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No Hard Drive Bay On PStwo
Thanks to Gamespot for the notification. Sony has confirmed that the PStwo will not feature a hard drive bay. "...consumers who want and use the hard disc drive are typically the more 'hard core' gamers, ... we feel that a majority of those HDD interested consumers already have their PlayStation 2 units."
He said he felt that the main problem was the developers would start shying away from the HD due this... Which unfortuantely is probably true.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I would say that developers knowing that future PStwo systems will not have a HDD they will be less likely to support the add-on. I would say that, but to get less support for the HDD would be next to impossible considering there are what, two US releases with support? FF:XI which all HDD owners have because they are only sold together (the Linux kit HDD doesn't have the "browser" upgrade needed to allow games to access it). And Resident Evil: Outbreak. Which has such horrific loading times without the HDD that it should be required.
Does anyone know any other games that can make use of the HDD? Also what Japanese releases would use the HDD that have had the feature removed for US release? I would guess that FF:X did support it. After using HDLoader to copy the game to my drive, I found that the shattering screen that marks the start of combat actaully displays over the loaded battle area instead of a black screen if it can get the data into memory fast enough.
How many failed/vaporware add on's now does this make in the past few years? I know that FFXI and HD loader are around, but still. There's the 1394 port on the PS2, notable absent on later versions. The GC still hasn't used one of it's expansions bays. PS1 never used the parallel port (Officially) and barely supported the serial port. N64's disk drive system also MIA. This doesn't even include things such as light guns that are woefully under developed for. We could go on back much further... It just makes me wonder why doesn't Sony/Nintendo add some sort of incentive to get them to use available technology. Like 15% off licensing fees if it uses the HD/1394/eyetoy/whatever. It worked to get developers to release quality games for the NES.
With the increasing density and decreasing cost of flash memory, why install a hard disk? It adds expense, noise, power consumption and reduces system reliability.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
If the PStwo comes with ilink(firewire) and/or usb ports, then there is still hope. Sony may enable use of external drives. Then again maybe not, for fear of piracy, arrrrrrrrrrr. (Sorry, I missed talk like a pirate day, arr)
Also I think ps2 mod chips already let you "make use" of external usb storage.
One other big problem is that the current Playstation 2s are notoriously unreliable. While a user may have already purchased their system as well as the HDD, the odds are fairly good that they will need to replace their system within a few years. If they have to after the release of the PSTwo, there is a good chance that they will not be able to get a replacement that will allow them to use their HDD. Unless they have some form of external drive support, this is a very bad move on Sony's part.
The HD held some possibility of revitalizing a somewhat tired console. No more. So now it's up to PS3, which may be a while in coming and sounds fiendishly difficult to code for (thought debugging obscure locking problems was hard on SMP *nix? just wait 'till Cell).
This is solely my personal opinion.
Frankly I'd be surprised if any developers were considering supporting it in more than a token sense even before this announcement. There are so few out there and the perceived benefit to customers is so low you'd never recoup the extra cost of testing, let alone development.
Sony needed to release the thing in 2002 and to ship the SCPH-5000x (the 2nd-rev PS2 with the built-in IR/DVD remote) with the hard drive pre-installed if they wanted anyone to pay attention to it. The game market is hit-and-miss enough these days without shackling yourself to some peripheral only a subset of your audience owns or cares about.
Graham
I cant help but think this is a bad idea. Having a built in harddrive (laptop sized?) would have been the obvious choice to go for. What they have effectively done here is killed any possibility for any new PS2 titles to take advantage of the hard disk. I cant beleive sony are making such a grand error...
I think they should be petitioned about this !
Nick..
Electronic Music Made Using Linux http://soundcloud.com/polyp
I know many Socom 2 players that are buying the hard drive just to play the three new maps that are coming out starting in October.
Also, I may be mistaken, but I believe the upcoming Front Mission Online may utilize the hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if the game never saw North America though, considering the lack of HD support on the PSTwo.
I had heard that the SOCOM maps would just be distributed on disc and not make use of the HDD at all.
It looks like Square Enix is building support for Front Mission Online into the PlayOnline loader that resides on the HDD so I wouldn't guess that is uses if not requires the HDD. But as you said, it may not see a North America release, but not because of the lack of support on the PStwo, but just because of the lack of installed drives period.
Yea, they come on discs, but how are you supposed to have the SOCOM II map disc in and the SOCOM II game disc in at the same time? That's where the HDD comes in, buddy. You copy the map to the HDD, pop in your SOCOM II game disc, and play the map. The issue with the maps was that they were originally supposed to be downloadable, they touted that term ALL THE TIME! But now we find out they didn't make it possible to download the maps, thus forcing you to buy OPM or pretty much not get the maps at all...
I was thinking it might be like the EverQuest expansions for the PS2. The full game plus the new expansion was on the new disc. It could just checked to make sure you had a proper save files from the initial release.
I doubt it's the technology, more so how the save/recall API for memcard stuff is written. I suspect most of the current more-than-8Meg cards out there that are !Sony have hardware hacks that avoid issues many older games have with writing to 8megs, though there's still a few.
Of course, I'd have no problem paying $50-$70 for a 128M storage card for the PS2/two. But to continue to act like 8megs is enough, particularly when most current games have no idea about the 2nd memcard slot, is silly.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Boy I am really worried now. I plan on buying this new smaller slicker unit with network adapter and I was serious NOT aware it can't have a HDD. Now I might consider buying the regular unit again. I don't know what to do?!
