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PS2 Hard Drive Announced
An Anonymous Coward writes: "Sony has announced details on their hard drive for PS2 (in Japan, anyway)." It's listed at $150, which puts the PS/2+Hard Drive at around $400 (after rumored PS2 price cuts). All of this is going to matter big time when Microsoft's X-Box storms onto the scene. The article also has information about the keyboard, mouse, and network adapters that will someday also be tethered to PS2s around the world.
Raphael Gray, a Welsh hacker, managed to get ahold of Bill Gates' credit card and proceeded to send Viagra to his home! Now that's funny. Great hack.
Unfortunately, the Brits apparently are able to make diamonds by shoving coal up their ass and waiting six months. Whereas here in the U.S. this guy would be a hero and perhaps given a slap on the wrist, over there they are labelling him as mentally unstable with psychiatric problems.
Raphael Gray wherever you are, don't listen to them. You are the one who is sane, having a very healthy sense of humor. Do yourself a favor and emigrate to the U.S., where you won't have to put up with a bunch of asshole bureaucrats who can't take a fuckin' joke.
is this the first post *ever* without "large gaping hole" linked to our favorite web site??
Oh.. **OH**. "PS2" stands for "Playstation 2".. Oh, now i get it.
I sure am glad i read your post; up until here i had thought that when cdmrtaco said "PS2", he meant the UNIX environment variable.
I was *THINKING* it made no sense to attatch a hard drive to your secondary prompt.... damn. That was confusing.
Now i just have to figure out why those people in that other thread are obsessing about the PS1 art museum in new york and talking as if it were a piece of consumer electronics or something..
There is a large gaping hole in the back of the PS2. This hole is where the (internal) harddrive plugs into. You can buy the internal one, or the external one which uses a USB port.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
I'm an intern for MS in the XBOX group. (Yes, it's XBOX. Not xbox; Not X-box; Not X-Box; just XBOX).
There will be no such thing as DX drivers, at least none that the user will ever know about. Microsoft is not that stupid people. Think about it - this is a gaming CONSOLE. Yes, it is certainly a CONSOLE, and not a PC. Sure, it's got the same brand name parts. However, it has a different architecture. It has certain constraints PCs do not have. It has certain benefits that PCs do not have (locked hardware, unified memory, etc.)
As was stated at a tech talk at MIT by J Allard, there is no real "operating system" for XBOX. All the code that drives the hardware is statically linked with a game executable. And since it's a Microsoft "OS," it has to be huge, right? As of now, this is under a megabyte.
There. It's a console. It's not a PC. It doesn't really have an OS. There's no such thing as drivers. And stop bitching about XBOX just because it comes from Microsoft. Look past the freakin' name for once and see that MS might just have something good on their hands.
You should never take life too seriously - You'll never get out of it alive.
CD-ROM's weren't a good media to ship software on, either, because "the average consumer didn't have a CD-ROM drive".
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
The word from the source
Xbox. No dash, not all caps either.
How about:
Randomly generated maps / items / whatever
Opponent position
AI state data (depends on engine)
Past information (Wait, can't open this door until I flip switch C in room 32 5 levels back..)
Also, you are mixing Flash memory (non-volatile) with SDRAM (requires power to store information). Flash is a _lot_ more expensive.
"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Actually, the Harddrive doesn't hook into anything in the bay.(Other than sliding into the bay) The harddrive hooks into the modem/bba which hooks into that slot. At least that's the way they showed it at E3.
Vermifax
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There are actually two ports on the BBA, one ethernet and one analog 56k.
Vermifax
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Shown here
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With the advances in graphics cards, PCs look better for gaming to me. Consoles make (made?) a big point about being simple and portable. Once you started adding more and more shit to them they just become very expensive proprietary PCs. Seems a bit strange somehow..
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Delphis
Delphis
And stop bitching about XBOX just because it comes from Microsoft. Look past the freakin' name for once and see that MS might just have something good on their hands.
It doesn't matter.
I'd rather give Nintendo my money than Microsoft, just so I know my cash won't help finance a company that produces shite software and plans on extorting even more money out of users.
