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J. Allard Responds to Hard Drive Criticism
Edge Online is reporting on responses Xbox 360 platform chief J. Allard gave in response to questions regarding the hard drive on the Xbox 360. From the article: "I don't know who we've let down. There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive, so I think that's a good thing for consumers. We've made a commitment to broadening the audience, and while I think most of our energy here at X05 is about the hardcore, over time we're really setting the stage for making this a bigger category for everybody. So from the developer point of view you have the best tools and the commitment of the most well-resourced company in the world going worldwide with this product and saying that we want to grow the audience. So that seems like a win for developers - I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed."
Heh. He lies in that statement. Flat out.
/will/ require a harddrive to play.
Quote: "I don't know who we've let down. There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive, so I think that's a good thing for consumers."
I can name it right now: FFXI. It
Matthew Walker
http://www.tweeterdiet.com/ - My Diet Tracking Tool
Without a harddrive how am I supposed to install linux on it and turn it into a cheap media center that runs mame ?
Search your logs like the web: splunk!
I think he missed the real point of the criticism with his defense. I think the idea of different tiers of packaging and possible upgrades is a good idea. But I think many people believe that internal storage is no longer one of the "optional" features that can be removed to cut the cost of the machine.
...the game could be crippled without one. Imagine when all the new maps come out for Halo3 and you're the one that can't play with your friends on Live because you don't have the HD to download the map-pack.
They really need to give up the act about 'broadening our audience' for a while. Until this system costs less than I pay for my car each month, I don't think they'll be reaching for anybody but hardcore gamers.
Perfecting Discordia
www.stevenvansickle.com
There is no way Final Fantasy XI can play WITHOUT a hard drive. It's really simple, MMORPG will always have patches and update contents. So unless M$ is dropping FFXI, or J. Allard isn't aware that FFXI will be ported to Xbox360, his statement is simply not true.
The problem with making it optional is that developers will never make any cool features for the HDD unless it's ubiquitous. I think that's the main reason Sony just did away with the HDD when releasing the PSTwo. Why would developers make games that even made use of it at all, much less required it, if it just alienated the people that did not have one.
We may not see quite the same problem here, since at least it will exist as an option from the start, but no major developer is going to release a game that has any features supporting the HD without serious consideration of how it will effect the customers that don't have one.
I also agree with the first reply, FFXI will NEED the HDD, but maybe he's just using Microsoft speak (poster #2) and saying that there are no games on the system NOW that require the HDD because there's technically no system available and no games available. Wouldn't be the first time MS abused "language loopholes" to pacify the audience...
Sure, all games can run without the hard drive...
BUT, if ALL systems DID have the hard drive... that allows the game developers to utilize it to it's max potential.
Imagine if the Revolution's controller was optional. An add-on of sorts. That kind of cripples the system. But since ALL the systems will have this extra ability, it means the developers can utilize it. Only having a fraction owning a particular accessory could scare developers away from actually using it.
This, IMO, is why it's too bad that all the systems don't have the hard drive.
J. Allard's "extreme" makeover from (balding gray-haired corpodrone to earring clad, doofus, sweatshirt under the jacket, teenage-style hipster) is one of the saddest and most embarrassing things to come out of corporate America in a long, long time.
From the article:
"I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed." -- The unknowing customers you're screwing over by forcing developers to not take advantage of the hardrive for fear of screwing their customers over and the developers who can no longer use the HDD for caching, etc. etc. (listed later)
"Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure." -- Did he not just say he wasn't sure who was supposed to be disappointed?
"I was the biggest fan of the hard drive and its potential, but the problem is that we sold 22million Xbox consoles and 5million, maybe 10million just don't care about it." -- Maybe they didn't even know it was being used in games they were playing, used for caching, storing huge save games that would require an entire memory card, used for map updates, used for patches to the game itself, etc.
"We can either ask the gamer to pay for it, pay for it ourselves, or prove that there's enough value in it and have the gamer say 'I want to pay for it' - I think that's the right model." -- again just completely missing the point, it creates a situation where developers have to make a choice to support it or not, piss off the customers that don't have one or not, etc.
"A lot of people have said: 'This is really confusing - you have different configurations and blah, blah, blah', and I'm like: what consumer electronics business in the world has three manufacturers, three brands that each make one thing that doesn't change for seven years?" -- that should be pretty damn obvious, it's the consumer electronics business that YOU are in...
The problem is that there is an implication that you're saving 100 dollars by getting the cheaper model when in fact you will need to purchase a 40-dollar memory card to save games (something that is a fundamental requirement of modern gaming). Thus you will only save 60 dollars and get a much worse deal. A lot of people will be disappointed when they opt for the cheaper model and find out a few hours later that they still need to spend another 40 bucks before they can save their game.
