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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.
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.
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:
Hard drives have a manufacturing cost floor. It's probably around $25-$30 to make the platters, the head, the voice coil, the casing and so on. Doesn't matter what the minimum capacity is, you can't beat those physical costs. Now, the hard drive manufacturer takes their profit and sells the device to the console maker. The console needs a few dollars more in parts (thermal, electrical, shock mounts etc) to integrate the drive. Altogether it's a significant amount of money against the wholesale price of the box.
Microsoft are hurting like hell right now because they have to pay that cost on every Xbox they sell and Sony doesn't. This is why Sony came up with that PSX console/PVR hybrid - they could offer a lot more functionality, charge much more for it and more than cover the extra manufacturing cost.
The 'sufficient' amount of RAM for a console is a function of many things. Sustained read speed from the optical disc, system bus bandwidth, processing power of the CPU and GPU. No point filling memory with data you can't express on-screen or that can't contribute to your simulation of the world. People also don't want to wait 2 minutes for memory to fill from the disc. If all of the other things could scale up, RAM would too - but then the system would be even more expensive.
As for the caching, Xbox already provides scratch space for games - 3 sets allocated on an LRU basis.
Graham
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.