PS3 Hard Disk Sold Seperately

[Phades]

It's starting to look more and more official.

According to this news blurb (http://ps3.ign.com/articles/630/630331p1.html) on IGN, the standard Playstation 3 is not going to have a hard disk. Seems like a shame that Sony is ignoring this great feature and segmenting their market.

[Adam Blue]

$99+ tax for the HDD on the PS2 was money well spent.

[Liquidize105]

Sony thinks so too.

Cha-chin!

[Mr_Snuffle]

Another peripheral that will never be used... the only way you are going to get devs to make use of something like this is make it standard, otherwise it's a complete waste of time, only to be used by a very select few titles.

1) GC BBA
2) PS2 BBA
3) PS2 HHD
4) PS2 Multitap
...

I expect the 360 HHD will suffer much the same fate

[Kelegacy]

You know, with the huge compacity media being used with the PS3, will a HDD matter much? I am not really technically inclined, so maybe a hard drive really could help support the other hardware components? With a Blu-Ray disc being near 50 gigs, couldnt you use that extra space the same way you would a hard drive? I dont use my Xbox hard drive for anything other than game saves, so if this was the case (and the memory cards wind up cheaper and have a high capacity for saves) I dont really mind it. I WAS a little upset at first, but now I've rationalized it out...for the most part. The PS3 will be losing money even if they price it at 400 dollars, so if a built in harddrive causes the price to go up even more, I'm all set.

What would be REALLY cool is if they threw in a free memory card with the standard console, controller, and demo-disc package. Even if it was only a low capacity. I hate buying peripherals or other bullshit.

[Morrolan]

If the 360 ships with an HD standard, there is absolutely no question that I will pick it up without waiting for the PS3. If both ship with the HD seperate, I might just wait for the PS3.

[darkwarrior]

Its nothing to do with the storage medium the game comes on, its to do with playing the game. Drives can only read from a disc so fast and nothing like a HDD which can read at speeds that make load times on PS2 infentessimal. Imagine next gen GTA. Now imagine next gen GTA's city pre-loaded onto the Hard drive instead of the RAM so that it constantly is trying to access the disc (And on older PS2s failing). Wanna go to the top of that building and see the edge of the world thats twice as big as San Andreas?

Simple.

Load that huge tournament hall and all the textures for your Soul Calibur 4 onto the HDD in the initial load, no more waiting, no streaming, no slow access and no long repeated load times.

Now imagine PS2 load times. Now imagine them loading a 50 GB dual layer Blu Ray full capacity (Extreme yeah but thats the max).

[Heretic Machine]

You know, with the huge compacity media being used with the PS3, will a HDD matter much? I am not really technically inclined, so maybe a hard drive really could help support the other hardware components? With a Blu-Ray disc being near 50 gigs, couldnt you use that extra space the same way you would a hard drive? I dont use my Xbox hard drive for anything other than game saves, so if this was the case (and the memory cards wind up cheaper and have a high capacity for saves) I dont really mind it. I WAS a little upset at first, but now I've rationalized it out...for the most part. The PS3 will be losing money even if they price it at 400 dollars, so if a built in harddrive causes the price to go up even more, I'm all set.

You can't patch a Blu-ray disc. You can't save games on a Blu-ray disc. You can't pre-load a Blu-ray disc onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't add new maps/weapons/characters onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't load up your own custom soundtrack onto a Blu-ray disc. These are all things you need a hard-drive for.

[sTubbs]

If the 360 ships with an HD standard, there is absolutely no question that I will pick it up without waiting for the PS3. If both ship with the HD seperate, I might just wait for the PS3.

It has already been 100 percent confirmed that the 360 will ship with a standard 20 gigabyte HDD. Bigger HDDs will be made available in the future for those who want them. I am too lazy to link to anything right now, but going to the official site or any respectable gaming site will reveal this as fact.

[Kelegacy]

it would be nice if you could install a harddrive yourself, even a small 20 gig one. But no, Sony will jack the price up for their own drives. I bought a 160 last fall for 90 bucks and if Sony's HDD isnt at least that for LESS, i'll just shake my head and kill a baby.

I want a hard drive, but it's really not cost effective to include it...or so they say. I would have been fine if they dropped a wireless port or two and gave me a hard drive. Oh well. If wishes were assholes, i'd be pockmarked with sphincters everywhere.