As it is I see this as a major mistake on Microsoft's part. They are making it more difficult for developers to take full advantage of their console just so some customers can save 60 dollars and still feel like they got ripped off.
Nintendo , every game on Gameboy advance , Nintendo DS , cartridge .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
The people who lose are the people who want to play old xbox games on their xbox 360. My understanding is that you need the hard drive (and an xbox live connection) to play older xbox games. Or has this fact changed in the past two weeks?
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Source
Last but not least, after we were told that there was no ability to fly aircrafts in the game due to the DVD drive's inability to stream the environment fast enough in full 720p resolution. We asked Jacques Hennequet (Producer for Saint's Row), "If the Xbox 360 Hard Drive was standard across both SKU's, would flying aircrafts in the game have been a reality?", Jacques simply answered "Yes". While he completely understands why MS made the decision to not include a hard drive in the Core System, I think he felt somewhat disappointed, as it could have opened up much more possibilities within the gameplay for Volition's first Xbox 360 title.
Not making it standard is making features be cut from games. End of story. Why is this a big deal when the others don't have a HDD? The Xbox had one standard, so it's taking a step backwards. THAT is why people are complaining - you're removing a feature that was being used unconsciously, and causing developers to cut features that otherwise would have been included.
Like they did with the original Xbox, when they fell on a large pile of NEGATIVE money?
On the bright side, has anyone noticed that since the hard drive is removable, when it does go out (and it will), all you need to do as Joe Blow average consumer is go buy a replacement drive for it? The hard drive and the dvd drive are the two most likely pieces to fail in the console. At least you won't be screwed when the hard drive craps out as in the original XBOX model. Notice that I'm talking about Joe Blow here - not you hot rod modders.
Sure that's what the words in the article can clearly mean, but J. Allard just doesn't have a clear understanding of English. What he said was:
"I don't know who we've let down."
He doesn't seem to realize that "let down" is a synonym for disappointed...
Ah wait, Firefox find stalled on the apostophe. He means the total package shoudn't be an overall disappointment, while not having a hard drive is a specific disappointment.
But he still doesn't realize the chicken or egg problem that the hard drive entails, kind of like the HD content or HD TV situation.
This is all about price points. Mom goes to Walmart around Christmas and sees "XBox 360 $299". She's much more likely to buy it than she is to buy it at $399. That's all that matters. Mom will buy it.
So now little Jimmy has it and he's slapping down $60/game every now and then, whenever he can afford one himself, or can nag his parents into buying one.
Jimmy eventually gets Halo 3, and yes there are map packs, and yes his friends are playing them and he can't because he can only download one map onto his memory card at a time and it's just a huge pain. So he whines and it's been a year and his mom is like "god he spends a lot of time on that x-box I wish I hadn't bought it" and she forks over $99 for the hard drive upgrade.
People are more willing to spend $800 over two years than they are to spend $600 all at once. It's just human consumer nature.
Microsoft wants you to buy the stripped down version, then they will entice you to buy the upgrade. They get more users from the stripped down version, they get more money from the upgrades. It's win win for them.
It makes perfect business sense and I don't blame them for avoiding taking an extra $100 loss on every system they sell so it has a hard drive.
But does it suck for the developers? Of course. Does it mean games won't be *as good*, certainly. Is it better for Microsoft, probably yes. Personally I'm just going to suck it up and buy the premium system with the hard drive and the wireless dohicky etc. It's the price of early adoption, wait a year and premium will be $100 less, and regular will be $50 less, and more and more games will come out that just require the hard drive.
---
I support spreading santorum
Reasons for a HD:
1) Downloadable content for games. Not just a little, as will fit on a memory card, but lots and lots of it. Especially important for any patches.
2) Downloadable media - game trailers and the like.
3) Backward compat. Because the original Xbox has a HD and did not abstract it away, all Xbox 1 games will require a HD to run at all.
4) Games CAN use it. They just won't require it. There are games that will release on or close to launch day that will make use of the HD to improve the game experience.
There is plenty of reason to get the HD, and it's more or less a necessity of you plan on playing over Live (a memory card will work, but the experience will be pretty piss-poor, I'd guess).
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
I'd say every single one of your English teachers are shaking their heads in disappointment Mr Allard. JA
There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive
I can't not misunderstand this sentence because it doesn't have not too many un-un-negatives...
3) Backward compat. Because the original Xbox has a HD and did not abstract it away, all Xbox 1 games will require a HD to run at all.
