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Home > Archive > Xbox forum > August 2005 > The decision to offer a no HDD version of Xbox360 has cost MS a sale.
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The decision to offer a no HDD version of Xbox360 has cost MS a sale.
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| Mark E. Smith 2005-08-23, 8:35 pm |
| I have to say that I am sorely unimpressed with MS's decision to go ahead
and splinter their market by offering both a HDD and non-HDD bundled version
of XB360. This will affect the way games are made and removes the level
playing field that we came to love with the original Xbox.
I have to say that this has made my decision firm to NOT buy an XB360.
Perhaps MS will get it right in the next next-generation. I don't want to
play on a mixed environment platform where developers have to shoot for a
moving target. I have that already on my PC.
Just to add, I will also not be buying a PS3 or Revolution....I had my heart
set on XB360 but this debacle combined with the HD-DVD, no HD-DVD or Blu-Ray
has killed it for me. Good luck J Allard.....hope you get it right next time
with XB720.
Mark.
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| Paul Smith 2005-08-23, 8:35 pm |
| "Mark E. Smith" <marke.mith@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:ek$j30%23pFHA.644@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
quote:
>I have to say that I am sorely unimpressed with MS's decision to go ahead
>and splinter their market by offering both a HDD and non-HDD bundled
>version of XB360. This will affect the way games are made and removes the
>level playing field that we came to love with the original Xbox.
Sure I'd rather have every Xbox 360 come with a hard drive, but to be honest
after thinking about it I don't see what the big deal is, caching data isn't
as important now because it has 512MB of RAM.
If you wanna big memory card get the hard drive, if not get the memory card.
quote:
> I have to say that this has made my decision firm to NOT buy an XB360.
> Perhaps MS will get it right in the next next-generation. I don't want to
> play on a mixed environment platform where developers have to shoot for a
> moving target. I have that already on my PC.
Shooting for a moving target? If hard drive = yes then cache, if not then
don't, if hard drive = yes then save to it, if not then don't.
I'm sure developers and publishers would rather have a larger installed base
thanks to the cheaper package then worry about writing 12 extra lines of
code to determine if a hard drive is present or not. - Which they'd have to
do anyway because the hard drive is removable so can't always be guaranteed
to be connected.
quote:
> Just to add, I will also not be buying a PS3 or Revolution....I had my
> heart set on XB360 but this debacle combined with the HD-DVD, no HD-DVD or
> Blu-Ray has killed it for me. Good luck J Allard.....hope you get it right
> next time with XB720.
Well if Sony and Toshiba weren't messing around the next generation discs
would be available this year, but they're not. How's that Allard's fault?
I'd rather have a mature and solid DVD drive then a flakey "next-gen" drive
like the PS2 had.
--
Paul Smith,
Yeovil, UK.
http://www.windowsresource.net/
*Remove 'nospam.' to reply by e-mail*
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| Jeff Fink 2005-08-23, 8:35 pm |
|
"Mark E. Smith" <marke.mith@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:ek$j30%23pFHA.644@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
quote:
> I have to say that I am sorely unimpressed with MS's decision to go ahead
> and splinter their market by offering both a HDD and non-HDD bundled
version
quote:
> of XB360. This will affect the way games are made and removes the level
> playing field that we came to love with the original Xbox.
Are you speaking from a technical perspective where you have a dev kit and
can see the "way games are made?"
Reason I ask, is that I could see a development environment where the XDK
has a "StartLoadingFileIntoCache()" function that copies data from the DVD
to HDD if it exists, and if not, does nothing. When the code really needs a
file, you'd call something like "LoadFile()" where it would block until the
file is loaded (either from the cache or DVD). From the developer's
standpoint, the code wouldn't change at all - the XDK would handle the
difference in hardware and people with the hard drive would have faster load
times.
MS would have to mandate that X360 games use the HDD if it is present to
give those users the benefits, but if they can hide the differences below
the XDK, I can't see why developers wouldn't want to do something like this.