[falak]

I used to make the comparison between the HDD and the multitap, but to be fair, implementing the use of the HDD is far easier than allowing four players instead of two.

The only way I can see this working is if they disallow the release of games that don't provide support for the HDD. Of course, games can no longer presume 'swap file' style capability...

[darkwarrior]

Cost effective? You can get 120 GB HDs for about £30 so a 20 GB is gonna be cheap as anything. Even crappy PCs ship with something like 60 GB minimum now.

[Chandler]

You can't patch a Blu-ray disc. You can't save games on a Blu-ray disc. You can't pre-load a Blu-ray disc onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't add new maps/weapons/characters onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't load up your own custom soundtrack onto a Blu-ray disc. These are all things you need a hard-drive for.

a lot of the above can be done with a compactflash card or usb mp3 player (or psp). Console games rarely have bugs.

The thing that worries me the most is streaming from blu-ray, but you know what, that halo1/2 load time where everything was cached was a PAIN. I wasn't able to play for a quick 10 min session because that thing annoyed me. Plus blu-ray is no slow drive here, it should be equivalent to a 12x-16x dvd-rom.

Online play worked pretty well on PS2 with tonyhawk and socom, I dont see any major issues with it except for mmorpgs, which is obviously going to require a hdd.

[Bumbuliuz]

Cant say Im suprised seeing Sony do this. Didnt they learn anything from MS with Xbox?? I think there are 2 parts where MS is spanking Sony. Xbox Live and the Hard Drive. 2 of my favorite parts of my Xbox

[Adam Blue]

a lot of the above can be done with a compactflash card or usb mp3 player (or psp). Console games rarely have bugs.

The thing that worries me the most is streaming from blu-ray, but you know what, that halo1/2 load time where everything was cached was a PAIN. I wasn't able to play for a quick 10 min session because that thing annoyed me. Plus blu-ray is no slow drive here, it should be equivalent to a 12x-16x dvd-rom.

Online play worked pretty well on PS2 with tonyhawk and socom, I dont see any major issues with it except for mmorpgs, which is obviously going to require a hdd.

Speaking of MP3 players, I think it's great that the 360 allows you to use one to stream all of your music, instead of putting it on the HD. That will save space. Also that 'caching' that Halo did far surpases load times on general PS2 games. After the initial startup, that is all you have to wait for.

[Royal Fool]

With a Blu-Ray disc being near 50 gigs, couldnt you use that extra space the same way you would a hard drive?

Well, technically if the discs were rewritable then developers could use them as storage space of sorts, downloading skins and maps onto them just like the Xbox would do with its hard drive. But you'd still be confined to the games themselves and be unable to share your own media around, unlike the Xbox 360 which has the dashboard available all the time.

Anyway, we still don't have enough details on it all, so I'm just speculating here... but it seems to me that Sony is just splintering their market and developers that want to create innovative games.

[NACIONAL]

PS3 Hard Disk Sold Seperately

I saw that coming... well, at least XB360 will have it standard

[GunnyMo]

You can't patch a Blu-ray disc. You can't save games on a Blu-ray disc. You can't pre-load a Blu-ray disc onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't add new maps/weapons/characters onto a Blu-ray disc. You can't load up your own custom soundtrack onto a Blu-ray disc. These are all things you need a hard-drive for.

Very well said. Except for the patching part. I don't think we've seen a lot of it but here's to keeping fingers crossed that consoles with HD don't start the PC trend of "ship then patch to fix bugs which should have been fixed before shipping". Most of what I've seen, so far, is patching for exploits or unexpected bugs.

Sony has always been, and always will be, all about selling you add ons. Hell, I won't be suprised if they change the "7 wireless controllers" (still can't figure out that odd number) to "2 wireless and you need a wireless multi-tap to use any more".

That said I do plan on picking the system up for my typical Sony/Japanese RPG fix. However, unless something big comes from Sony, I can say the majority of my time, especially online, will be spent on the 360. Resting on their laurels got Nintendo nowhere and I fear the same fate awaits Sony sometime down the road. Don't throw around that "Sony has the biggest market share and name recognition in the world" stuff: So did Nintendo. :D

[*Legion*]

Hooray! A $400 console, hard drive sold separately!

