Memory Deal Bolsters Xbox 2 HD Removal Rumors

friedknut writes "According to a CNET News article: 'Flash memory maker M-Systems announced on Wednesday that it has signed a contract to provide storage products for future versions of the Xbox, bolstering speculation that Microsoft may ditch the game console's hard drive', since the flash-based memory devices will 'be of significantly higher capacity than the 8MB Xbox memory units Microsoft currently sells to save game and user data.' But of course, Microsoft representatives declined to comment on the company's plan for next-generation Xbox hardware."

Comments

Goodbye to X-Box Convenience

[Channard]

This doesn't bode well for my purchase of an X-Box 2. One of the things that appealed to me about the X-Box 1 was the fact that you could run games off the hard disk. And before anyone starts going OMG! Pirate! - I put my own legally games on my X-Box hard disk. So all I have to do is shove the games in the cupboard, and then boot up my box and select a game. If the box 2 doesn't have this, I think I'll skip it.

Re:This will change nothing

[MoonFog]

The reason for this is that one of the reasons that the xbox has been a success is the ability to rip your music onto it and play it in your favorite games.
Do you have any source to back that up ? All of my friends who bought x-boxes got it modded and inserted a bigger hard-drive, not buying a single game for it. As I've mentioned in a previous post today, MS doesn't make money of the x-box sale itself. I seriously doubt that ripping cd's onto a harddrive and using it in your game is a huge reason people have for buying an x-box. I could be wrong though.

Ultimate TV

[LostCluster]

One of the reasons why the XBox supposedly has a hard drive installed is so that Microsoft could use it's failed Ultimate TV product to make an XBox that in addition to play games could also have DVR capabilites simply by dropping in a few extra chips and a bigger HD. I guess that plan has fallen into the black hole at this point.

My only problem with XBox (1)

[sokk]

I'm the lucky owner of an modded Xbox (1), and use it for a number of tasks. The only problem I have with it is that it makes too much noise. It's like having a computer running in my living room (yeah, I know it _is_ a computer).

It's not the harddrive that makes all the noise, it's the fans. But why are the fans there? Because the XBox is hot. Why is it hot? Partially because of the harddrive.

So dropping the harddrive is nice; IF there is way to get the machine up and running something ala "XBox Media Player". My network and my computer would provide me with all the content I would ever need.

It would've been really neat if we could play games from the network too (legal copies of course), because gigabit ethernet provides all the bandwidth needed for such a task.

So to me, this might be good news :).

Downgrades

[tepples]

remember that no console has removed major hardware functionality yet.

You mean like these?

• N64->GCN: lost an easily-reachable digital control pad. Playing Tetris on a GameCube is a bitch and a half.
• PS1->PSOne: lost the serial port, so two-player, two-TV games such as Command & Conquer Red Alert Retaliation no longer work.

And a couple minor ones:

• GBC->GBA: lost the infrared port.
• GBA->GBA SP and GB Player: lost compatibility with a couple tilt-sensor games.
• PS1->PS2: lost compatibility with about a dozen or so PS1 titles, most of them (J).

Re:This will change nothing

[iainl]

For a start, nearly all XBox games exploit the fact that there are three 750Mb cache partitions used for temporary storage, in order to both minimise load times and act as swap space for programs that find the 64Mb total (i.e. including graphics) memory too much of a bind.

So unless they wish to add a hell of a lot more memory (this stuff doesn't actually need to be flash, however) then backwards compatibility is broken.

However, an XBox 2 with 2Gb of real memory would be fun to work with, I guess.

Re:Re2: Wow.

[Nimey]

On the other hand, a flash card will be less useful on a cracked machine because they're not as durable as a hard drive. IIRC 10,000 writes is the mean time between failures for flash.