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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."
If this is true, this is an absolutely brilliant idea. A few hundred megs of storage memory and you've basically eliminated the need for memory cards for the average game player, and without having to spend ~$40 or more on a hard disk for each console (of course, I'm sure MS got volume discounts.) That, and switching to some sort of flash system would cut down on noise, heat output, energy usage, and failure rate. This is a really good idea.
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
now we can store entire linux distro's on it instead of a hack to install a bootloader. :p
Well, now we know where the next Xbox hack is going to be launched from.
Bootable USB through a buggy game backdoor anyone?
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
The XBox 2 will still have a hard drive in it. 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.
This feature demands a hard drive as flash memory, while getting cheaper, does not have the amount of memory avaliable for 100+ songs for as cheap as a hard drive.
That said, I think we will see larger memory cards as saves get bigger, also I hope to see them drop in price.
Above all else, remember that no console has removed major hardware functionality yet.
NES->SNES->N64->GC was all upgrades, each having more features than before
GB->GBP->GBC->GBA->GBA-SP Same deal
PS1->PS2
Dreamcast-> damn you for going under. We loved you.
I look forward to the xbox 2, and while I may not be a person to preorder it, or even get it within 6 months of release, it is on my list of things to get.
RoundTop
If the beast of redmond was infuriated by the linux xbox project. Putting a hd there gave the linux distro much more power(ability to store large amounts of data, a fast swap etc), this way they can still get the convience of having all your saved games on one(hopefully quick) memory device, while eliminating the need for a hard drive. Linux will still find it's way to the box^2 of the beast, it just might not be as useful next time around, provided that ms doesn't do anything stupid...though I guess if it has USB that kinda defeats my whole post. Ah fuck it! Free Weird Al!
I doubt the move towards not having a hardrive is related to making it cheaper to produce...Maybe partly but IMO it's geared towards the mod chips, evox bios's and such which make it all too easy to copy games. Without having the hardrive it's kind of hard to copy the games but there's always ftp via lan connection. Of course I have no direct knowledge of this but I did read about it on the internet once...
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
Since they will develop some stripped versions of their OS(es) for EU, it should, now, fit on a flash memory.
Don't you know it is now both immoral and criminal to think beyond the next quarterly report?
Seems like a good idea to me. Xbox having a hard drive, was a good concept, altough it had its pros and cons. The biggest con of it is the need to buy an external 8MB memory card if you would've wanted to move your saves to your friend's console (which made me wonder why not over ethernet..?). And on top of that, most games don't support the memory cards at all. And no, the music ripping feature wasn't really that great - not too many games supported the feature anyway.
Flash is probably a better (and perhaps more secure?) format for use, if they go on like Nintendo and invent their own formats on existing 'hardware' (Cube discs). I hope that the write times aren't the same as with console memory cards nowadays if you need to store big amounts of data.
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They may not be upgrades, because they're often designed to a superset of features -- not to add features to a set bullet point list.
For example, the GameBoy Player is designed to be a GBA via GCN. It doesn't support Super Gameboy borders at all, neither does the real GBA or GBA SP, or GBC. Despite the fact that the borders are a legit part of the Super Gameboy standard (and on quick a few games, such as DW1&2 and Donkey Kong).
Manufacturers will put whatever features they want into video game systems. It's just that most of those features continue to make sense for years, which is why they're added as a bullet point to the next superset system.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMOLRPG) demand hard drive space, so the HD will stay. Sony PS/2 tried it without the hard drive for EverQuest Online (Frontiers), and realized it was a problem because they couldn't significantly upgrade the clients with the self imposed 3M limit. Thus, FXII requires a USB hard drive in order to play. Those that play the games on PCs know that patches can include a lot of changes, which can require a significant download to upgrade the clients. Plus, the clients effectively cache maps and other things, creating large files to permit efficient game play. The hard drive will stay.
Open Standards Portal
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.
This will perhaps make this kind of hack more difficult. Though I am fairly sure the x-box 2 will also be modded fairly easy.
A compactflash card in TrueIDE mode behaves nearly the same as a real IDE disk. The timings are a bit different, and the IDE disk requires more power (external source needed?). Other than that, a simple adapter would do the trick.
It's a step in the right direction for Microsoft. As many of you know, Microsoft continues to loose a marginal amount of money on every Xbox system sold. A lot of the problem is the hard drive along with a lot of individual components that can only be bought or provided by a single vendor ( the Nforce video chip and Celron CPU for example).
When Microsoft designed the Xbox they looked at the usual cost drop trends of game systems in the past. Usually console makers take a small loss on systems and then within a few years are able to make a profit on hardware. Unfortunately for Microsoft because of the complex nature of the Xbox this hasn't been the case. Costs for the Nforce GPU haven't changed and in fact Nviia sued trying to get out of their contract as they were loosing money producing the chips. The hard drives are also a big expense for Microsoft.