The HD was abstracted away to the same degree as storage in Windows. They could easily emulate the filesystem on solid state memory if it were fast enough; the problem is simply that so much storage was made available to the developers (something like a 700mb utility drive, not including save storage).
I had to laugh at that statement. I love MS just for the debate they constantly ensue. How does Microsoft even think about money anymore?
"Oooh, we lost a few hundred million on the xbox, that's sad."
"How much are are we going to make on Office products alone next year?"
<I-draw-with-oatmeal-cookies-type insane laughter>
"Really? I couldn't even write that on a piece of paper without turning it sideways. That's if I could figure out how many zeros that is."
"So Bob, how goes the purchase of Venus?"
-- I have fans? Wow.
I find it ridiculous that you need an Xbox-specific hard drive. For $100, I can get at least a 150 or 200 gig IDE/SATA hard drive. (IDE/SATA because there's almost no price difference.) Knock it down to, say, 80 gigs (still four times the standard drive) and you should easily have enough money to buy a cheap IDE card, maybe even a SATA card.
I don't claim that I could build a gaming computer for less than $400, or $300 without a hard drive, though I might have fun trying. But I fail to see why we need a $100 drive that's only 20 gigs. In fact, considering the cheapest gaming computer Dell sells is over $1000, why not apply the same price scaling they do to the RAM, CPU, and video card to the hard drive? It'd end up costing less than $350 for the Deluxe, and instead of 20 gigs, you'd get over 200.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Wow, that's like, so totally relevant.
/. user FidelCastro.
It's not irrelevant. He's trolling. Note that his name is very similar to non-troll
Like, oh my god.
Never, ever, ever say that here. Ever. >_
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
Call bullshit all you like. All area transitions and save states are to be socked away to memory. As long as you don't turn off your Xbox, you should be able to play all the way throguh the game without saving.
That occured to me, but only works if your game is very short. Puzzle games come to mind, but what about saving high scores? What about game options? I still think the OP was a troll, and so are you.
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
First gen games are almost always less polished than later games on a new system.
Yes, with enough polishing even the foulest turd can become a shining diamond.
Common knowledge.
And that's why people are disappointed. One of the great things about a console is that you can assume people will have the same hardware, so you don't have to scale down to the lowest common denominator. If it works on the development machine, it'll work on everyone's machine, otherwise theirs is officially broken.
And if a hard drive, broadband connection, high-end nVidia card, quad-core processor (do I have that right?), and all of these are things you can count on most people having, you'll use all of them. Meaning we'd see a lot of very cool games using all of them. As it is now, this is worse than the original xbox -- it's just a high-end PS2. The only reason I'll ever buy one is if I can't borrow someone's for long enough to play through the Halo 3 campaign.
It looks like PC gaming wins here, with things like Half-Life 2 -- you pretty much need an Internet connection, and probably broadband, in order to play the game and keep up with all the patches, meaning all that, plus some decent minimum requirements, can be assumed by any modders. Which is why we see such awesome mods. Natural Selection, anyone?
So, PC gaming wins... maybe that's what they wanted?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
"So that seems like a win for developers - I'm not sure who's supposed to be disappointed."
Ah! But you do know:
"Are there developers who are disappointed? Yeah, sure."
And then this:
"You bought a Mini Cooper and you want the Turbo, you're screwed. You buy the Xbox 360 Core system, you can build up to the premium system and you won't be left out of anything along the way."
Horrible analogy. People will not "upgrade" their Xbox because no games will require it. Developers will not create games that require the hard disk because most people will not have it. Recurse. How many times have we seen this?
Btw, is being an arrogant fuckwit a prerequisite for working at MS?
It's not irrelevant. He's trolling. Note that his name is very similar to non-troll /. user FidelCastro.
Your mom was trolling.
SquareEnix certainly seems to believe that FFXI will be on the Xbox 360.
After all, there is always the remote possibility they may have someone "on the inside" feeding them information.
It's common policy that the game must run without a memory device. Noone says it has to be really usable (Final Fantasy without saving?) but it has to start without the memory device. Probably to allow for changing the memcard during the game.
Personally I think it'd be nice if that would trigger a "demo mode" that unlocks quite some stuff but doesn't save to make the in-store demos more interesting.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
Without a harddrive, there will be no backwards compatibility (=recompiled binaries) for current generation XBox games.
"There isn't a game on 360 that you can't play without a hard drive"
You can't play ANY XBox game on the 360 without a hard drive.
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I still remember a game for the Dreamcast, I think it was called Dragon's Blood. It might have had a different name in the USA.
What surprised me at the time was that I could hear the CD-ROM seeking all the time. As soon as I started moving around, the CD would seek like crazy. I can only guess it loaded data on the fly off the CD.