Very well said. Except for the patching part. I don't think we've seen a lot of it but here's to keeping fingers crossed that consoles with HD don't start the PC trend of "ship then patch to fix bugs which should have been fixed before shipping". Most of what I've seen, so far, is patching for exploits or unexpected bugs.

"Patching" is not a bad thing. There's nothing bad about fixing a product. What you're talking about is not finishing the product when you ship it, finishing it afterwards instead. That was all the hysteria when hard drives started coming to consoles, and it just hasn't panned out. The biggest reason is that the thing that makes it so hard to squash all the bugs in PC games (completely different hardware from one machine to the next) is not a factor in console games.

Like you said, the functionality is mainly used to fix exploits. Fixing exploits in online games is reality. Fixing exploits in ANY network-enabled software is reality. One could whine that it "should be fixed before it releases", but they're not willing to wait the extra few years and spend 5 times as much money for the game, would they? It's easy to fix a problem after it's been discovered. It is incredibly difficult to make absolutely certain that there is nothing wrong with a piece of software. That's what NASA development is like, and that's where NASA development budgets come from. You don't get that in a $50 piece of software.

[Paranoia]

Ninja Gaiden Hurricane Packs is the best example what you can do with patching.

[NACIONAL]

Ninja Gaiden Hurricane Packs is the best example what you can do with patching.

i don't think that is patching... i think its better called... well expanding...

[Cha-Ka]

Console games rarely have bugs.

HA HA HA HA HA! But seriously, I hope Sony changes their tune on the HD inclusion. That would squash any hopes of developers patching games and making downloadable content unless the PS3 memory card will store multiple GB. Seems a damn shame. :mad:

[Commissar Rob]

I'll play devil's advocate here, but...what has Sony lost by not having a hard drive standard with the PS2? Certainly not a vast swath of market share.

Maybe they're just thinking it's a feature that, in the end, the majority of gamers won't care about. They didn't include it this gen and they still managed a huge library of gamers and a dominate market share. They're probably assuming the same will hold true in the future.

[Chiggs]

I expect the 360 HHD will suffer much the same fate

Below are the specs for the Xbox 360. I suggest you look them over carefully before making replies about the system itself on the internet. Additionally, the information which detailed that the Xbox 360 would come with a detachable 20gig hard drive has been available for well over a month now.

Xbox 360 Specifications (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm)

[nophex]

I'll play devil's advocate here, but...what has Sony lost by not having a hard drive standard with the PS2? Certainly not a vast swath of market share.

Maybe they're just thinking it's a feature that, in the end, the majority of gamers won't care about. They didn't include it this gen and they still managed a huge library of gamers and a dominate market share. They're probably assuming the same will hold true in the future.

The Xbox and it's built in standard HDD hadn't been released when Sony made the PS2. The standard has been set now. Them not including a HDD in the PS3 is completely different from the PS2 not having one.

[Mr_Snuffle]

Below are the specs for the Xbox 360. I suggest you look them over carefully before making replies about the system itself on the internet. Additionally, the information which detailed that the Xbox 360 would come with a detachable 20gig hard drive has been available for well over a month now.

Xbox 360 Specifications (http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox360/factsheet.htm)

I was under the impression that the 360 would be shipping something like two models, one with HHD, and one without. The one with the HHD would be required to play original xbox games or some such. That may have changed recently though, I haven't been following it that much

[TrackZero]

Another peripheral that will never be used... the only way you are going to get devs to make use of something like this is make it standard, otherwise it's a complete waste of time, only to be used by a very select few titles.

1) GC BBA
2) PS2 BBA
3) PS2 HHD
4) PS2 Multitap
...

I expect the 360 HHD will suffer much the same fate

Do you mean the HDD? MS already confirmed a 20GB drive comes with the console, it is standard.

[TrackZero]

Cost effective? You can get 120 GB HDs for about £30 so a 20 GB is gonna be cheap as anything. Even crappy PCs ship with something like 60 GB minimum now.

The crapiest boxes I've seen of late from the cheapest-asshole manufacturers are all up to 80GB standard now.

[TrackZero]

a lot of the above can be done with a compactflash card or usb mp3 player (or psp). Console games rarely have bugs.


