Core or Premium - Hard Drive or Not?

Game Performance

You will all know that when data is loaded from a hard drive, as opposed to a DVD, it loads faster. This is called caching, and it is one of the big benefits of having a hard drive with the current generation Xbox. This is not to mention the fact you can use it to store updated rosters, downloaded maps, levels and other content.

In order to take advantage of the hard drive in terms of designing games, the developers must integrate this into the game code. That is, they must design the game so that it will make use of the hard drive. Given this, the fact that we have 2 seperate Xbox 360 packages, one selling without a hard drive, and one with, presents us with a couple of issues:

Taking Advantage of the Hard Drive

Developers will not take as much advantage of the hard drive as they would if it was standard on all Xbox 360 consoles. This is because they typically design games to capture the widest market, ie the lowest common form. The lowest common form in the case of Xbox 360's is those without a hard drive. This means that developers will design their games so that they can run nicely on consoles without a hard drive, and this will be at the expense of the Xbox 360's with a hard drive, that could run with better graphics etc at the same speed.

Microsoft have said that games will be able to be designed with a detection system, to detect whether or not the console has a hard drive, and act accordingly. This is fine, and minimises the advantage utilisation problem somewhat, however it does not detract from the fact that the game will undoubtedly have some parts to it that could simply run, look, and perform better if the game was designed for a console in which a hard drive was standard.

More RAM

The Xbox 360 features considerably more RAM than the original Xbox - 512MB v 64MB. To some extent this will negate the
foregone performance gains that one would have received from using a hard drive versus not using a hard drive. However, as with the "hard drive detection system" that will be featured in the console, this only negates the issue somewhat.

Cost

In order for a game to be playable on all Xbox 360's, it will have to be designed for an Xbox 360 without a hard drive, this is one level. On another level, if the developer wants the game to take advantage of the hard-drive they will have to implement additional code to do so. Wouldn't this take more time, and ultimately add to the cost of designing the games? This is a particularly important point given that next gen games are already predicted to cost at least another 20% over the cost of producing a current generation console game.

What the Developers have to say

Some of you may have read an article that Next Generation ran. In it they gauged the reaction from games devlopers to the annoucement of the 2 different Xbox 360 packages.

The reactions of the devs varied greatly, ranging from praise for the move, to strong opposition. For example from Scott Miller, CEO at 3D Realms - "One word:  Blunder. Developers will almost always cater to the lowest spec'ed system when it comes to consoles, so as to maximize the customer base.  So, my guess is that few games will truly make significant use of the hard drive, given that it's an option that cannot be counted on."

And from Mark Rein, VP of Epic Games -  Developers were always told not to expect a hard drive on every machine so nobody has developed with the assumption it will be there. Developers already got our big Xbox 360 gift - we got 512MB of RAM. That was a huge win for developers and customers alike and there was no way we were going to get that and a hard drive on every machine.  The RAM is more important and will make a bigger difference than the hard drive would have."

You can read the article for yourself at Next Generation, but I will note while there were no outstanding praises for the move in terms what it will mean for the performance of the Xbox 360, there were plenty of more negative comments in that respect. In fact most of the positive comments stemmed from the fact that the Core System is simply cheaper.