25th October 2004, 10:20 PM
You have no idea what you are talking about, by which I mean, all the things you claim to know about are completely flawed.
The XBox hard drive has been used with pretty great effect on that system. The music thing is pointless, I have NEVER used that. Live's downloadable stuff is pretty nice, and it's enough to justify it most certainly, but ALSO there's the ability to get huge expansions without having to buy a whole new game. DOA for example had that, even though honestly I'll never play that game, it was a good use.
And the PS2 has 3 games, not minor ones, MAJOR ones, that make GREAT use of it. REOutbreak is almost unplayable without the drive. Socom can't be expanded without it, and FFXI needs it entirely.
Hard drives are NEEDED in the future. Sure, there's the whole "well, you could have a burnable medium", but that's just stupid. I've used burning drives, and there is just WAAAAAY too much wrong with the idea of using that as the sole means of recording data. One, the chance for errors. Disks can be burnt "bad" just far too often for it to ever be viable. Worse than that, if a power outage or even something minor occurs like the system being bumped, YOUR DISK IS RUINED FOREVER, and there IS NO DEFENCE AGAINST IT. The other issue is speed. Burning drives are pretty fast these days, but it still takes minutes to get anything done, and waiting that long compaired to mere seconds for the HDD, well, the choice is obvious.
Maybe a decade, or even 5 years, from now, it could be viable, but it will NOT be an option by the time the next gen systems come out. So, ALL the next systems will NEED hard drives (or MAYBE super sized memory cards, but even though they are faster and more secure than hard disks, an equal size card is far more expensive). Memory cards had their time, but the people, ie, me, demand a LOT more space. So, they all need HDs, and they need them included with the system. A personal WANT of mine (though my XBox HD is not even near being filled, and I doubt it will be by the time the XB2 comes out), is for the HD to also be removable and replacable with extra ones sold seperatly.
Now, as for the PSTwo (which I have finally had the pleasure of seeing, seems it's not actually called a PSTwo, Sony just didn't even name the remodel), I still think a way to get that HD attached. Looking at it, there is no extra port on it for something like that. However, there are still the USB ports. Simply put, just use a port for the HD. Since those games are all on HD, they can be easily updated to use the USB port online (via a disk they can ship to you that does the job of setting all that up for you). The nice thing about the PS2 USB ports is they are just like most USB ports, they can be expanded very easily. Just use any standard USB multitap, such as for example USB ports found on a lot of USB keyboards, and you get a lot more USB ports from that. Boom, you can plug in all sorts of stuff. I know this because I've done this myself with Socom. So, all Sony need do is release that little adapter, and then the companies with those games just need to release that disk.
Two extra controller ports, nice idea if there were a decent number of party games on the PS2. One thing, it wouldn't work with PS2 and PS1 games if they finally added them to the PS3. The way the PS1 and PS2 multitaps work sorta totally prevent them from being usable that way. One would still need multitaps for those two system's games, as the 3rd and 4th ports would be "dead" when playing them.
The XBox hard drive has been used with pretty great effect on that system. The music thing is pointless, I have NEVER used that. Live's downloadable stuff is pretty nice, and it's enough to justify it most certainly, but ALSO there's the ability to get huge expansions without having to buy a whole new game. DOA for example had that, even though honestly I'll never play that game, it was a good use.
And the PS2 has 3 games, not minor ones, MAJOR ones, that make GREAT use of it. REOutbreak is almost unplayable without the drive. Socom can't be expanded without it, and FFXI needs it entirely.
Hard drives are NEEDED in the future. Sure, there's the whole "well, you could have a burnable medium", but that's just stupid. I've used burning drives, and there is just WAAAAAY too much wrong with the idea of using that as the sole means of recording data. One, the chance for errors. Disks can be burnt "bad" just far too often for it to ever be viable. Worse than that, if a power outage or even something minor occurs like the system being bumped, YOUR DISK IS RUINED FOREVER, and there IS NO DEFENCE AGAINST IT. The other issue is speed. Burning drives are pretty fast these days, but it still takes minutes to get anything done, and waiting that long compaired to mere seconds for the HDD, well, the choice is obvious.
Maybe a decade, or even 5 years, from now, it could be viable, but it will NOT be an option by the time the next gen systems come out. So, ALL the next systems will NEED hard drives (or MAYBE super sized memory cards, but even though they are faster and more secure than hard disks, an equal size card is far more expensive). Memory cards had their time, but the people, ie, me, demand a LOT more space. So, they all need HDs, and they need them included with the system. A personal WANT of mine (though my XBox HD is not even near being filled, and I doubt it will be by the time the XB2 comes out), is for the HD to also be removable and replacable with extra ones sold seperatly.
Now, as for the PSTwo (which I have finally had the pleasure of seeing, seems it's not actually called a PSTwo, Sony just didn't even name the remodel), I still think a way to get that HD attached. Looking at it, there is no extra port on it for something like that. However, there are still the USB ports. Simply put, just use a port for the HD. Since those games are all on HD, they can be easily updated to use the USB port online (via a disk they can ship to you that does the job of setting all that up for you). The nice thing about the PS2 USB ports is they are just like most USB ports, they can be expanded very easily. Just use any standard USB multitap, such as for example USB ports found on a lot of USB keyboards, and you get a lot more USB ports from that. Boom, you can plug in all sorts of stuff. I know this because I've done this myself with Socom. So, all Sony need do is release that little adapter, and then the companies with those games just need to release that disk.
Two extra controller ports, nice idea if there were a decent number of party games on the PS2. One thing, it wouldn't work with PS2 and PS1 games if they finally added them to the PS3. The way the PS1 and PS2 multitaps work sorta totally prevent them from being usable that way. One would still need multitaps for those two system's games, as the 3rd and 4th ports would be "dead" when playing them.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)