So instead of them throwing a cheap HD in with the console, you find the alternatives are buying compactflash (which would cost the same as a 160GB drive for a 1GB compacflash card) or an external mp3 player (which costs the same as the 160GB as well). Yeah, brilliant. There's simply no excuse for not including a HD in their console this generation as a standard, Sony should have learned this lesson by now. Except they're being blinded by $$$ and would rather fuck over the consumer than care about their gaming experience. I hope people finally see through Sony's BS this generation, but I doubt it.

[Phades]

All you really have to do is compare the load times on many Xbox games to the load times on PS2 games. Load times on Xbox games is far and away better. Also, the downloading of extra content is a great feature. Sure, you can fit that stuff on a memory card, but then you're filling up your memory cards. I've yet to even see my Xbox's hard drive go below the more than 50K blocks it says are available. Not to mention, with a hard drive you're ready to go with all of that out of the box and don't have to worry about it. Sure, Sony will still get some MMORPG's on their system but it'll likely be like FFIX was and cost you around $100 just for the software and a harddrive that maybe 5-6 games will ever use. No thanks.

[Blue]

PS3 is teh doomed?

[*Legion*]

PS3 is teh doomed?

No, but it sadly is teh expensive, and without a standard HD to cache to, it may be teh painful loading times.

All the super-duper processing power in the world doesn't do squat to media seek & access times.

[Wonka]

So I will once again ask my earlier question from the end of that other dying thread:

What do you guys think is a bigger handicap? No HDD to speak of? Or no Blue-Ray (ie. only 10 GB instead of 50 GB)?

[*Legion*]

What do you guys think is a bigger handicap? No HDD to speak of? Or no Blue-Ray (ie. only 10 GB instead of 50 GB)?

No hard drive, easily. Nobody's having problems fitting games onto DVDs. How many 2 DVD games have you seen? Hell, GameCube discs only hold 1.5 GB, and how many games have fit onto those without any problems? A few rare games take two discs. Space on optical media isn't something that's causing problems.

A lack of hard drive caching, though, would be a massive pain. Who wants to endure those load times again? Not to mention go without the convenience and neat functionality that the persistant storage of a HD allows.

[Mr_Snuffle]

Do you mean the HDD? MS already confirmed a 20GB drive comes with the console, it is standard.

Sorry, typo. Yeah, I mean HDD, and I've now, much to my delight, been proven wrong. My point still stands with the other peripherals though :P

[Phades]

So I will once again ask my earlier question from the end of that other dying thread:

What do you guys think is a bigger handicap? No HDD to speak of? Or no Blue-Ray (ie. only 10 GB instead of 50 GB)?

No HDD. While the extra space is swell, no game today is really taxing the limits of a DVD's capacity. Even if games were to need to spill over onto 2 DVD's, not common, how big of a deal is it to have a 2-disc game? Heck, a great game like Half-Life 2 on the PC is under 5GB, and World of Warcraft is less than 6. Both of those are well under the capacity for a DVD.

[Cyrano]

Am I the only one who read this a few news posts ago?

"Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has expressed concerns over the lack of storage space on the Xbox 360's DVD media.

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes."

I still think not having a hard drive is worse, but the 360's low-density DVD spec doesn't sound very good.

[Last of the Red Hot Mamas]

Regarding the loading issue, a hard drive helps, but so does RAM and drive speed. I mean, the Gamecube's loading times are far shorter than the PS2's and the GC doesn't have the advantage of a hard drive like the Xbox does.

[Wonka]

Am I the only one who read this a few news posts ago?

"Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has expressed concerns over the lack of storage space on the Xbox 360's DVD media.

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes."

I still think not having a hard drive is worse, but the 360's low-density DVD spec doesn't sound very good.

Yes. That was why I was asking the question.

The only thing is that despite Itagaki's enthusiasm for HD-quality cutscenes, I myself feel fairly apathetic about them. For me, DVD quality of playback is more than acceptable. I simply don't really notice resolution issues as much on a video as I do in a real-time game engine. I mean, I am just never sitting at home watching a DVD and thinking "man, that is just too blurry!". I do notice the jaggies in my console games, but I don't ever feel that my DVDs are not "crisp" enough. I also never find myself thinking that the cut scenes are too blurry. If anything, I usually find myself wishing that the game engine looked a bit more like the cut scenes do and not the other way around. So I don't know if Itagaki has sold me on the idea that I need this...

