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Xbox 2 Sneak Peek May Not Involve Hardware?
Thanks to GamesIndustry.biz for its article discussing the possible unveiling of the Xbox 2 at Game Developer's Conference in San Jose later this month. According to the piece, a Microsoft Japan staffer suggested that "the console's actual hardware will probably not be unveiled at GDC, and that a decision had not yet been taken to as to when the technical specifications of the system should be released." Although some basic technical details have allegedly been leaked, the piece argues: "Some commentators have suggested that Microsoft is holding back from a final decision on the RAM, and possibly on the inclusion of a hard drive, until it finds out what Sony is planning to do with the PS3."
A hard drive has been present for ages in computer gaming, and it doesn't bring about many 'innovations.' The ability to add content/patch the application post-release(generally a good ability, but then again the ability to patch applications is arguably part of the reason PC games have a penchant for shipping buggy), the ability to have huge save game states, the ability to use hard disk as swap space that is faster than removable media, but not at RAM speed. That's really all the hard disk brings to the table.
Also, there's an even more cynical take on the hard drive. It wasn't there for any form of innovation at all, but is there because Microsoft was trying to build a console to leverage the existing computer game industry to build a game library of shovelware ports of PC games.
As far as the expense of the hard drive, there is also the failure rate of hard drives to take into account...