disolitude said: ^ god damn it... WHERE WERE YOU A YEAR AGO?!?! :)

Hahaha... well if it helps, that $10 POS I linked probably wouldn’t have lasted you a year ;)

 

They do have some good ones for a little more however.

 

it sure was a mistake.

Game_boy said: No HDD in Wii a "mistake", says dev No HDD in DS a "mistake", says dev No HDD in PSP a "mistake", says dev No $99 PS3 a "mistake", says dev No FREE CAKE a "mistake", says dev No Portal on Wii a "mistake", says dev My gender a "mistake", says dev No Beer at E3 a "mistake", says dev My hairstyle a "mistake", says dev Free sniper rifles for fanboys a "mistake", says dev No devs a "mistake", says Core 360 HDD Still no $99 PS3 a "mistake", I blame Wii Fit, says dev   --   My conclusion: DEAL WITH IT. Thank you.

This is about how I feel about it, but I'd put it in a more analytical way: game designers frequently talk about such things, without considering the economic consequences.

Xbox Live Should be free. The PS3 should cost less. All 360s should come with a hard drive. All games should be tailor made for their systems, so that CoD5 (as an example) takes full advantage of XBL's features on the 360, takes full advantage of the Sixaxis and Blu Ray on the PS3, and full advantage of the Wii Mote on the Wii.

It all sounds fantastic! Except the industry -- at least, the PS3/360 side things -- isn't exactly rolling in money as it is. Sony has bled billions over the last couple of years in this industry, and Microsoft has been bleeding billions since they entered. EA is losing money. Several other major publishers will lose money this year (not Activision, though!) or make slim profits. The last thing these companies want to do is shave earnings even further. 

I think the entire industry is suffering a slight case of man-child syndrome: a complete lack of awareness of financial reality and economic responsibility. I want a 1 dollar Refrigerator and a 50 cent Toaster. It's great for everyone! The appliance companies sell more units, and everyone gets cheaper toasters. What could possibly go wrong?

ive been sayng this was a big mistake since day one. you cant save your games for goodness sake. i dont even think you can make a profile or live account. some1 correct me if im wrong.

also i can go out right now and buy a 250 seta hard drive for my ps3 for 179 which is the same for a 120gb hdd for 360. also with the 360, you HAVE TO use their hard drive.

Bodhesatva said: Xbox Live Should be free. The PS3 should cost less. All 360s should come with a hard drive. All games should be tailor made for their systems, so that CoD5 (as an example) takes full advantage of XBL's features on the 360, takes full advantage of the Sixaxis and Blu Ray on the PS3, and full advantage of the Wii Mote on the Wii. It all sounds fantastic! Except the industry -- at least, the PS3/360 side things -- isn't exactly rolling in money as it is. Sony has bled billions over the last couple of years in this industry, and Microsoft has been bleeding billions since they entered. EA is losing money. Several other major publishers will lose money this year (not Activision, though!) or make slim profits. The last thing these companies want to do is shave earnings even further.  I think the entire industry is suffering a slight case of man-child syndrome: a complete lack of awareness of financial reality and economic responsibility. I want a 1 dollar Refrigerator and a 50 cent Toaster. It's great for everyone! The appliance companies sell more units, and everyone gets cheaper toasters. What could possibly go wrong?

I disagree. No one here is saying MS should have hit a different price point, or added anything they didn't already have. The argument is they should not have released a model with fewer capabilities than their main stream option. Doing so has now made the collective pool weaker, thus tying developer’s hands.

How was this a good thing? It didn't make MS any more money. Almost no one bought the Core or the Arcade (compared to the HD options). The best “spin” you could put on this, is it forced developers to not use HD space for large downloads.

But then again, I have never been one to think that forcing developers to do something due to limited hardware benefits gamers.

ive been sayng this was a big mistake since day one. you cant save your games for goodness sake. i dont even think you can make a profile or live account. some1 correct me if im wrong.

also i can go out right now and buy a 250 seta hard drive for my ps3 for 179 which is the same for a 120gb hdd for 360. also with the 360, you HAVE TO use their hard drive.

@ Bodhesatva

But the case with regard to the 360 is different, the bulk of over 90% (based on a sample) of 360 owners seem to own a Premium with a harddrive, then you also have a few people buying an Elite.

IMO the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, if a harddrive would have been standard the 360 becomes a far more appealing product overall.

For the Wii this would be entirely different, the device was built to be cheap and small. Entry price (more aimed at kids and 'casuals') and form factor are very important for the Wii's success.

mrstickball said: Dear Microsoft, It is appearent your Xbox 360 isn't the perfect console. Therefore, I sugguest the following things to be featured on the Xbox 720: #1. A HVD DVD Drive, capible of no less than 500GB of drive space. Certainly enough to satisfy even Metal Gear 5. #2. Waggle controls that aren't to waggl-y #3. A 5 TB internal harddrive. Preferably very fast read times so if there is installation, it's instantaneous #4. A mind reader for the UI. Preferably something that isn't very intrusive to my everyday life. #5. Hardware that is not only very, very fast (like 30 general purpose CPUs, ect), but very very easy to work with. Infact, I want a dev kit that I can think up the games, and it creates the games for me. #6. A very fast selling console. See #7. #7. A $49.99 USD pricetag to ensure #6 happens. Kthxbye, Developers

That's pure gold stickball.  Pure gold.  :)

 

Honestly, if 90% of the 360s out there have hard drives, than what the hell is wrong with a developer putting out a game that requires a hard drive?  They only lose 10% of their targeted userbase, and they gain whatever functionality they wanted to gain for their game.  I agree that the Core system with no hard drive was a stupid idea by MS, but there's no reason that developers have to be hamstrung by this mistake.