[TrackZero]

Sorry, typo. Yeah, I mean HDD, and I've now, much to my delight, been proven wrong. My point still stands with the other peripherals though :P

Oh yeah, peripherals are largely trash. If it's non-standard, you'll never see wide-spread acceptance, even if it's a must-have device. Developers simply won't give proper support.

[*Legion*]

Am I the only one who read this a few news posts ago?

"Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has expressed concerns over the lack of storage space on the Xbox 360's DVD media.

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes."

No, we read it too. We just like the idea of the death of the "no game, all FMV" Japanese RPG.

Especially with the graphical capabilities of the next gen of systems, who needs to prerender cutscenes? Let's get over that already.

[Achilles]

They might be able to get away with it if they launch it with the system. On the other hand if they wait three years to bring the hard drive out and then stop supporting it with their next rev of the PS3 like they did this time they’ll have no chance of getting support.

They should also get rid of some of the millions of ports the PS3 has, I appreciate that they want to throw features I’ll never use at me, but I don’t want to pay more for them (assuming the PS3 will be more than $300). What do you guys think is a bigger handicap? No HDD to speak of? Or no Blue-Ray (ie. only 10 GB instead of 50 GB)?Given that the Blu-Ray discs will cost several dollars more to manufacture it’ll probably be a while before you see a game ship on one. So HDD is certainly the more useful of the two features.

[51|RandoM]

Everything currently on the hard drive in my xbox will fit on a thumb drive... I'll stick with flash memory for the next gen, so no drive=no sweat.

[BigJonno]

Everything currently on the hard drive in my xbox will fit on a thumb drive... I'll stick with flash memory for the next gen, so no drive=no sweat.

But that only gives you the storage. The benefits of games developed to fully utilise an HDD are just as important as not having to buy memory cards.

Of course, there is a middleground that Sony might take. They could release a (relatively) cheap HDD instead of memory cards. Unlikely, but it would make sense (and more money.)

[Vandenh]

No HD is a joke for PS3... how can they seriously advertise their console as a "media" hub if they have no HD. Looks like PS3 is indeed a PS2.5

MS must be rubbing their hands... 360 looks like the real next gen.

[Redline]

The console war is OVER!!!

(Sorry, has someone else already posted this? :P)

[Morratut]

This doesn't suprise me one bit from Sony. No doubt they will promise it will be available on release of the PS3 etc etc but it won't.

Stupid stupid Sony.

Come to me my 360!!! come to Morratut!!! :D

[buckfutter]

One thing to remember is that as Blue Ray discs pack data more densely, they also read more data at the standard speed. So a DVD sized game on a Blue Ray disc should have very fast disk access time. That said, if a game takes advantage of not compressing data at all (which may also help loading times considerably), a game that takes up a lot of space could even out on the density advantage.

That said, no HD standard equals one failed peripheral. The exact same thing will happen if MS decides to add HD-DVD support at a later stage via a peripheral device.

I also believe that sticking to the DVD medium will cause some problems down the road for the 360. Games like GTA already push limits of DVD space with 32kpbs radio tracks and no 5.1 surround audio tracks to deal with. I certainly see it being problematic outside of FMV restrictions.

[bapenguin]

The biggest problem with this...is not the fact that there is no hard drive, but there is no hard drive standard. That means you split your market and your developers have to plan for both situations when programming.

[Roc Ingersol]

Agreed. The PS3 HD might as well not exist. Add-ons have pitiful markets. Or maybe I'm not being fair to the handful of PS2 games that use its HD?
Whether that matters or not is a different story.

And the standard DVD for the neXtBox is no big deal. It'll bring that hip retro feel to the next gen: 'Flip disc to continue' :)

[Babbster]

That said, no HD standard equals one failed peripheral. The exact same thing will happen if MS decides to add HD-DVD support at a later stage via a peripheral device.

I agree with you to a large extent (and would certainly prefer that Xbox supported one of the next-gen optical formats), but at least an HD-DVD add-on would have a purpose (HD movies) even if no game developer supported it. A PS3 add-on hard drive would be hard to justify with limited developer support since it has little function apart from gaming - maybe storing audio/video files, but I'm personally of the opinion that streaming from PC is the way to go in that area.