But here's the fun part: the game never missed a beat. It ran flawlessly at a clean 50 fps. (That's the TV refresh rate here in Europe.)
That's just the kind of thing that you can do with good hardware and software design.
On the hardware side, the whole system didn't crawl as soon as you access the CD, as is pretty much the norm on PCs. Loading and running the game just happened at the same time with no slowdown.
And on the software side, it tells me that they not only coded the game to be able to do that, but most likely also took the time to optimize the placement of the files in the resources, to minimize seek times. That's another thing that just doesn't seem to happen on the PC.
Giving the XBox a standard hard drive just allowed the exact same kind of crap. Throwing some files together haphazardly, and relying on the HDD to sort out the performance problem. I.e., what the HDD really brought you there probably isn't the faster load on 2nd try, but the dog slow load on the first try.
And how much can you cache anyway? You don't want a 5 GB game cached to a 10 GB HDD, because you only have enough place for two of them then, and that doesn't even leave any space for saved games. So sooner or later (e.g., when playing a bunch of maps online in random order), you'll have to reload one from DVD anyway. Welcome back to the slow moving blue bar.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...both seem a bit overpriced.
$50 for a 64MB memory card? Amazon.com (just as an example) has generic 512MB memory cards at the same price.
$100 for a 20GB hard drive? I can easily find 120GB drives for that price elsewhere (assuming a 3 1/2" IDE drive is OK).
C - the footgun of programming languages
I seem to recall reading some M$ sales info on the XBoX a few years ago (I'm too lazt to find a link) that said if 10% of the user base gets a hardware add-on, that is consider a good margin for an add on. Unless your company also sells the addon then, it's not worth development cost to code for an addon. I thought these were the reasons they included a HD and Broadband in the XBoX, so they would be used by developers, and thus a reason XBoX was better than a PS2.
/. rss. If I can't do all that *and* have great games on 360, I'm happy where I'm at now.
I think they see XBoX as a failure, even though they said they expected a loss. They are now trying to not repeat themselves, but they don't know why XBoX failed. It failed because of the lack of games, not the platform. How sad is it when I mod my XBoX so I can BT any games I want and realize the 5 I bought are the only 5 I'm intereste in playing?
I love my XBoX, it runs mame, streams avi's, and mp3's, does karaoke, taps into my tivo, and lists the latest
Wow I didn't realize that Microsoft was in the red now. Are they going to declare bankruptsy?
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Still, but making consumers pay $100 more for a hard drive is a good way to recoup some of that money. Mass production of a 20gig drive *has* to be cheaper then that.
Besides, have you seen the prices of pre-order bundles? The highest one is $1,999--someone has to be making money. [ http://www.gamestop.com/gs/360/360.asp ]
We need to let game makers know we want games that require the harddrive and maybe MS will stop selling the core system
Here's a nice little article that came out on GAF today: http://www.gamesarefun.com/news.php?newsid=5630 Exerpts: "Microsoft seems to be wasting no time with their online program for Xbox 360 - the company has announced the first download-only game, the exclusive Xbox Live Arcade game Marble Blast Ultra....it's expected to be available as soon as the Xbox 360 is out, and requires the hard drive equipped Xbox to download." I wonder what he would say to that?
...my mistake for not researching the details.
But now, I wonder what Microsoft were thinking when they decided on an external hard drive. The case of the XBox 360 looks large enough to hold a 3 1/2" standard IDE drive. That would have been a far superior solution.
C - the footgun of programming languages
I heard through the grape vine that the reason for deciding to make the HD optional was supply chain issues. In the panicked rush to beat the PS3 to market, MS realized that they couldn't get enough HD's in time to support the X-Box 360 launch, so decided to make the HD optional. I also heard that they have told retailers to expect shortages of the premium package including the HD through the holiday season. Can any /.'ers vet this info?
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Call bullshit all you like. All area transitions and save states are to be socked away to memory. As long as you don't turn off your Xbox, you should be able to play all the way throguh the game without saving. ... you should look at that statement from the perspective of less-than-hardcore gaming consumer to realize how ridiculous it sounds.
So everything is fine, unless, I turn off the Xbox360, encounter the next rural power outage while in the midst of my new favorite Xbox360 title, or god forbid ..lose interest in a lackluster game and want to play another title.
and then Microsoft wants another $100 for a 20 gig HD? wtf.... If M$ intends to marginalize the sometime gamers they are doing a prime job; Nintendo Revolution sounds better every minute to me, specially if I can download for-pay retro content(FFIII here I come!)
the overlord
Think Gnole-ish, not prole-ish