At least Nintendo's business practices are slightly less evil, and mostly confined to the toy market, anyway.
Besides, (IIRC)the Gamecube will cost $50-100 less, looks fucking killer, AND Nintendo is known for making some of the best games ever.
Microsoft can take their box (oh, sorry, BOX) and shove it.
C-X C-S
Am I the only person who saw that and thought "PS/2? Why would someone make a new hard drive for a machine that has been out of production for over ten years??"
I don't want no steenking hard drive for a IBM PS/2....
(Taco, take the hint, its PS2, not PS/2, but even then you should probably just stick to Playstation 2...its only a few more letters!)
-Julius X
-Julius X
remove "-whatkindofspamdoyoutakemefor-" from email to send
When I think of PC games, I think of games developed in the first half of the 90's.
And I think of games that were developed even before that. Games that were true classics like Sam & Max Hit the Road, Out of this World, Prince of Persia, Ultima IV, Wasteland, Wing Commander, Tetris, Pirates!, Populous, Gabriel Knight, System Shock, The Secret of Monkey Island, SimCity, and Alone in the Dark.
When I think back to the first half of the 90s I think of all the disappointments. I guess you don't remember Battlecruiser 3000AD, Phantasmagoria, Rise of the Triad, The Adventures of Willy Beamish, Cutthroats, The Daedalus Encounter, Lands of Lore 2. And those are just the ones I remember. I'm sure there are far worse ones that I've completely forgotten.
Games published today are typically very buggy (Anarchy Online), overly focused on graphics and glitz, very reliant on marketing, and very often disappointing despite long waits (Black and White?) or promising themes (Emperor: Battle for Dune?).
That has been the case for a very long time. There are plenty of truly excellent games that have been published after your "Golden Age". I would suggest you try playing Thief, Space Empires IV, Deus Ex, Baldur's Gate, Close Combat, Half-Life, Triple Play 97, Diablo, Starcraft, The Sims, Rainbox Six, Planescape: Torment, Everquest/Ultima Online, Unreal Tournament, Command and Conquer: Red Alert, or Homeworld.
Don't rely on your memory. It lies to you.
I have way too many devices on my SCSI bus, and all of my IDE controllers are filled up too. So just the other day I was wondering how I'd put a new hard drive in my system, I was debating getting a firewire controller.
Thanks to Sony, now I don't have to worry about that! I can get this new PS/2 hard drive and plug it right into the jack with a pass-through cable to my keyboard or mouse! This sounds great and all, I'm just not sure that the PS/2 bus could sustain enough bandwidth for that.
At Game Developers Conference 2000 MS was openly telling people that the XBOX would ship with just enough of an OS to initialize the hardware and start reading the DVD. Everything else necessary to run the game will come from the DVD. This allows them to update libraries, drivers, whatnot and have the developers distribute them as a part of their product. The end user never has to worry about system maintenence.
So, no. I don't think any NDA was broken by the mention of no driver updates and a small base OS.
See my comment above re: the Square/Final Fantasy effect on HD sales.
Also, with FFXI going online, you can bet your bottom dollar that the BBA/modem combo (for a mere $40) will sell like hotcakes as well.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
*sigh* Once again, not seeing the Square/Final Fantasy edge that Sony has in this particular case.
The HD and Final Fantasy X, which will require/make use of the HD (depending on who you ask) are both being released the same day in Japan. I'd say this is a good indicator of good future sales of the HD add-on.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
You're confusing FF X with FFXI. FFX will not feature online play, FFXI will.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
And you, as well, are wrong. FFXI will feature online play, FFX will not.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
Ummm, except Square has stated that the HD add-on is going to be a virtual necessity in order to play Final Fantasy X. That might not sound like much here in the States, but that's a near-guarantee of gargantuan sales figures over in Japan. Besides, hasve you taken a look at the sales figures for PS2's after the announced price drop in Japan? Well-nigh equal to the sales figures of the Gameboy Advance over the same time period, no mean feat given the popularity of GBA and the price differential between the two. Square + necessity of HD add-on == virtual guarantee of sales on the HD.