Oh well. Each and every one of us knows that if there are games we want to play for a particular console, that's the one we'll buy (or the two, or the three). All this specification talk is a lot of sound and fury signifying people with too much time on their hands. :)

[Deadend]

I will go with the flow and agree that Sony is being stupid/cheap/dirty/greedy on their hard drive issues.

On Xbox360 only using a Standard DVD and it will be tough to cram 2 hour long HD cutscenes onto a disc?

QUIT USING DVD CODEC YOU STUPID DRUNK!

Xbox360 can handle compresion, it can handle Divx or BINK, or anything, it's a computer, not a dumb DVD player that uses a low-compression codec like DVD.

Or... use multiple discs, they are near dirt cheap to make, espcially compared to the cost of making more self-indulgent CG eyecandy crap.

The only time the format can hurt the system is with games like a Diablo style game, where there is a massive (say 10gb) amount of diffrent items that need to be able to be shown, thus making it impossible to fit on 1 DVD, of couse... if any company is able to make that many assets, then I would be quite impressed.

[bobbler]

They are 2.5 inch drives (Xbox360 and PS3 both use this size) -- 20gb drives at cheapest sell for ~$50 (100gb are like ~$150). Of course those prices are to consumers. They are also slow as dirt and 5400rpm at best (most likely 4500rpm drives going into consoles).

I wouldn't get too excited over the transfer rates on the drives that'll go into the Xbox360 (and PS3). The drives aren't going to be faster than the Xbox1 (most likely) drive and the DVD (BR) drives in the consoles are much faster than last generation -- the gap closes by a great deal so the advantage of actually using the HDD is reduced greatly. We're talking around ~15+mb/s from the DVD drive now days and maybe 20mb/s from the HDD. As opposed to last generation where it was 3mb/s for the DVD drive and around 20mb/s for the HDD -- the actual usefulness of the HDD goes down greatly. Now consider the difference between most PS2 and Xbox load times (on average they were fairly comparable, with Xbox having a slight advantage) -- the reason for an HDD is for patching/new content/trailers/online stuff, not load times.

With that said: Sony, add a friggin 20GB HDD.

[Kamalot]

"Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has expressed concerns over the lack of storage space on the Xbox 360's DVD media.

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes."

I think most of us would rather be playing our games instead of watching pre-rendered movies of games. If the PS3 is so powerful, why do they need pre-rendered anything? Why not use the awesome processing power of the cell processor to render those scenes in real-time?

Maybe PS3 fans can twiddle their wireless controllers as they watch the Killzone HD video over and over again, using their imagination to believe they are really playing.

[Kamalot]

I just realized that even the Revolution has a half-a-gig of internal memory standard for use with downloading extra levels, patches and old Nintendo games.

Why didn't Sony include some kind of base internal memory for the PS3?

Memory Sticks

Sony makes a KILLING off of their memory sticks. They know that EVERYONE who buys a PS3 will have to buy a memory stick.

Memory Sticks = Cash Cow

[peeweejd]

you have to be kidding me? at least $300 for a console, prolly $100 for a useable sized hard drive in OEM packaging...

hell this is the same as a cheap PC nowadays... you can even get a flat screen monitor with it...

there's your media hub... who needs to wait for a PS3, when you can call emachines and have a media hub today...

[Doomsday]

I think most of us would rather be playing our games instead of watching pre-rendered movies of games. If the PS3 is so powerful, why do they need pre-rendered anything? Why not use the awesome processing power of the cell processor to render those scenes in real-time?
Because pre-rendering things is easier and you can provide better visuals? Games of the 360 and Revolution will have pre-rendered cinematics, just like the PS3.

Please also keep in mind that texture sizes will likely quadruple in the next generation. For developers who were filling Xbox 1 discs to the limit, the fact that the Xbox 360 maintains the same format becomes an issue

On topic: No built in HD is very annoying. PS3 will likely support a variety of flash media, so I'm not concerned about being ripped off, but it does affect load times negatively

[netcraazzy]

I think by not including a HDD Sony is hurting themselves more in the "what could be" department than in the usability department. Solid state memory cards are big enough to hold your save games and most likely some small downloaded content. What you won't be able to do is download games or game demos which is something that MS is promoting with the 360. Now suppose that you do end up saving downloaded game content to a memory card on the PS3, the fact that it's an external memory device opens up the door for hackers. Any of you who played PSO on the Dreamcast might remember all the hacks that were made for that game by exploiting the fact that your game data was saved on those external VMUs.