While Microsoft did not expect to be making money on the current generation of the Xbox, the system has greatly surpassed loss expectations thus far and if the Xbox 2 is not a financial success it may cause serious questions about the companies long term chances in the console race. Their plan was to get their foot in the door take some losses during the first generation and generate some support for their second generation system. Thus far many of the all important Japanese third party licensees are still disinterested and several have dropped Xbox support altogether after initially being "onboard". The system is a miserable failure in Japan and Asia in general and is in third place worldwide a ways back from the Nintendo Game Cube.
Microsoft needs to turn the ship around in generation 2 or else it may already be too late. By taking out the hard drive as widely rumored beforehand it will greatly reduce the manufacturing costs of the system. I see it as a positive move by Microsoft.
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
I wonder why 3rd party vendors haven't gone ahead and manufactured flash cards for the X-Box system already... It seems logical for someone to do a Game-Genie type of thing by circumventing ms.
I agree with others that this analyst is doing his job, meaning talking out his ass.
The xbox2 may or may not have a hard drive. I believe that it will, for numerous reasons. But this is so obviously a deal to line up memory card tech that it's ridiculous. The analyst's description of what the hard drive is used for is absolutely naive and ill-informed.
Fact is, a lot of games use the hard drive. All don't but a lot do. Some you may have heard of, like Halo. I'd expect that the developers will continue to push for the ability to cache and stream off of the HD.
And lest we forget, the idea of backward compatibility goes straight out the window with no HD. We're not talking about obscure titles; we're talking Halo, DOA3, etc. Backward compatibility may or may not happen, but an analyst with any intelligence would have hit on this, and maybe started speculating out his ass about that. This guy wasn't even that clever.
Oh, and Live, the jewel in the crown of microsoft's console gaming experience so far, is extremely reliant on the hard drive. The downloads, the levels, etc., these are all huge selling points, great features, and they're just getting started. I believe that MS will try to make its major innovation push in the online arena, and the hard drive enables a lot. Without it, options are much more limited. I especially love the analysts who predict that online storage will replace the Hard drive. Do they have some insight into an unprecedented rollout of broadband technology that will make this actually reliable? Have they ever downloaded a level on Live, and thought about what it would be like to go through that every time you wanted to play the level? Obviously not.
And these people affect the flow of capital. Sheesh.
Hunting briefly around the 'net, I can find a 40gb Seagate IDE HD for about $55. Official memory cards for an X-Box cost $25. I have two cards for my PS2, so lets assume that's about the right number. So, for $5 more, I get over 2500 times the space, and much higher access speed.
So here's what I'm hoping Microsoft do. They sell two models of X-Box 2, one with HD, one without. The one with costs $50 extra, but you can probably save that in memory cards.
On a seperate note, am I the only one here who didn't chip their X-Box? Everyone is complaining they won't be able to use it as their file server, or at least not copy games to the HD?
This means that XB2 won't play XB1 games unless MS writes an emulation layer. This would either be at hardware level (slow, awkward but possibly more reliable for some games) or API level (faster to execute, easier to write, some games may not follow the API properly and hence break).
Either way, the XBox1 game isn't being played on an XBox - it's being played on a simulated XBox. Why not simulate the hard drive at the same time as the CPU?
MS have come out and said they can't make XBox 1 profitable. There is a good chance they are going to try to reduce theirhardware costs with XB2 so that they can actually realise some good profits out of the XB console series. The harddrive is a large expense that could be considered expendable with without too much pain.
Does it go on forever?
remember that no console has removed major hardware functionality yet.
You mean like these?
And a couple minor ones:
As some others pointed out, the HDD is very important should MS want to keep compatibility with their current console.
However, backwards compatibility with the Xbox seems increasingly unlikely, because there are several issues and compromises:
- New CPU and incompatible ISA
- New GPU (again, with incompatible ISA, and don't start the stupid "DirectX API" thing here, I'm talking low-level pixel/vertex shader code and Nvidia's proprietary, probably heavily patented/copyrighted extensions)
- Keeping backwards compatibility could mean compatibility with some current Xbox hacks, like buffer overflows in some games and some BIOS stuff that could allow pirates to.dump "0 day" ROMs/ISOs immediately after the thing hits the market.
- The HDD has not proved to be a market advantage, in fact, it negatively affected Xbox sales in some markets (big, ugly, heavy, noisy consoles don't sell in Japan, vertical PS2 anyone?).
Yes, MS could put the resources forward to solve each and every issue, but after not earning a penny in one entire console generation, I think it'd be a wise decision not to include backwards compatibility.