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| Mark E. Smith 2005-08-24, 12:32 am |
|
"Jeff Fink" <jfinkjfink@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:elDpoQ$pFHA.272@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
quote:
>
> "Mark E. Smith" <marke.mith@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
> news:ek$j30%23pFHA.644@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl...
> version
>
> Are you speaking from a technical perspective where you have a dev kit and
> can see the "way games are made?"
>
> Reason I ask, is that I could see a development environment where the XDK
> has a "StartLoadingFileIntoCache()" function that copies data from the DVD
> to HDD if it exists, and if not, does nothing. When the code really needs
> a
> file, you'd call something like "LoadFile()" where it would block until
> the
> file is loaded (either from the cache or DVD). From the developer's
> standpoint, the code wouldn't change at all - the XDK would handle the
> difference in hardware and people with the hard drive would have faster
> load
> times.
>
> MS would have to mandate that X360 games use the HDD if it is present to
> give those users the benefits, but if they can hide the differences below
> the XDK, I can't see why developers wouldn't want to do something like
> this.
>
How would this allow core XB360 owners to download content (patches, new
maps, etc)?
Exactly....they cannot. This fragments the audience and will cause the
majority of the developers to aim for the lowest common denominator.
J. Allard even said that the HDD could be used for caching thus speeding up
level loading, etc.
I'm sure the core XB owners will love it when the richer players are able to
get into the game before them and gain the advantage for the round.
Either way this was very poorly thought out in my opinion. They should have
made the HDD standard. Sure, kill the HD cables and wireless but for the
love of all thing sacred leave the freaking HDD in the bundle. Super sigh.
| |
| Twelve... 2005-08-24, 8:35 pm |
|
"Mark E. Smith" <marke.mith@NOSPAM.com> wrote in message
news:#JvJL$EqFHA.3800@TK2MSFTNGP11.phx.gbl...
quote:
>
> "Jeff Fink" <jfinkjfink@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:elDpoQ$pFHA.272@TK2MSFTNGP15.phx.gbl...
ahead[vbcol=seagreen]
and[vbcol=seagreen]
XDK[vbcol=seagreen]
DVD[vbcol=seagreen]
needs[vbcol=seagreen]
below[vbcol=seagreen]
>
> How would this allow core XB360 owners to download content (patches, new
> maps, etc)?
> Exactly....they cannot. This fragments the audience and will cause the
> majority of the developers to aim for the lowest common denominator.
>
> J. Allard even said that the HDD could be used for caching thus speeding
up
quote:
> level loading, etc.
> I'm sure the core XB owners will love it when the richer players are able
to
quote:
> get into the game before them and gain the advantage for the round.
>
> Either way this was very poorly thought out in my opinion. They should
have
quote:
> made the HDD standard. Sure, kill the HD cables and wireless but for the
> love of all thing sacred leave the freaking HDD in the bundle. Super sigh.
>
>
I agree they should have left the hard drive in, it's a calculated and
misguided risk that MS is taking for the sake of profit. Allard stated that
one of the main reasons they're offering the Core system, is to entice the
casual gamer into buying a system. That's a straight up lie and he knows it,
it's about the money. Anyone who isn't into gaming already, is not going to
spend $300 plus tax on a brand new shiny system so they can break into
gaming, if they really wanted to get into video games, they'd be buying
systems right now, $149 xbox and ps2, $99 gamecube....what's more, he stated
that he wants to expand the video game market, well, you don't do that by
pissing off allot of the customers that are already in the market. dumb
descisions. anyway, about fracturing the the xbox consumers, if you think
about it, i'm sure that less than half the people across the U.S. who own an
xbox, also have live, so the xbox community is pretty much already
fragmented between those that have Live and those that don't. That hasn't
stopped developers from realeasing downloadable content. in fact, Bungie,
released downloadable content and a retail disc for Halo's new maps, because
they knew that not everyone who bought Halo had Live. so, it might not be
that big a deal. Plus, 512 mb of ram is huge, leaving the hard drive sorta
obsolete from a gameplay perspective.
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