[bobbler]

I think most of us would rather be playing our games instead of watching pre-rendered movies of games. If the PS3 is so powerful, why do they need pre-rendered anything? Why not use the awesome processing power of the cell processor to render those scenes in real-time?

Maybe PS3 fans can twiddle their wireless controllers as they watch the Killzone HD video over and over again, using their imagination to believe they are really playing.

That is a pretty childish attitude -- what does Xbox360's lack of a HD optical disc have to do with PS3?

Don't take your, apparent, anger out on the PS3.

[Reanimated]

Doom III takes up a grand total of 1.75GB on my computer's HDD. With that in mind, I really don't see how there will be very many games that will need more than 9 GB of disc space. MS has very good HD compression schemes for those developers that want to cram a bunch of FMVs into their games... but I honestly don't see the need for FMVs with consoles producing graphics like Gears of War. Most 360 developers will simply do what the vast majority of Xbox devs did and create cutscenes in-engine.

Some developers, like say Rockstar with GTA, may have to use the 360's real time decompression capability to decompress game assets on the fly. Others may just have to clean up unused game assets (things that got cut but remained on the disc) before sending a game for pressing.

Disc space MIGHT be an ISSUE in 4 years for Xbox 360, but I really don't see it being a MAJOR problem or limiting factor. Couple this with the fact that MS plans to ship 360's with next-gen drives (for movie playback) down the road, and I just don't see Xbox 360 being at any real disadvantage with the DVD drive. ACTUALLY this is much more of a liability for Sony because they could be pricing themselves out of market leadership due to their inclusion of the BRD.

[51|RandoM]

But that only gives you the storage. The benefits of games developed to fully utilise an HDD are just as important as not having to buy memory cards.

Of course, there is a middleground that Sony might take. They could release a (relatively) cheap HDD instead of memory cards. Unlikely, but it would make sense (and more money.)

what benefit? about the only significant benefit I can think of might be load times---which I'd rather address by increasing system memory.

seems like people want to turn their console into a pc, but still only pay a console-sized price.

[mister_slim]

Given that the Blu-Ray discs will cost several dollars more to manufacture it’ll probably be a while before you see a game ship on one.
Given? How is Blu-Ray going to cost multiple dollars? It looks like Blu-Ray will very quickly approach the costs of DVD manufacture.

[Teddeh]

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes."

I still think not having a hard drive is worse, but the 360's low-density DVD spec doesn't sound very good.

Maybe the Japanese developers are being forced to make GAMES and not cutscenes linked with the occasional button press?

:D

*OPINION - FEEL FREE TO DISAGREE WITH IT* I hate Japanese or Japanese-style RPGS. Final Fantasy especially.

I don't think X360's lack of media capacity will hurt it. In fact, that it has an HDD will actually complement it. A two disc game could be one disc as an install that pre-caches assets that need nice fast access (textures, sound) and disc two is a "Play" disc that contains the program and stuff that can stream from disc - cutscenes or cutscene scripts that drive the game engine, for example.

End result - less loading times and that helps towards a better play experience.

The blu-ray drive in PS3 had better be bloody fast, or the devs had better work out some really clever paging techniques to stream new stuff in while keeping enough in RAM for what's happening and keep the framerate up.

Some loading times on PS2 are outrageous as it is, pulling in HD art and 5.1 sounds off disc will be painfully slow...

[Achilles]

How is Blu-Ray going to cost multiple dollars? It looks like Blu-Ray will very quickly approach the costs of DVD manufacture. Because they’re an experimental technology and only Sony makes them. Word on the street is they could cost $4-$5 more than DVDs for short time at least. To very quickly approach the costs of a DVD doesn't mean they'll be the same price, it means they'll start out a lot more expensive and eventually be about the same price.

If you notice it’s still the case that lots of games for the PS2 ship on CD instead of DVD even though it’s not that much more, so I don’t see any Blu-Ray titles at launch unless they’re Sony first party, and probably none for a year or two.

