PARANOiA said:
I think there's something affecting backwards compatibility and the HDD issue here that no one has mentioned: the controllers on Xbox2 may be entirely different.
The XBox copped a lot of flak on launch for the controllers... I'd be surprised if MS didn't try to modify them to make them more "friendly" to everyone (read: PS2 audience).
If this is the case then the system out of the box is unlikely to by backwards compatible. Selling a HD-Addon could be a great revenue raiser, and include a way to plug old controllers in (since most XBox1 games use the HDD).
Something else no one has mentioned which I'm curious about.. if you have XBox1 games, then your saved games are 99% of the time going to be on your hard disk. Why would you care if the Xbox2 has a hard disk, since they're no use to your existing games? End result: you keep your Xbox1, or buy a memory card to transfer the data.
I agree that the talk of no backward compatibility and no hard drive may stem from problems we may have never thought of and may in fact hamper their inclusion. Is it possible they changed the controllers? Possible, but I doubt for the reason you mention(re: friendlier to PS2 audience). IMHO they have already done just that by releasing the S Controller. Now, it's possible that they decided to abandon the USB technology behind the controllers. It's one of the biggest exploits used by hackers to load Linux and other software on the hard drive. It's possible MS has decided to plug all the holes that hackers exploited: USB, hard drive, DVD drive, CPU, BIOS, etc. On the other hand, by supporting backward compatibility consumers will come to expect that previous peripherals will also work(controllers, memory cards, AV packs, etc.) To make Xbox Next hack proof, the first thing they need to do is to keep USB flash drives from working on it. In effect, this means a clean slate for Xbox Next and hopefully in the end it will translate to a more profitable console.
Now another reason could be, and I think this would really be cool, no more controller ports but instead controllers are completely wireless. There's already been talk about a built-in wireless adapter. It wouldn't be much of a stretch if they extended that to controllers.
As for a hard drive add-on, I initially liked the idea because I'd rather have the option then no option at all. However, after reading the messages on TeamXbox.com's forums I'm starting to reconsider that. I think that maybe Microsoft already has a few good ideas on how to provide mass storage without necessarily using a costly and less secure PC hard drive. Think about it, Microsoft only provides 2gb of the total 8gb to games for caching. The rest of the 6gb is used for game saves, downloadable content and music. I suspect that an insanely high majority of the Xbox users are not using more than maybe 10%-20% of that space. In fact, on my own Xbox I'm only using about 1gb and that's because I copied 25 CDs or about 850mb. That's a lot of space that's not being used and lot of money lost by Microsoft. Also consider that Microsoft can't buy 8gb drives anymore and has resorted to 20gb and greater capacities. Funny thing is anything above 8gb is not being used, which is not only a big waste for Microsoft, but also for consumers. In fact, I would rather they use a more cost effective solution and pass the savings to the customer by making the console cheaper or use it on something more worthwhile like faster CPU, more memory, faster GPU, or etc.
As for transferring hard drive data from a Xbox1 to a Xbox2, I've seen many suggestions. The biggest one being that you can use WinXP as a way to backup the data and then restore it to the Xbox2. Or instead of using your own PC, use Xbox Live to backup the data. It's even been suggested that Microsoft might even allow either one of these methods as a replacement for local mass storage. I'm not sure I like that idea since I don't have broadband at home or an WinXP machine. Might be OK for those kind of users, but not me. Guess we will see huh?
Tommy McClain
