HD-Less PS3?

GamesIndustry.biz has the story that, for the time being, Sony is planning on releasing their next generation console without a hard drive bundled into the package. From the article: "However the company has never said that a hard disk would be bundled with the unit at launch, and Chatani's comments this month seem to suggest it's erring toward not including one - and perhaps offering the peripheral optionally in the same way it currently sells Memory Card units separately from PlayStation 2."

Comments

If the memory is big enough

[Enrico Pulatzo]

It shouldn't be too much of a concern, with a requisite "if".

If the memory cards are treated like a hard drive, there will be no problem, I can later swap in a HDD to store more data/access it quicker. If, however, the situation is similar to the one with the Playstation 2 (a hard drive evenutally came out and found little use since developers couldn't really count on one being there) then the PS3 will suffer for it and when a hdd is released, it won't see too much use.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[ZephyrXero]

By not including a harddrive built in, this is the problem they put themselves in. The industry has proven time and time again that if it's a peripheral and not built in or at least bundled it's not going to get used very much in actual games. This was the reasoning behind the dreamcast coming with a built in modem and the xbox coming with a built in ethernet and harddrive. MS seems to be screwing up in this dept too with the option of buying a system w/o a drive. I could see selling a "basic model" with a 10 gig and then let people buy bigger ones as needed, but to release (both Xbox360 and PS3) without one is going to discourage many developers from taking advantage of it. At least the first wave of launch Xbox360's will all have a harddrive included.

The other question is what happened to the harddrive Nintendo damn near guarenteed us would be built into the Revolution? 512MB of flash memory does not sound like a harddrive to me... not unless youre running a 486 system or something :P

I am very happy about the use of "standard" SD Flash cards instead of proprietary memory cards all around... Still, a harddrive should be cheaper than a flash memory card ($75 for a 1GB flash or $75 for an 80GB HD), so I don't even see why they're releasing them....

Re:If the memory is big enough

[MrBigInThePants]

If the situation is similar to the PS2, then the HD will store about 500mb and cost $300 - making it the most expensive per mb HD in the world.

The format and file system on the HD will be proprietary. Years after release the EXACT SAME HD will be avaialble for sale at about the same price as when it was first released - and it will still be the most expensive (and now slowest) HD on the market.

I find it amusing that some people on this site are anti-Xbox because of "M$" the big nasty corporate, and trumpet Sony as the great saving alternative...

Has the world really gone crazy or am I just off my meds again?? (i.e. 40oz of scotch)

Re:If the memory is big enough

[HAKdragon]

I think the reason Nintendo is including 512MB of flash ROM is for downloading NES/SNES/N64 games. Granted if you download a lot of those game (especially N64), you'll run out pretty quickly. I am kind of suprised that they won't be including a hard drive for such a purpose. Maybe it's a supply issue. I've heard of Microsoft procuring the right size hard drives for the XBox.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[Elranzer]

[sic]... perhaps offering the peripheral optionally in the same way it currently sells Memory Card units separately from PlayStation 2.

Oh, like the same way the current PlayStation2's harddrive is sold seperately, and no one is using it other than for one, below-average online RPG? Sounds like a plan.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[Analog Penguin]

What? Are you serious? I'm not a scholar on this topic by any means, but I'm pretty sure that Nintendo has been one of the toughest campaigners against emulation of any kind. I'm sure there will be all sorts of methods built into the new Nintendo system to prevent "misuse" of the flash memory, and I have no doubt that ROMs are one of the bigger possible "misuses".

Re:If the memory is big enough

[koi88]

What? Are you serious?

Yes, he is serious. One of the main selling points of the Nintendo Revolution will be its ability to download and play games from many older Nintendo consoles.
I think this is a clever move, as this might make the console more interesting for an older / more hard core audience (i.e.: people like many slashdotters).

Re:If the memory is big enough

[earthbound kid]

My old roommate collected NES games like nobody's business, and I only have 70 megs worth of his stuff on my hard drive now. I also have 80 megs of SNES game and a decent variety to choose from there. I don't know about much about N64 games, but I still think the average gamer will be able to fit what they need into a half a gig. As long as there's some sort of upgrade option available, just in case, I got no beef.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[Rallion]

Without N64 games, it's not likely to fill up at all. My NES roms total at 100MB, my SNES roms at 750MB. That's for pretty much every game that exists in English, plus some that don't. And, of course, while there are lots of gems in there, most of those games are pretty bad.

N64 games are smaller than people think, as well. You DO have some big games, like Conker's Bad Fur Day and Resident Evil 2, at 64 MB. But the majority is much smaller, about 10MB each.

