Xbox 2 Storage Supplier Says No Hard Drive

Loadmaster writes "Dov Moran of M-Systems, who recently closed a deal with Microsoft to provide 'customized memory units' for the next Xbox, spills the beans. He says Xbox 2 will not have a hard drive in an interview with the Israeli website Globes Online. No details on how their memory solution will replace the HDD, though." Regardless, Moran seems pretty confident in the agreement with Microsoft, so it's likely that the Xbox 2's storage system is now in M-System's hands. S!: Also worth noting is a GameSpot story which has an Xbox spokesperson claiming: "Mr. Moran is aimlessly speculating... we've made no such announcements about future Xbox products and services."

Comments

Re:Backward Compatibility?

[ottawanker]

From their website, they offer the following sizes of their 2.5 Inch IDE Plus product:

Capacity - Unformatted (MBytes) 256, 512, 1024, 2048, 3072, 4096, 5120, 6144, 7168, 8192, 9216, 10240, 12288, 14336, 16384, 18432, 20480, 22528, 24576, 26624, 28672, 30720, 32768, 34816, 36864, 38912, 40960, 43008, 45056, 47104

Re:Backward Compatibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

From their website, the following is some performance information on the 2.5 Inch IDE Plus: Performance Burst Read/Write: 16.7 MBytes/sec DMA-2 transfer mode: Sustained Read: 8.3-8.7 MBytes/sec (up to 13MB/s with customize s/w) Sustained Write: 8.0-12.0 MBytes/sec PIO-4 transfer mode: Sustained Read: 7.3-7.6 MBytes/sec (r/w sector or multi 16 commands) Sustained Write: 7.7-10.1 MBytes/sec (r/w sector or multi 16 commands) Access time: 0.04 ms

other angles

[JDizzy]

Maybe Microsoft also is also looking for ways to lockdown the hardware, and prevent people from installing linux. Possibly using a more compact form of memory which they can control better. You know the old moto: "embrace and extend". Microsoft need only pervert something for their proprietary needs, and lockout reverse engineering.

Another issue might be simply mechanical, hence the notion of reducing the need for moving parts. Since solidstate memory is increasing in capacity, and price. One cannot arge against the percieved advantage of having a hdd for large scale storage. I dump entire CD's to my xbox, and play them in games, or use the xbox as a primitive juke to play the entire collection. So possibly Microsoft is opening up an after market for add-on hard drives? Their stance being that you get "enough" storage for game-state saves, and if you need more get an add on memory module for your controller, or get the option hard drive. It certaily helps to leave space for the the extra hardware in the enclosure just in case they decide to include them later on (depending on what sony does).

I talked with a few Microsoft execs

[gruntled]

over the past week for a story on cheating online that's running Monday in the SJMN. Some tidbits: One fellow told me that MS folks were "extremely surprised" by the Linux hacks. Another fellow told me that the hard drive has been "critical" for pushing patches down the pipe.

Re:So what you're saying...

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

"You have to enter your internet settings seperately for each game"

Wrong. The disc that comes with the network adapter saves all connection settings to the memory card when you set it up. Have you actually played a PS2 online game?

"there's no cross-game invitation or buddy system etc."

Wrong again. EA Sports games include a buddy system and cross-game invitation. You noted that you need different user accounts for different publishers. You should realize that there is integration of user accounts and buddy systems within a publishers set of games.

"Compare that to the integration and relative simplicity of XBox Live."

Compare that to the price. I get all the online coddling I need from Sony for $0.00. Yeah, it's a free-for-all, just like PC gaming, which is fine by me. Playing games on the Internet with my PC has never been especially challenging, certainly not so challenging that I need to pay money for someone to handle some of the details of it. But I guess there's a market for people who need a little extra help. ;-)