Pardon my techno-illiteracy, but what is this HVD of which you speak?

Microsoft simply couldnt be bothered to look into a blu-ray drive for the 360, they instead wanted to rush out the 360 as soon as possible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_Versatile_Disc

Next-gen disc format...It's holographic using dichoric mirrors to allow for multiple layers of data to be read, and used from the same disc, at the same time. It allows for a maximum theoretical disc size of 3.9 terabytes of data, and as of last year, has 200GB and 300GB discs available.

Another issue with the DVD drive of the 360 is the noise.
This is a big factor that shouldn't be overlooked.

The new feature to allow one to copy the DVD to the HDD is a great one, the noise in the first place isn't.

It was a very good decision. Fitting either a HDDVD or BlueRay on the 360 would have meant a time-to-market delay (which has proven one of the critical advantadges of MS this gen) as well as a considerable mark-up on the 360 BOM (bill of materials) - AKA higher price, bigger losses. The trusty DVD-ROM on the 360 hasn't proven to be a hindrance gaming wise as the stream of quality titles has shown and the only real downsides are disc swapping and noise (the disc drive is the reason why the 360 is so loud).

I do think that considering the cost involved in building graphics assets taking 40gb of models, textures and shaders which is beyond most (if not all) developers budgets the storage available on blue-ray discs is mostly redundant besides uncompressed audio.

 I remember my first 360 was loud as a train. I don't knowif MS patched it or what, but the 360 I got in early '07 is as quiet as a Wii.

Hm...

Seriously, does anyone play their videogames with the volume so low that you can hear the DVD drive? When I play videogames the last thing I hear is the 360 drive and I definitely enjoy playing games loud either by myself or with friends. Anyone saying that the noise coming out of the 360 is an issue is either a rabid Sony fanboy that wants an excuse to believe that their console is better (lol) or you just have superb incredible ears that you can listen to it through all the dang noise while playing (or mommy won't let you play your games loud enough).

I don't know about it being an issue, but when a friend of mine who owns a 360 (and not a PS3) who I hadn't seen in like 2-3 years came over, the first thing he said when I turned on the PS3 was "Wow, that's really quiet..."

OT: Looking at the market today, I think it was good decision because it allowed them to get the leg-up on the PS3. If the PS3 and 360 had launched concurently in late 2005, I doubt the 360 would have even topped 12 million WW by now. So it WAS a good decision, at least for the short-term. However, I personally think that decision will come back to haunt them as the generation winds on. I think that by mid to late 2009, the DVD will be causing devs nightmares with trying to figure out how to use it's limited space. I mean, think about all the people who criticized Sony back in 2000 when they decided to include a DVD drive in the PS2. I distinctly remember dozens of articles saying that it was totally unnecessary and that a CD would easily provide all the space anyone would ever need for a video game. We all know how that argument ended up. I could be totally wrong, but I just get this feeling that it will be the same this time around. If the 360's games already take 3-4 discs to hold, imagine what it will be like by early 2010. (6 discs? 7? 10?)

lol install games on my hdd? with 13 gig storage? Not going to happen and i dont have any plans to pay 175 dollars for an extra 13 gig.

stickball I was thinking the same thing but unless the next xbox (or Xbox 4) needs server sized storage I don't see it happening.