So, you can fit, well, let's say at least 30 games on that thing, if they're all N64. Many times that if they're older. That seems to be extremely reasonable for what comes with the purchase price. You can always buy more memory, so why make every single person that buys the console pay extra?

As for reasons to use flash instead of a disc-based drive, well, there are lots of reasons. Durability is one, noise is another. But when you look at the SIZE of that machine they showed, and consider that they plan for the launch product to be even smaller, size and heat are almost certainly the main motivations.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[Enrico Pulatzo]

Nintendo is all about emulation. They just don't want third parties doing it :)

Look at the Zelda promo disc for the Gamecube. Totally emulated NES there. Also for the GBA. It's highly likely those old games didn't get recoded or ported. Then there's the game Animal Crossing, where you could unlock old games.

The Big N is all about emulation: it's a cheap way to add a library of games to new hardware.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[apoc06]

actually there is a pretty large mod community that use the harddrive to backup their legal games onto the harddrive. this reducing load times and strain on their aging ps2 dvd lasers.

google: hdadvance and hdloader

Re:If the memory is big enough

[assassinator42]

When did they announce they'd be selling a system without a drive? From all I've heard, there will be a 20 GB hard drive standard.

Re:If the memory is big enough

[ZephyrXero]

Which sys you talking about? Sony's "looking unlikely" (ie..rumor) and MS has already said long ago they were gonna have three tier system for the 360 (one w/o hd) and Nintendo announced the 512MB thing...just to clear things up :)

That's fine.

[HaloZero]

But I want the ability to put my OWN hard drive in there, of my choosing, without having to buy additional equipment (except for said hard drive, of course). Sony's trying chance to sell a 40GB hard disk for the PS2 at a price of 199$ is and was ridiculous. I mean, FFS, I have hard disks just kicking around my room.

Also, will I be able to put savegames on the hard drive? Will I be able to near-seamlessly move them onto a Memory Card?

Re:That's fine.

[LennyDotCom]

I have hard disks just kicking around my room.

You shouldn't kick hard disks around your room. It's not good for the platters or the heads for that matter.

public service announcement brought to you by the ASFPOCTHD's

Re:That's fine.

[oGMo]

The PS2 HDD was only $99. Actually, it was more like $50, because it came with FFXI, which would have easily gone for $50 otherwise. (Actually, given it came with the first expansion pack by default, it'd be more like $39.99+$39.99.) In any case, it wasn't that much, and you can get them now for like $60 at Frys. Still with FFXI. (Which includes a free month of play, which is more than enough time to get addicted.)

Yes, you can easily transfer saved games to the HDD; both PS1 and PS2 games, in fact. While I don't play FFXI regularly at the moment due to time constraint, I still consider the HDD worth it for this if nothing else.

Re:That's fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

The other posters missed your point about the memory card, I think. Yes, you can use the HD to store gamesaves, but in 99.9% of the cases, you can't just save to the HDD directly. You have to use the memory card, and then later come back and swap the saves over (which also means you can't load from the HD either). There are a few HDD-aware titles in Japan that will cache to the HD and/or recognize it as a place to save/load memory card files, but not nearly as many as there should have been.

Re:That's fine.

[oGMo]

Yeah but eh. It's not really that big a deal. Saving direct would be nice---and there should have been a unified storage API so that any game can use any unit---but it's still really not that big a deal. One card easily holds enough for probably 20 games with two exceptions: Drakengard, which had ridiculously large saves (1.4MB) and FFX, where you could use about 4MB and 75 save spots if you wanted to have a collection of every spot in the game.

Not that I'm hoping they overlook it in the PS3. If/when I plug in the HDD, it better be there. Of greater concern on the PS2 is the number of games which can't even read the memory card from slot B. That is annoying.

Re:That's fine.

[LennyDotCom]

ASFPOCTHD's
American Society For Prevention Of Cruelty To Hard Disk's

Re:Fuck Everything, We're Doing No Hard Drive

[amliebsch]

It was funny the first time. Now, not so much.

Might as well not offer it at all

[kneecarrot]

This is frustrating. The whole benefit of bundling something with the console is that game developers can count on it being there. They can therefore program extra functionality and know that it will be supported. If Sony isn't including a hard drive, this will cause many developers to scale back this extra functionality.

Price control?

[Snowspinner]

Hm. This seems a bit of an odd move, unless they're dropping it to try to get back below the $400 price point, in which case it makes total sense.

Re:Price control?

[faloi]

If they're so close that the bulk price of hard-drives makes the difference on the cost, all it'll take is a hiccup in some PCB or chip fab house to push 'em over the edge. I hope cost isn't the factor, I'd rather believe it's a marketing thing to create their own upsell opportunity.