On top of that look at the problems that the DVD drives in the current gen systems had, and that was a technology that had already been in the market for a while. This is a completely untried drive that will be making its mass-market debut in the PS3. I can’t see that turning out well. Putting in an HDD would seem to be a lot safer bet than going the Blu-Ray rout and more beneficial (for gaming) as well.

[Cyrano]

Does anybody know if current Xbox games "install" themselves to the hard drive? I can't think of any games that took longer to run the first time I ran them than subsequent times. Wouldn't that have made the games run better? I'm not being sarcastic, I just wonder if anybody knows if this was done.

Second, does anybody know what the speed of the 360s DVD drive is compared to the PS3s Blu-Ray drive?

[Achilles]

Does anybody know if current Xbox games "install" themselves to the hard drive? I can't think of any games that took longer to run the first time I ran them than subsequent times. Wouldn't that have made the games run better? I'm not being sarcastic, I just wonder if anybody knows if this was done.Team Ninja games in particular. For example when you first run Ninja Gaiden you end up watching a 2 minute load time which doesn't happen when you load up the game the next time. Now there's only so much space that can be used for this, so if you play Halo you'll get the longer load time the next time you play Ninja Gaiden because its information was overwritten by Halo. Most games and all exclusive games that I know of install the game to some extent on the HDD.

If you'd like to check it out yourself load up Halo for the first time and keep track of the load time (halo really only loads the once in a noticeable way), play it a bit then turn the machine off, turn it back on and see how long the load time lasts; it'll be cut from ~30 seconds to near instant.

[*Legion*]

Does anybody know if current Xbox games "install" themselves to the hard drive?

It's not "installing", it's caching.

The Xbox maintains a cache of data from the last 3 games that have been played on it.

A couple games other than ones Achilles mentioned that take FOREVER to load when not cached are Ghost Recon 2 or DOOM 3.

You may notice them in the form of opening cutscenes that, for some reason, you can't always "skip". If the data for that game is no longer cached, then some of these games will make you sit through most of the opening cutscene while it caches.

[Chris_D]

I'm probably posting to the wrong crowd here but how many rpg fans would refuse to buy a Final Fantasy game just because it came on 4 discs instead of 1? XBox360 lack of HDDVD support = non issue.

[Cyrano]

Well, the caching system would have to change to "installing" for the 360 if the hard drive is going to help with multiple-disc games, wouldn't it? Will people put up with "please insert disc one and wait a really long time for it to cache" before playing their games? I don't think the idea of having to install your games on a console would be popular. More likely, games will use compression to fit on a single disc.

And no, Final Fantasy games coming on four discs for the 360 won't be an issue at all. Everyone will just buy them on a single disc for the PS3. The lack of HDDVD support will only be an issue if Microsoft wants to sell 360s in Japan.

[buckfutter]

Multiple discs isn't such a hot idea if your game uses streaming and has an open ended environment, which are ironically the sort of games that will eat up space outside of games with a ton of prerendered movies. And production costs do rise when you start needing custom case fittings for many discs. But in the end, if a developer works to the system's capabilities it won't be a problem. It'll just impede PS3 to 360 ports... which considering how complicated multicore programming is turning out to be, might not be happening to often anyway, in either direction.

[mister_slim]

Because they’re an experimental technology and only Sony makes them. Word on the street is they could cost $4-$5 more than DVDs for short time at least. To very quickly approach the costs of a DVD doesn't mean they'll be the same price, it means they'll start out a lot more expensive and eventually be about the same price.

Blu-Ray Press Release (http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/News/Details.aspx?NewsId=13887). Doesn't look like Sony is the only manufacturer.
Degussa, a new BDA member company, projects a single-digit Euro cents per-disc cost at launch.
Doesn't sound anywhere near $5.

Yeah, take it with a grain of salt. But where is your info from?

[netcraazzy]

You may notice them in the form of opening cutscenes that, for some reason, you can't always "skip". If the data for that game is no longer cached, then some of these games will make you sit through most of the opening cutscene while it caches.

Wow that must be why Splinter Cell Chaos Theory seems to not let me skip the cutscene sometimes.

[Achilles]

Good article mister_slim, it looks like they might be as cheap as DVDs to produce at launch. If this is the case it’s a much more useful technology. I think HDD is still more useful for games just in how versitile it is, but at least people may be able to use Blu-Ray for games right from the beginning.