Now, the benefits of throwing it out:
- Smaller, leaner, cheaper to make console
- Efficient, durable, reliable architecture
- Harder to hack
Basically, MS' strategy seems closer to what Nintendo did right with their current Gamecube console and the hard fact it's the only company capable of making a solid profit with minimum losses (in fact only ONE loss situation in their history). This is smarter than simply throwing money to push everyone else out of business.
If this means MS is taking a honest and technically efficient approach on their next console, I'm all for it. The current Xbox has some great games but it's never been interesting enough, neither from a technical standpoint nor as a game console.
- Otaku no naka no otaku, otaking da!!!
Flash RAM can support up to about 10.000 write-cycles or less! This makes it unsuitable as a means to replace a hard-drive. NVRAM (Non-Volatile RAM) is a much better solution, but it's more expensive. Also, it will retain your data no longer than 10 years (this is probably not a problem for Xbox users).
Flash RAM's application is to store firmware code that is not meant to change frequently. I imagine that the type of data one stores on a HDD changes frequently, sometimes very frequently.
Sigged!
MS just bought a Wintel emulator that runs on a PowerPC.
- New GPU (again, with incompatible ISA, and don't start the stupid "DirectX API" thing here, I'm talking low-level pixel/vertex shader code and Nvidia's proprietary, probably heavily patented/copyrighted extensions)
ATi have said this can likely be overcome, with shader recompilation most likely.
- Keeping backwards compatibility could mean compatibility with some current Xbox hacks, like buffer overflows in some games and some BIOS stuff that could allow pirates to.dump "0 day" ROMs/ISOs immediately after the thing hits the market.No chance. We're running under an emulator, remember? Anything that tries to step out of the sandbox gets killed immediately.
- The HDD has not proved to be a market advantage, in fact, it negatively affected Xbox sales in some markets (big, ugly, heavy, noisy consoles don't sell in Japan, vertical PS2 anyone?).
For every person that dislikes the extra size that comes from the HD, there's another that likes downloading content from Live, two that are grateful they don't have to buy extra flash cards, and a few more that like game features that use it (like faster loading, massive game saves, custom music tracks, game expansions [e.g as with DOA3] etc etc]. I would be willing to bet it'd be a net disadvantage, from polling the comments here. A better start to reducing size/noise/heat would be to take out the built-in PSU.The current Xbox has some great games but it's never been interesting enough, neither from a technical standpoint nor as a game console.
Funny, I usually hear that the other way around :-)
Basically, as people have pointed out, no HD effectively means no backwards compatibility. And no backwards compatibility means everything they spent on establishing the original Xbox is wasted.
What's the one thing they'll be left with, after Xbox1's life is over? Brand awareness? Well, mixed feelings at best from the console community. Confidence in MS's ability to succeed in the market? Likewise. Popular, exclusive gaming franchises? Not many at all. Experience? Well yeah, but that's a very expensive training exercise.
What they will have is a library of popular software (remember that the Xbox did very well in selling multiple games to each owner). Windows has succeeded mostly because of backwards compatibility - they can't afford to throw away their one big advantage, especially having seen how it helped the PS2. And they can't afford to port (and enhance) every game that people might want, nor would everyone be delighted to buy them a second time.
Maybe they'll have to sell a separate $70 "Compatibility expansion kit", with a HD & the emulator (and maybe a couple of new features too), but if they don't offer backwards compatibility at all, they might as well write off the last few years/billions completely.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Couple of thoughts on flash here. First in it's favor it would be quiter, have reduced heat load, power requirements and certainly faster. It would also be easier to implement DRM stuff and you could remotely flash someone's flash when they get online and wipe out any linux distros that got on their. More to the point they can DMCA the software on the flash especially if they mount the BIOS in the flash. It would also be nice to see from the standpoint of what it would do to flash memory prices. Remember the effect Windows 95 had on stagnant memory prices of $100 a meg (used to sell computers).
e .h tm
Now, that being said there is a serious problem with flash that prevents this from being used as a boot or swap partition of any kind. It has limited write capacity before it fails (10,000 writes or so).
http://www.esacademy.com/faq/docs/flash/lifetim
Unless they can somehow develop new technology to get around this limitation, this could quickly become a very serious problem. For storing game saves and the like, 10,000 writes is plenty, but if your going to be constantly writing to the thing like a swap file would, you'll get about two weeks use before it's fried.
Possible solution; hybrid. Use a small microdrive from Hitachi similiar to what landed in the new mini ipod. Cheap, meant to be embedded, and hitachi will use a proprietary interface if you your big enough. Proprietary interface cuts down on hacks and helps make it a closed system. On top of this you put in a newcard (PCMCIA replacement) slot for a flash memory module that is used to store games. This would also allow you to run all kinds of other adapters. Keep in mind just like the usb slots in the current xbox, it doesn't have to be shaped like newcard to act like new card.