Re:Price control?

[N3Roaster]

I hope cost isn't the factor, I'd rather believe it's a marketing thing to create their own upsell opportunity.

And that would be a huge mistake. Expensive add-ons for consoles just aren't successful. There are many examples of this and very few (if any, depending on how you count it) counter-examples. If they do this, can they at least please make the various versions compatable with each other? (PS2 Linux hard drive not usable for games, games hard drive not usable for Linux.)

Re:Price control?

[suyashs]

There are ways to format the hard drive so it is usable by both Linux as well as for Games, but it's a long, complex, unsupported process...

Re:Price control?

[N3Roaster]

Thanks! I'll look into that.

Re:Price control?

[NanoGator]

"Hm. This seems a bit of an odd move, unless they're dropping it to try to get back below the $400 price point, in which case it makes total sense."

Makes you wonder if they're overloading it a bit in the graphics department.

Me personally: I'd rather they lowered the clock speed (thus lowering the price of the CPUs) and put the savings into more RAM. That'd be a cute way to kick the XBOX 360 in the ass.

In other words...

[calikahuna]

Holy hell, this thing is gonna cost a lot to make! Cut costs! The downside is the same as for the PS2, if its not standard equipment, developers will assume that the majority don't have it and won't use the features. Tough decision for Sony, but in the long run at least the marketing folks can still say that it has hard drive capability to compete with MS, even if most games will ignore it.

Re:No HD??

[XenoChron]

And if there isn't a really good grammer checker, I'm dead. End of story!

Re:No HD??

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

you.. do know that.. the xbox 360 is going to have an external hard-drive add-on as well, right?

Re:No HD??

[ivan256]

Yeah, because the PS2 really tanked after the Xbox came out with a hard drive.

I'd rather there was no hard drive. It keeps the developers out of the patch mentality and keeps the machine from being loud. As for storage, with an SD slot you'll have no problem saving all your games and downloaded content on a $25 1GB memory card. What's the big deal?

Maybe they'll surprise everybody and make it so you can plug in any old USB 2.0 hard drive... Normally I wouldn't even have allowed myself the joy of hope in that department, but they gave a little in the supported memory format department, so who knows... If the PS3 uses all industry standard perhiperals, the Xbox 360 is screwed.

Assuming it's true...

[hollismb]

It really means one thing. Sony isn't nearly as serious about their online plan as they should be, and bye-bye to content download as a standard option on the PS3. Sure, there are other uses like custom sountracks, media capabilities, game saves, and caching for faster or seamless loading, but that's really the main issue, as the others can be worked around.

Re:Assuming it's true...

[Grym]

It really means one thing. Sony isn't nearly as serious about their online plan as they should be, and bye-bye to content download as a standard option on the PS3.

And I say good riddance! The only reason publishers are pushing for content downloads is so they can stick you with "micropayments" later. example: "Want that uber weapon you just got killed by? Buy it for only 50 cents!"

Many marketing people see this as the holy grail in business models. It plays off the addictive nature of gamers to want to "be the best." Moreover, each price is so small that people are likely to impulse buy--just like they do with the candy bars in the checkout line. Best of all, you don't need to do any extra work--simply hold back some content and release it later... for a fee, of course.

Thanks but no thanks. Maybe it's just me but I'd rather not be nickeled and dimed for every little feature that should already have been present.

-Grym

Re:Fuck Everything, We're Doing No Hard Drive

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

the original spec's of the PS3 and the XBOX360 were interesting the first time, but now.. not so much. What's your point? :)

Re:No HD??

[hollismb]

Except for your average user still won't buy and use them, which means developers won't either. How many games used the PS2 HD? Two? FF Online and Resident Evil? People don't buy these types of add-ons, regardless of how widely available they are, or who makes them, which in turn means developers won't use them, which means it's a totally useless 'feature'.

Re:Fuck Everything, We're Doing No Hard Drive

[Palshife]

Compare the two. This adaptation is much better than the one you link to.

Something fishy...

[kaptron]

I seem to remember hearing that the PS3 is not really a gaming console. They've stripped the HD, the controller is already wireless, like a remote control... Hey, this is looking like a fancy blu-ray DVD player! Well, at least it stands on its side. Killer.

Re:Fuck Everything, We're Doing No Hard Drive

[kaptron]

It's still the same exact idea, just that the search and replace function was used more liberally (he still let a "Bic" or two slip in there). The analogy of controllers doesn't entirely fit the whole "three vs. four razor" point of the original (funny) article in the first place, but I digress...

