... Not even a real servo mechanism.

I'd imagine the failure rate for DVD drives is greater than that of HDDs so in time, the TCO could be cheaper for HDDs, at least in Microsoft's eyes (more money up front, less repair work because of bad/loud dvd drives).

This would never fly, by the way. A full 360 game is many hundred megabytes to several gigabytes in size, it'd take too long to download that much data for most people. Especially if you have hundreds of thousands of HDD-only customers hammering the content servers all at the same time when a new title is released. Imagine downloading for 2-3 days to play a new game when you could have popped down to the games store and bought it and been back home inside of an hour?

If you have ever used steam you can see the possibilities of it working. Games can be preloaded (imagine not having to go to the game store or call them up and listen to their sales pitch to preorder a game) and games can be downloaded in sections (don't need to download the whole game at once to start playing).

Net connections need to be like a magnitude faster overall before a scheme such as this becomes feasible. I'm not sure even the next generation of consoles after this one will do away with the physical media. There's just too vast a stretches of the world where the internet infrastructure doesn't carry the kind of load current, and much less future games would put on it...

I don't think anybody said this would be the only option. Plus, what would be stopping them from releasing an external drive for these regions connected via eSATA? Nothing, if you realize that the current xbox 360 hard drive is 'external'.

 

[FireGoblin]

To follow this thought process - How about releasing an 'XBox 120' - a cut down XBox 360 with reduced CPU cores, reduced GPU pipelines(?), no CD drive, smaller & lighter - to play XBox Live games only???

Cut the price to Wii levels, allow Live games to be shared within a household (for a small fee no doubt!) and it would be the perfect addition for second bedrooms etc

 

[blakjedi]

To follow this thought process - How about releasing an 'XBox 120' - a cut down XBox 360 with reduced CPU cores, reduced GPU pipelines(?), no CD drive, smaller & lighter - to play XBox Live games only???

Cut the price to Wii levels, allow Live games to be shared within a household (for a small fee no doubt!) and it would be the perfect addition for second bedrooms etc

If anything the "reduced cores" and "reduced pipelines" suggestions dont make ANY sense. The developers and the games EXPECT those things to be there and that is the consoles SPECIFICATION... dont worry... in time the current machine will decline in cost...

 

[FireGoblin]

Hi, I'm not sure about the GPU pipelines - hence the question mark, but I thought that Live games only used a single core? If they use the spare capacity of Core 0 (that the OS runs on I think) then the fact the others are missing shouldn't affect the game code.

What I was suggesting was that, could MS release a cut-down version of the 360 that was for playing network distributed Live games only? The question of would they is a whole different ballgame though!

 

[Corwin_B]

Hi, I'm not sure about the GPU pipelines - hence the question mark, but I thought that Live games only used a single core? If they use the spare capacity of Core 0 (that the OS runs on I think) then the fact the others are missing shouldn't affect the game code.

Geometry Wars uses all 3 cores, actually.

 

[FireGoblin]

Scuppers my brilliant idea!

 

[expletive]

What added functionality? The HD adds zero functionality on the 360, it just gives more storage than the current model of flash memory units.

I've alerady listed them in my OP but...

Demos, trailers, movies, music, custom soundtracks, and thanks to a688 for pointing out the obivous back compat and caching for games.

PLUS you dont dont need to buy a memory stick. (-$40)

An optical drive is far far far cheaper to manufacture than a HDD. Most of the guts in an optical drive is plastic, there's almost zero precision devices in it apart from the optical pickup; the head actuator's mostly just a regular stepper motor and some PLASTIC gears for chrissakes... Not even a real servo mechanism.

There's 100G drives online for $40 retail. Even if MS charges the 10 or 20 more for a HD only version its still cheaper than buying an "DVD core" + a memory stick. I think MS wouldnt mind having more units with HDs either, those are people that have all they need to spend money on the marketplace whereas memory stick people will always be limited by space.

There's no way it could be made for the same price, unless the core version with optical drive's artificially price-adjusted according to the price of the version with the HDD, and that seems kind of backwards don't you think?

No, see above why.

This would never fly, by the way. A full 360 game is many hundred megabytes to several gigabytes in size, it'd take too long to download that much data for most people. Especially if you have hundreds of thousands of HDD-only customers hammering the content servers all at the same time when a new title is released. Imagine downloading for 2-3 days to play a new game when you could have popped down to the games store and bought it and been back home inside of an hour?

Net connections need to be like a magnitude faster overall before a scheme such as this becomes feasible. I'm not sure even the next generation of consoles after this one will do away with the physical media. There's just too vast a stretches of the world where the internet infrastructure doesn't carry the kind of load current, and much less future games would put on it...

Maybe i can get you five minutes with Gabe Newell?