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I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
I swear, the next person that names a high-tech electronic device P S 2 with any combination of ., /, - is going to have to deal with me! I have to read half the article to figure out what the heck system someone came up with a hard drive for!
Next thing you'll tell us is the correct way to say XBOX sounds like exbo-X with a long O and accent on the X.
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
Funny comment coming from someone with a .sig like that...
This post sponsored by Ninja Burger. "
As a matter of fact, I'm using a PS/2 keyboard right now!
Oh, wait...
From time and memorial of console gaming, gadgets and nifty peripherals have traditionally been bombs. There are a few exceptions where a very popular game is so inherantly tied to the peripheral that playing it without just isn't playing the game(think gun games, DDR). Heck the keyboard for Dreamcast was a washout until PSO came along.
So while its nice to have a harddrive on your PS2 people are not going get it just to have a harddrive on your PS2. They need to have a "killer app" that does a "gee wiz I'm glad I have this thingy".
I don't own a console, so maybe I don't have the facts right, but it seems console makers make the money on the games. The $400 price tag seems great, adding a keyboard and mouse for another ~$70 still makes it a pretty good deal. The problem is that the games are likely to be more expensive than for a PC. It's also a pretty special purpose machine, why not spend a little more and get a PC. It'll run more software, you won't be using a TV for a display, unless you really want to. If you like the PS2 only games that are out there, then it still makes sense.
A lot of video cards have TV out, and this also takes care of the need for a DVD player. Of course you need a wireless input device of some kind, so we're upping the price of the PC a little bit.
Your point about proprietary extensions is a good one, but with high powered video cards becomming so affordable, you might be able to get better graphics without the extensions.
As you pointed out, the best thing about consoles is that they're all the same. This maens that games will work equally well on all of them so developers know the target system specs. It also means that a lot of the stupid driver problems that make Windows so unstable go away. Consoles still have a lot going for them
Microsoft does pretty well at making things like keyboards, optical mice, and other input devices. Maybe XBOX will follow this trend instead of that of their software business.
Massivly Multiplayer Online Gamse are becomming very popular. These games are constantly being patched to add new content as well as rebalance the game and fix bugs. Turbine, the makers or Asheron's Call (which is published by Microsoft), have already expressed interest in the XBOX. They have monthly patches to provide new content, so they will be making use of the hard drive. I'm sure Sony won't let Microsoft be the only ones with a MMOG on a console. If they're smart, you'll be seeing EverQuest for the PS2 for Christmass.
"Ummm, except Square has stated that the HD add-on is going to be a virtual necessity in order to play Final Fantasy X."
Square making FF games that support the hard drive is still just a niche product. FFX will not require a hard disk for solo play, only for the additional online stuff. Only players who want to use their console to play the game online will need to buy the hard disk, and many will likely balk at buying said hard disk just to play SquareSoft games online when four other new games could be purchased for the same cost.
This of course assumes that Square makes online content people actually like. Don't forget that Square has had many games that flopped sales wise, examples being The Bouncer, Ergheiz, and their forgettable PS2 racing sim.
"Besides, hasve you taken a look at the sales figures for PS2's after the announced price drop in Japan?"
And those have what to do with the hard disk add-on?
This is not a good thing for Sony. While it is neat to have a hard disk, network adapters, etc. for the PS2, chances are it won't go over well.
Developers don't like console add-ons, because they facture the market and can lead to low game sales. Nintendo learned this in the 1980s, when their slew of add-ons for the NES in Japan (Even a knitting machine.), and a smaller number of them in the US, flopped. Sega experienced the same problems with their 32X and Sega CD add ons for the Genesis . Nintendo again had problems trying to add high-density media to the N64 system. When Nintendo created a RAM add-on for the N64, it sold well at first, but was eventually rejected with consumers, and the first game to require it ended up being packaged with one.
Console add-ons are just bad news. Sony will likely end up slashing costs and making crazy deals with developers to get the add-ons support beyond niche games. In the long run, they will fracture their own market and annoy customers. Microsoft will have these features prepackaged without an obvious added cost, and Sony will likely suffer for it.