TheRealMafoo said: Bodhesatva said: Xbox Live Should be free. The PS3 should cost less. All 360s should come with a hard drive. All games should be tailor made for their systems, so that CoD5 (as an example) takes full advantage of XBL's features on the 360, takes full advantage of the Sixaxis and Blu Ray on the PS3, and full advantage of the Wii Mote on the Wii. It all sounds fantastic! Except the industry -- at least, the PS3/360 side things -- isn't exactly rolling in money as it is. Sony has bled billions over the last couple of years in this industry, and Microsoft has been bleeding billions since they entered. EA is losing money. Several other major publishers will lose money this year (not Activision, though!) or make slim profits. The last thing these companies want to do is shave earnings even further. I think the entire industry is suffering a slight case of man-child syndrome: a complete lack of awareness of financial reality and economic responsibility. I want a 1 dollar Refrigerator and a 50 cent Toaster. It's great for everyone! The appliance companies sell more units, and everyone gets cheaper toasters. What could possibly go wrong? I disagree. No one here is saying MS should have hit a different price point, or added anything they didn't already have. The argument is they should not have released a model with fewer capabilities than their main stream option. Doing so has now made the collective pool weaker, thus tying developer’s hands. How was this a good thing? It didn't make MS any more money. Almost no one bought the Core or the Arcade (compared to the HD options). The best “spin” you could put on this, is it forced developers to not use HD space for large downloads. But then again, I have never been one to think that forcing developers to do something due to limited hardware benefits gamers.

Yes, it absolutely did make MS more money. Dropping the hard drive from the Arcade SKU probably shaved 10 dollars off each system. In addition, many Core users later purchased an attachable HD for 100 dollars. Let's be nice, say that only 1/10 core users eventually bought an HD. That means, on average, Microsoft made 18 additional dollars per customer by not including the HD -- and I think that's a very conservative estimate. 

If you don't think shaving 20 dollars off the cost of SKU isn't relevant, your foolish. 

As to the second bolded statement: this is precisely the sort of man-childish statement I was talking about. Yes! Developers shouldn't have to deal with limited hardware. Sony and Microsoft should instead have made much more powerful systems, right? Because all three systems are limited. None are top of the line now. Why didn't they make the systems even more powerful, and build them like supercomputers? Why do the PS3 and 360 only have 512 MB of RAM? (in the case of the PS3, it isn't even unified) We're already seeing games (most notably RTS like Supreme Commander) struggle to run on current-gen platforms, because they don't have enough RAM. Why did they limit the developers so? 

Answer: limiting developers isn't a good thing, inherently. The problem is, people take this concept and run everywhere with it, to the point where they completely ignore economic realities. Because you know what would be even worse for gamers? If all these companies went out of business because we insisted they build ultra-super-computers for us and then forced them to sell those computers for 200 dollars when they cost 10,000 to develop.

It's an extreme example to prove a point. Here's the central question, Mafoo: Microsoft has already spent -- spent, not earned -- over 6 billion dollars in the last decade on gaming. They have spent money to sell us their product! Given that, at what point does it become unreasonable for us, as consumers, to insist that they aren't doing enough, and that they should have spent even more? 

Because at some point, this is going to turn the other way. You realize that, right? At some point in the future, these companies are going to want to turn a net profit on us. This isn't a charity. I think many gamers have just gotten so used to companies that are willing to spend billions of dollars to attract their interest that a company actually making money on them sounds greedy and unfair. 

 

MikeB said: @ Bodhesatva I think the entire industry is suffering a slight case of man-child syndrome: a complete lack of awareness of financial reality and economic responsibility. But the case with regard to the 360 is different, the bulk of over 90% (based on a sample) of 360 owners seem to own a Premium with a harddrive, then you also have a few people buying an Elite. IMO the benefits far outweigh the disadvantages, if a harddrive would have been standard the 360 becomes a far more appealing product overall. For the Wii this would be entirely different, the device was built to be cheap and small. Entry price (more aimed at kids and 'casuals') and form factor are very important for the Wii's success.

This might be reasonable, Mike. The question needs to be asked: when is it worth it to spend more money? Because I assume even you would agree that Microsoft has spent lavishly on gamers, trying to garner their interest and gain marketshare.

It's possible this particular expenditure would be worthwhile -- it simply depends on how much money Microsoft saved by excluding the HD, and comparing that to how much trouble it has caused developers. I don't think we can really come close to approximating either value. Is it possible this particular expense would have been worth it? Yes.

But like several other posters in here who put the idea in a more sarcastic fashion, I'm a little tired of developers and gamers demanding more, more, more from system designers, particularly Sony and Microsoft. Both of these companies are already spending a ton of money to try to get these sytems into people's hands at a reasonable price. Not earning, spending. At what point does it become unreasonable to insist a for-profit company continue to spend billions of dollars to satisfy me? In most cases, to me, it sounds like the cries of a petulant child, who refuses to see how good he has it, and simply insists he be given more.