Still Playing Chicken?

[blueZhift]

Oh well, I guess Sony is still playing chicken with Microsoft wrt standard hd for the ps3. Right now it looks like Xbox 360 will ship with a hd, in fact I would guess that's a definite if Sony announces definitively no hd for ps3. We all remember what happened with the hd for ps2 and all of those broken support promises (Square Enix remembers too!). I think that this time Sony has to ship with the hard drive or else they really will open the door a little wider for MS to gain market share. Why? Because I think the next generation of games are really going to make use of permanent storage on the console like we've not seen before. So I think Sony needs to stop playing chicken and line up a good hard drive supplier. This time around I won't be buying any games that require me to go out and purchase a hard drive at the same time.

Re:No HD??

[ZephyrXero]

Well, the upside for Xbox is that all the 360's will include a hd at launch, and probably for the rest of this year too... Most likely they won't even start selling the HD-less edition until next year when they're trying to drop their price to compete with the PS3 more.

Re:No HD??

[ZephyrXero]

The built in HD on the Xbox was the main selling point for me... It was great to have friends come over and say "Make as many save files as you want" b/c there was no chance in hell you'd fill it up with just saves. As while if I played someone's PS2 I'd always need to ask them if there was enough room for me to save on their card...

Re:No HD??

[Saige]

I'd rather there was no hard drive. It keeps the developers out of the patch mentality

I see your point here - we want them to make sure the bugs are fixed BEFORE the game goes gold.

However, being able to patch can also be very useful in some cases - consider Halo 2, where people found and abused some obscure glitches in multiplayer, and they were able to FIX them because of the ability to patch.

I don't want developers to shove something out early to meet a deadline, with the intent to patch later - but those idiots shouldn't force the rest of us to not be able to have obscure problems being abused patched to keep the game fun.

Re:No HD??

[jkeyes]

Well if you want them to not ship now patch later you can do what Microsoft did to stop it. You can only push out patches via Xbox Live! if they fix online play period. If the game is somehow defective then it sucks to be you. Although that's a benefit of Microsoft controlling the online experience if Sony keeps their current stature of letting the companies do what they want then they can't really stop them.

Re:No HD??

[Babbster]

Even Sony's own games didn't prominently push the hard drive with "cool" features. Their own MMOG, Everquest Online Adventures, didn't require it either.

Memory cards and controllers are the only peripherals that sell consistently with console gaming systems - the former because they're required (at least for Gamecube and PS2) and the latter because people want to play with friends and controllers are the most likely component to break down.

If Sony expects to sell a significant number of add-on hard drives, they're out of their collective mind. Even Microsoft is going to have trouble selling bigger hard drives for the 360 unless they provide truly compelling features that utilize the extra space - and I don't extra storage for video is going to be that compelling to 360 buyers since a) streaming would let them use their PC's storage which would come cheaper and b) unless they really sell the add-on HDs cheap, DVR-type functions (assuming they go for that) are better handled by a TiVo which can be had at bargain basement prices and has excellent functionality. Heck, MS is already marginalizing the use of the HD even for custom soundtracks by supposedly allowing streaming from an MP3 player.

It really makes me wonder what the marketing people see to make them believe that these add-ons can work. Time and time again, we've seen add-on devices - even decently supported ones like the 32x and SegaCD (one could argue about the level of support, but Sega made a bunch of games for both) - fail to gain significant traction with either consumers or developers. Even Nintendo, with their ridiculously huge installed base of GBAs, has gotten few developers to provide anything more than token support of GBA->GC connectivity; their own Zelda provided little impetus for hooking up. Of course, with wireless becoming standard on handheld consoles this might become a more widely used feature...even then, a handheld console provides significant benefits on its own, while a hard drive peripheral without something to hook it up to is nothing at all.

I'd buy a PS3 without a hard drive if the games were compelling - the same standard I'd apply to any console. But unless the hard drive gives me something "insanely great," or it is cheaper than a memory card, I'll likely take a pass.

Like the PS2...?

[satoshi1]

So... will this end up like the PS2? The PS2's harddrive was released LATE in it's life (at least, here in America), and was never support properly. The Japanese had a few games that used the harddrive, as did we, but they had more.. They had software specifically for the harddrive. Software that would allow them to buy stuff, e-mail, browse the web, download things, listen to music, etc. etc. Said software was never released here in America... Sony left the harddrive to die, on both continents. The only way to get one here is to buy it with Final Fantasy XI.

I wonder if Sony will end up not supporting the PS3 harddrive just like they did with the PS2?

I wish I had more to do with my harddrive than just FFXI.