Not a bad idea from their perspective. Right now, only 1 game requires the HDD (FFXI). If I might have missed 1 other game, my point still stands. Other games that USE the HDD can run just fine without it. Other than possible speedups, and possible large gamesave areas, there might not be other use for the HDD. Those two factors are actually not terribly compelling for a HDD. People will still buy games despite not having those features. In return for dropping the HDD, Sony can save a little bit more money on manufacturing. Every tiny 2 cent part adds up to dollars in the end per unit. Finally, Sony can try to do damage control on the HDLOADER fiasco that allows mass-pirating of games on systems that support the HDD. Sony won't lose customers for not including the HDD support. Maybe new FFXI players will have to scrounge old consoles. HDLOADER/ADVANCE users were primarily warez0rs so thats no loss to Sony. Overall, this is a win for Sony. People will still buy this console. I will.
I mean, how are you supposed to refer to this thing if you want to distinguish it from the PS2? Should we call it PS word two and call the PS2 PS number 2? Or maybe we should pronounce it Psstwoh or something like that.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Not really a GBA Emulator but more a real GBA ;).
The lack of HDD has been mentioned before, and I'll repeat the old post I did: Haven't you thought about that PSTwo obviously will support external USB harddisks?
Speaking of never-used ports... My excellent 8-bit NES had a knock-out panel on the bottom. I remember opening the unit to find a wide (parallel?) port inside the machine. "Wow!" I was thinking as a 13 y/o "I found a top secret upgrade port! I wonder how Nintendo plans to use this hidden feature!? Ohhh I can't wait..."
Needless to say, I'm still waiting. That (along with the repeated cancellations of bringing back a REAL Knight Rider TV series) is why I don't give a damn about ANY add-on product vapor-ware announcements. Not that I'm bitter about such things...
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
So what's the point?
It comes with the ethernet built in, but they drop the HDD?
So I can play Madden, but not FFIX... Smooth
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I think a major reason behind the lack of hard drive on the new unit is due to the release of HD Loader over the summer. The HD Loader software allowed you to install a hard drive in the PS2 and run games from it without a mod chip. No soldering was required and the case did not have to be opened so the warranty was not violated. The hard drive attached to the network adapter and fit in the expansion port. Sony moved quickly to have the distributors shut down, but not before a lot of people had obtained the software. They were afraid of people copying friend's games or rentals to their hard drive.
I bought HD Loader and found many legitimate uses for it. I have young children and using HD Loader I copied all of my original games to the hard drive so they do not have to handle the game disks and take the chance of scratching them. I just leave the HD Loader disk in the tray so that everytime they boot they are presented with a menu of games to run. Load times have noticeably decreased. One of my kid's favorites had nearly a minute load time between levels. Running from the hard drive that was reduced to less than 10 seconds.
To start with, stores may very well mark the old units down (Target is a prime example of one that does this). You may be able to get the PS2 w/ Network Adaptor (I hate that spelling, but it's on the package as such) for closer to $120 or so. Also, I recently saw that the FFXI package at Best Buy was around $88 now (not a sale price, from what I could see). Plus you should be able to find a vertical stand for the unit on eBay for relatively cheap and, if the pictures at engadget.com are to be believed, the PS2 and the PStwo, on their vertical stands, take up the same surface footprint.
In the end, the old PS2 is just not that large of a unit. Hell, man, it's smaller than my Atari 2600! :)
As always, the decision to drop support for the HD bay and by extension the HD itself, in the PStwo is just about money. No, it's not really about stopping people from using HD Loader. Most console users are not interested in or technically capable of using the various tools that, among other things, make playing pirated games possible. If that were the case, Sony would have done something a lot sooner.
The likely fact is just as it was said earlier, the consumers with interest in the HD already have it. They've milked it for all they can get, so continued support at this stage would cost more than what it is worth. Why? Because they had plans for the PStwo all along as a stop gap between now and the PS3 release. The PStwo gets the platform back in the news in time for XMas. They'll pick up some new sales and some repeat sales as either gifts, spares, or replacements. And best of all, for Sony, the PStwo hardware is probably going to sell at a profit for them. To make this possible they had to drop everything that would increase the cost of making the console, so bye bye HD.
This probably also means that those HD using goodies that were promised will not be coming, at least not to North America or Europe.
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...the best thing that could ever happen to FFXI would be to drop the PS2 players... Yes, I'm being selfish in saying this, but FFXI on the PC doesn't come close to looking as nice as most other PC MMOG's I've played (Dark Age of Camelot, Earth and Beyond, and the beauteous Anarchy Online) due to the fact that the developers have to keep the PS2 in mind with its limited resources. But that's just my opinion.
Had Sony not ditched the firewire ports on PS2 back with the previous revision, it seems that they might have been able to issue some sort of BIOS patch that'd allow you to use firewire external hard drives instead, but with those ports gone, I guess that idea's dead. Perhaps if those USB ports are capable of USB 2.0 (assuming they can even function as standard USB ports, I've never used them before) that could live on. Laptop hard drives might have been a solution too, but last I knew 40GB models were a bit pricey, and Sony sounds to be cool to the idea anyway.
The HD Loader software allowed you to install a hard drive in the PS2 and run games from it without a mod chip.
This method of piracy is so popular that I none of my piracy savvy friends network has ever bothered to use it! Not to disagree with you that it exists, and seems pretty handy. It's just I sure hope Sony isn't shooting themselves in the foot to prevent what from my point of view is a form of piracy I've never seen anyone use. (They can already burn pirated CD-ROMS- and they hardly even care enough to do that.)
it was a disk drive.... the Famcom used floppys too and they had planned to do the same for the U version but it never happened
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