Nintendo, of course, will get to sit atop the heap of game companies, leveraging their experience into a strategy that allows them to come out best (Albeit maybe not highest selling.) by marketing a simple, cheap gaming system without much hassle by a proven console company.
Also of interest: the PS2's were running netscape 4.x on PS2 Linux. All attempts to get to a command prompt were met with hostility :-O
Basically I guess what I'm saying is that I want consoles to remain as "carefree" as they've always been. Of course the X-Box, I think is going to hurt that alot, especially if they make you upgrade DirectX drivers, download patches and such, but hopefully Sony and Nintendo will continue to cater to the CONSOLE market and not try to compete with MS in the "innovative" [sic] PC in a little black box instead of a big beige one market.
That announcement link also indicates that a USB mouse and keyboard would be available. Doesn't that imply that the HD is definatively USB?
If so, why is it not possible to plug one in right now?
So, towards that end, does anyone know of any sites that go into the internals of the power supply, or explain how to hack it to work off a battery? I don't want to buy one to take apart without at least some kind of reassurance that it's a doable project. If the power adaptor were external, it'd be real easy, but unfortunately not..
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Pretty standard stuff; the DreamCast, Saturn and, I think, PSone worked this way, and probably the PS2. The OS is on each disk; later games have later revisions of the OS.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
No, but the game boy color sold pretty damn well, and you had to buy a whole new game boy, which cost from 80 - 100 dollars. And it's not even like it was that much better, what did you end up with, 16 shitty colors? For another 80 bucks?
Also, keep in mind that Sony will be selling PS2's with the hard drive installed. If the improvement to the games is great enough, they'll sell. If all it lets you do is store some pictures, then probably not.
My other
Combat is the ultimate proof that graphics don't really matter. We love some Q3A, but a while ago my roommates and I got into a round of Combat and I have NEVER seen people get into a multiplayer game like that.
My other
I can buy drives in 1s and 2s for less than $90. Sony can probably buy them in bulk for what, $50? $40?.
If I were Sony, I'd wedge the drive into the case. If it doesn't fit, design a slightly larger case and market it as the "Sony Playstation II Deluxe" and sell it at the same price as the PS-II + cost of drive + same profit margin on the drive as the main unit (actually I bet the console is already sold at cost anyway). The redesigned case shouldn't take that long to pay for itself, and if I were in the market for a console I might be willing to pay $50 more for a unit with a drive.
On the flip-side of this, once they get the drives out there, how long will it take somebody to reverse engineer the interface and undercut the price? If it's a std IDE or something like that, not long at all.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
'Mods'
The biggest thing that is missing from console fps, has been mods. There has never been a way to play mods with the game, unless they were included with the game. Who wants to play Q3 on the dreamcast or ps2 if you are just limited to actually playing... Q3? I don't. Most gamers want more, and mods sell games nowadays. Game companies know this, and console makers are hopefully starting to realize this as well.
My biggest fear of hard drives and consoles coming together however, is fear of the 'release now and patch later' syndrome that seems all too frequent with pc games these days. Until now, console makers had to get it right the first time. There was no way to patch a game, and if a showstopper was found, the only thing that could be done was a recall. I have a serious fear that hard drives on consoles will lead to the same sort of problem. Hopefully it will be used more as an avenue for add-ons rather than a crutch when companies run out of time
Time for some tasty Shiner Bock!
Did you break NDA by telling use the size of the OS and about certain constraints and no DX components? or is that publicly available...
Waiting until MS comes and asks CmdrTaco to remove the post...
A host is a host from coast to coast, but no one uses a host that's close
Well I think the problem for Sony is that "piece of shit vaporware" will be coming out on November 8, 2001, and it will come with a hard drive, and it will also come with a built in ethernet adapter, all devices that the Playstation 2 were lacking. As more people end up with cable modems, etc.. being able to play games over a network will be of greater importance. Having a hard drive just makes sense, rather than having to switch out CD's, a 40 GB hard drive could give games some room to spread out. All things that Microsoft gave some thought to, and now Sony is doing the same. I'm glad to see Sony is taking this step, competition breeds innovation, or at least some more add-ons I guess...
bbh
Willy
Consoles slipped into the background somewhere during and after the PlayStation's reign, and heads turned towards the PC. Personally, I hope this trend finally ends, and consoles come back to the forefront as the must-have systems for gaming.