Re:Like the PS2...?

[satoshi1]

That comes with its own harddrive, waste of money if I already have one. And there's no way I'm installing a mod chip, I regularly play online and the DNAS server would ban me in a heartbeat..

HD/HDD

[goodenoughnickname]

Can we stick to the acronym "HDD" for Hard Disk Drive? I thought this was an article about a non-High Definition PS3 being made. Which, really, is a stupid idea, but so is not bundling an HDD.

Thank you.

Re:HD/HDD

[hords]

Can we stick to the acronym "HDD" for Hard Disk Drive?

I couldn't agree more. I also saw it as High Definition at first.

Re:No HD??

[hords]

Man when I saw no HD I thought it meant no HDTV output, or no Blue-ray HD discs. Scared me. The hard drive I can live with being optional, the others I refuse.

But will they use it?

[pashdown]

What would be nice if the console makers clued into allowing us to load the media onto the hard drive like what is done with hacks. I have kids, so I like to store the original media away from sticky fingers and and stomping feet. Even if it required keys and online authentication, I'd be happy if they used a hard drive for something more than storing game saves and small map updates.

online memory

[frankmu]

what i would like to see is for sony to provide memory online,like google does. then you don't have to worry about carrying your own memory card with you, if you can connect online, you can access your profiles and saves anywhere. you can even keep your mp3's and video files for your psp too. hmmm, on second thought, probably not.

Re:No HD??

[mantle_etching]

Does anyone know what the function of the X/Y/Z drives are in the xbox?

If you said disk cache/swap space you'd be correct. Not all of the 10GB on the default xbox HDD is available to the user. Without looking at exact figures you cough up about a 1GB to the C drive for OS related stuff and about 1.5GB to the X/Y/Z drives. The default user drive is ~5GB for saves and whatever else an unmodded xbox holds there. Then there is 2GB of unformatted space (unformatted due to the original HDD size of the xbox being 8GB).

I'm not entirely sure why they'd want to deny developers the use of swap space. The only reasons I can think of from their standpoint is that they want to get people to pay extra money. It's ridiculous to think they are doing this for cost cutting reasons because buying the amount of HDDs in bulk a Sony or Microsoft is going to buy they're probably able to get 20GB HDDs for $5-10 per unit. The high price points on these boxes is probably due to paying IBM/ATI/NVIDIA's R&D fees more than anything else. Making prototypes and molds is what costs money not fabrication in existing assembly lines.

Even though the specs on these next-gen boxes seem outrageous. I think Sony would be doing a huge disservice to developers (and gamers) by not providing that HDD swap area as a default. It seems like Sony is ignoring the good parts of the XBox much like Nintendo ignored the good parts of their competition (and started losing share to Sega [Genesis] then almost the whole market to Sony [PS]). Microsoft isn't building the spec superior box this time out (in order to beat Sony to market), but defaulting to an HDD (and if you think they are going to offer non-HDD models as has been posted here then you need to consider the OS being used is Win2K based [as is the original XBox] and probably weighs over 1GB AND Xbox Live software needs to live somewhere writable since it's always being updated thus the box needs the HDD in order to live) will only help them take market share in the long run.

Re:No HD??

[Rallion]

If the PS3 uses all industry standard perhiperals, the Xbox 360 is screwed.

First of all, unlikely. This is Sony we're talking about.

Secondly, the XBox360 IS allowing you to use whatever storage you want. You can plug a fucking IPod into there.

Re:No HD??

[mausmalone]

Just a tip for making sure the title is clear in the future. In the console world, HD = high definition, HDD = hard disk drive.

Also, I have no doubts the X-Box 360 will sell well, but it's FAR too early to tell if one decision will make a console triumphant over another. At E3, Sony showed a bunch of footage that they claim is real-time, and that the XB360 can't hold a candle to. Meanwhile, some say the Sony stuff was pre-rendered, and Rare said that their XB360 consoles on display were running at about 1/3 of the target system spec. And Nintendo.... Nintendo = wild card.

So basically, we should probably curb our announcements both of impending doom and impending triumph until the picture becomes a little clearer.

Re:No HD??

[ivan256]

you need to consider the OS being used is Win2K based [as is the original XBox] and probably weighs over 1GB

It's a Win2k kernel, which, at least on my windows 2000 server box, is only a few hundred KB. Sure that doesn't include drivers, but all you really need in the system is a bootloader that knows how to read the OS off the DVD drive. If you need to update the OS, you just include the updated copy on newer games. Older games can continue to use the older OS.

If it isn't standard, developers WON'T support it

[elrous0]

'nuff said.

-Eric