@Bodhesatva

is it unreasonable to pay for a xbox and have it break 6 times... i think it is. So i could care a less about how much microsoft the richest comapany in the world spends so they can get more.........dont care at all, make a product that works....

thanks

@ Entroper

I agree, Microsoft should drop the Core, allow devs to require a harddrive if it's important for their games development. Existing Core users can upgrade if the game they want requires a harddrive. It ups the common strengths between PS3/360 cross platform development as well.

Bodhesatva said:  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?

I think you are missing my point. I have said nothing about cost. My argument has nothing to do with revenue. I think if MS had charged everyone more money for a 360, and then put a HD in every one of them (even if it was a 6 gig on the “core”) it would have been a smarter move. I am not asking MS to spend more, or provide us with more capability.

My argument is when you take any component that’s vital to the development of a game (Hard Drive, Video Card, Ram, CPU, etc...) and then limit one of those core items on any console you sell, you reduce the value of that component in the ones that have it.

For example, if in some 360’s at launch, MS sold units with 1 gig of ram, but then told developers that there games had to run on all consoles, you just greatly reduced the usefulness of that extra 512 Meg. Same thing is true with adding/removing a hard drive.

Adding something like wireless, or an HDMI port later on is no big deal, it does not affect the development of games, but having or not having a hard drive is a different thing if you ask me.

MikeB said: @ Entroper 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. I agree, Microsoft should drop the Core, allow devs to require a harddrive if it's important for their games development. Existing Core users can upgrade if the game they want requires a harddrive. It ups the common strengths between PS3/360 cross platform development as well.

Dropping the Core SKU at this point would be meaningless and the PR backlash from 360 Core owners were developers to begin requiring hard drive installations would be painful especially so for Microsoft considering how much damage RRoD has done both in terms of expenses paid to fix and potential sales lost.

All in all it would be a stupid decision for Microsoft.  Just what I'd expect you to recommend.

I think there should have only been a CORE SKU.

Microsoft wants the PC to be the "centre of home strategy", so what they should have done was:

- let developers assume a HDD was available
- let the 360 use a partition from an ethernet linked PC for it's HDD
(cheap, and make it as big as you want)
- offer a small (20 GB?) HDD as an add-on for those not wanting/able to share a PC

The machine would have been cheaper (for most) and they would have took advantage of one of their supposed goals (PC importance)

jake_the_fake1 said: Words Of Wisdom said: It's funny. Every time a PS3 developer puts a mandatory installation onto the PS3 hard-drive people whine and complain saying they don't want their console's hard drive used up in a PC-like fashion. Microsoft preempted third parties by not having a hard drive in all its SKUs so third parties can't rely on it and now developers are whining. What lame developers... if they want to make a freaking PC game, they should make one and stop whining about how the console isn't a PC.  installinga game on a PS3 is nothing like installing a game on a PC, on the PS3 you put the disc in and it installs it's self practically, a monkey could do this, and the benifits are seen almost instantanuously while on the PC side, installing a game requires the users attention as they accept/read the terms and conditions and then wait for a long time before the game is installed, far longer than DMC4 20min install time in some cases, only then to be faced with a load screen each time as their game loads for them to play. Clearly the people complaining are not PC gamers seeing as PC gamers have it much worse than what console gamers have in terms of installing a game, so I welcome game install on the PS3 if it almost eliminates load times and texture pop up.

AutoRun says "hello".

Seriously, you have to be dumber than a fucking rock to get confused by a PC install. The damned thing starts by itself, after all. 

it was MS biggest blunder, a complete step back from the original xbox. they could have offered the option for people, and made the cheap one a 20 and the normal a 120, the elite a 240. not forced dumb consumers to buy crappy memory cards, and allowed devs to decided if a game needed a small install for streaming or to decompress zipp saved levels or something. honestly it hurt more than rrod, it hurt potential. no wifi is a minor inconvenience, does not effect game play, even wired controlers would not have been as bad as leaving hd out.

to qualify this i am against multiple skus outside of pack in changes, its a waste, its confusing to consumers, who for the majority of them can barely operate a computer much less understand the difference between multiple hardware skus... looking at you too sony you started this retardation with slim models.

but back to the point, the hd is being held hostage by pencil pushers to use as a barganing chip to get 100 bucks out of people. this was probably pushed out of the control of the xbox dev team as soon as the came up with detachable hd, so a gamer could take it on the move... then they destroyed it even more with the implementation of copyright protection on files, even game saves... way to go MS ..... sigh

Not including a HDD on all models was a mistake, end of story. If sales of the Core system were something better than abysmal, it wouldn't be a mistake, but they are, so it is.

Well duhhhh.

Whats next, water is wet.

That's the problem with multiple product categories for one brand. They should learn from Apple...