Face it, PC gaming has gone down the tubes. When I think of PC games, I think of games developed in the first half of the 90's. Games like Quake, Doom2, Master of Orion, XCom, Master of Magic, Tie Fighter, Monkey Island, Civ, Warcraft II, etc. Games today don't match up, in terms of playability and commitment to gameplay over all else.
Games published today are typically very buggy (Anarchy Online), overly focused on graphics and glitz, very reliant on marketing, and very often disappointing despite long waits (Black and White?) or promising themes (Emperor: Battle for Dune?).
So, I honestly hope that the PC gaming industry experiences some sort of wrathful purge. Put the PC games back at the rear of the software store, just the way it was in the pre-doom days. Maybe then PC developers will think "oh no, if we want to actually sell our game, it needs to be playable and relatively bug-free!". Yes, what a revelation...
I bought a GameBoy Advance recently, and believe it or not, its the most fun I've had since I was hooked on Half-Life/TFC and running the radium map sites. Its cheap, the batteries last long, the games are good, and the console is just weak enough that developers have to make sure games are FUN, because the graphics alone won't sell the game.
So, some reasons I'm all for consoles at this point:
1) Hassle-free - Put the disk/cart in and play. No installation, no patches, easy controls, etc.
2) Stability - Wow, NO BUGS. I sure do miss that. Pay for a game and know it will run.
3) Cheap - Yes, far cheaper. My PC is still an overclocked Celeron 300A with a TNT2. I'm sick of having to pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a year just to keep my machine in a state suitable to run a game off the shelf well. Its ridiculous. Does a game really need to make my computer sweat blood to be fun? Hell no.
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Because my Original Nintendo, Genesis and Saturn all work flawlessly, where as my PC (whose ONLY job is to serve files to my Macs) had an incident a few months ago where it decided C: was also D:, E:, F:, and finally G: and Norton didn't know what the hell to do with it.....
Burn Hollywood Burn
Absolutely right. In fact, Microsoft has already declared the XBOX as an integral part of their .NET strategy. I think Sony knows it too, and that's why they're trying beat MS to the punch. Why else do you think that they're announcing the Hard Drive (with NIC, according to some reports), keyboard, and mouse at the same time?
It's a known fact that Sony hates Microsoft. Ken Kutaragi, the president of Sony Computer Entertainment has been trash talking about the XBOX for a while now and Nobuyuki Idei, the big boss himself, has done all but declare open warfare. They've probably got a good idea of what Microsoft is up to, and want to nip it in the bud.
Here's another fact to chew on. Be has been trying to remake themselves into an imbedded OS provider. Rumour has it that there's been a lot of hush-hush discussion between Be and Sony, and Sony has already released a BeOS device. Maybe I'm smoking crack, but combine all those facts together and it's not a big leap of logic to predict a BeIA based web client for the PS2 this fall. The XBOX might have some real competition on it's hands.
This
It took years of effort to turn dull PCs into game machines; nowaday people found challenges to do the opposite.
"Hey look I run an Oracle database server on my PS3!"
"Can you give me a break I'm trying to get this Final Fantasy XX running on my 10GHz P5."
All you people saying that add-ons de-value the console and developers dont like them dont get the big picture. As Nicholas Petreley pointed out in his opinion piece, m$ has seen the NC light. The xbox is just another NC. Coupled with .NET, it becomes a full time player in m$ vision of windows software services. The more competitors out there in various sizes (watch, cell phone, pda, NC, desktop, etc), the less likely that m$ will be able to dominate. Start writing your http based web service apps now.
Embrace the wrevolution!
Then why bother with a PS?
PS To PC USB Adapter
PS Emulator or countless other places
TV Out Adapter