"The hard drive in every Xbox killed us" admitted Peter Moore who, in an interview with guardian, mentioned that it and the cost associated with the drives was one of the main reasons Microsoft chose to move away from the original Xbox so quickly.
The Xbox's built-in HDD was "why we prematurely left the original" Moore admitted, "we were still selling it [the console] at $199 and the hard drive was like $70 ... it was killing us, and there was no way to bring the price down. So in the end we determined at around the 25 million unit mark that we just needed to slow this thing down and just not sell any more, and move to the 360 as quickly as we possibly could." Intriguing. Maybe now with the 360's not so mandatory HDD, we'll see a console life cycle that'll last beyond five years. Maybe?
[Via Shacknews]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
9-17-2008 @ 1:24PM
joeybeast said...
70 bucks for an 8 gig?
Not even in 2001.
Damn the original Xbox is ugly.
I haven't seen one in awhile.
Reply
9-17-2008 @ 2:57PM
john paul said...
It could take a bullet and nothing would happen to it... Oh how things have changed
9-17-2008 @ 7:45PM
B said...
The storage isn't the problem, it's the # of platters the harddrive has.
9-19-2008 @ 12:17AM
Dartmerc said...
MS must buy the HDDs from themselves, I mean look at the price of the add-ons you can pickup.
http://ihavetheprincess.wordpress.com
9-17-2008 @ 1:26PM
mattclarkie said...
So why did MS make 360 SKUs that came with HDDs and not just make it an optional accessory.
If the HDD was too expensive they could have changed to a cheaper drive the same way they keep increasing the size of the 360HDD. An 8GB drive was probably pricey in 2004 as it was old, but they could easily have found cheaper drives.
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9-17-2008 @ 1:32PM
Riley said...
I'm pretty sure the hard drive I replaced in my xbox was an 8 GB 5400 RPM drive. How could that have possibly been 70 bucks in 2004?
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9-17-2008 @ 1:33PM
Loban said...
I couldn't imagine playing on a non-HD console now. The only reason i put up with the Wii is because of the must-have first-party titles.
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9-17-2008 @ 1:34PM
bioadam said...
$70 for a 10Gb hard drive? MS wasn't getting much bang for it's buck. And here I thought they killed the Xbox because they wanted force fans to buy the Xbox 360.
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9-17-2008 @ 1:34PM
Neil said...
And now MS is making a killing on the add on hard drives....I love my 360, but I hate that MS is charging so much for hard drives as I'd love to get a 120gb hdd.
The messed up part is MS would likely make more money from me if the drives were cheaper as I'd buy and rent more stuff from Live.
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9-17-2008 @ 11:55PM
Gonzo1138 said...
Here, here. This is one of those few times that the cliche "more is less" works. Sell the gateway cheap. Then sell the content to fill cheap. Make your money on more overall sales, not overpriced content. Make more shit like Bionic Commando Rearmed for $10 and we'll buy it up.
9-17-2008 @ 1:41PM
Urza said...
The problem comes down to manufacturing guys. The CPU, GPU, Ram, and HDD in the original Xbox were all third party parts. Xbox only got better/cheaper/cooler chips when IBM and Nvidia decided to produce better/cheaper/cooler chips for microsoft.
The same applies to HDDs. Sadly, the 360 suffers the same syndrome of depending on third party for HDDs... except now it's external, so it can be changed. Imagine back in the original Xbox days, launch units being 10gb but current units being 40gb and neither unit doing anything special with the harddrive? Atleast with 360 there's plenty of DLC to fill them up. :)
You guys should read Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Very informative about the development of the original Xbox and the 360.
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9-17-2008 @ 1:42PM
Urza said...
The problem comes down to manufacturing guys. The CPU, GPU, Ram, and HDD in the original Xbox were all third party parts. Xbox only got better/cheaper/cooler chips when IBM and Nvidia decided to produce better/cheaper/cooler chips for microsoft.
The same applies to HDDs. Sadly, the 360 suffers the same syndrome of depending on third party for HDDs... except now it's external, so it can be changed. Imagine back in the original Xbox days, launch units being 10gb but current units being 40gb and neither unit doing anything special with the harddrive? Atleast with 360 there's plenty of DLC to fill them up. :)
You guys should read Opening the Xbox and The Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Very informative about the development of the original Xbox and the 360.
Reply
9-17-2008 @ 1:43PM
Doug said...
Anyone who hires Peter Moore needs to put a 99-year NDA in front of him beforehand. He sure doesn't mind offering up inside info in exchange for news coverage.
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9-17-2008 @ 1:49PM
DjDATZ said...
"Maybe now with the 360's not so mandatory HDD, we'll see a console life cycle that'll last beyond five years. Maybe?"
Easily. We're at 3 already, nearly at 4 years, with announcements securing a solid year 4 as well...
Reply
9-17-2008 @ 1:54PM
Michael Paul said...
Look, the most annoying thing about the 360 is the "Select storage device" question on almost all titles, and with some programs at EVERY save. That what comes from a completely optional HD.
Detect all devices then ask where to save if more than one seen? Nope, not these genius programmers. Totally lame, even IF Microsoft demanded it work that way for some idiotic 'user experience' thing..
Don't tell me lame stories about profit: the original Xbox WORKED because the HD was going to BE there if it worked at all.
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9-17-2008 @ 2:16PM
Mr. Nosuch said...
Hear hear, brother.
Microsoft is the expert at stupid interface decisions: "Let's ask a question that there's only one answer to!"
Nothing wrong with prompting when there's multiple storage devices, but holy bejezus, this is 2008, get someone on board with a clue about interfaces.
9-17-2008 @ 1:55PM
vidGuy said...
The only way I see the harddrives being a significant cost is if they bought all 25 million of them in 2000. Seriously, the harddrive price dropped so fast that it alone could have allowed for significant price drops on the XBOX.
What likely happened is they had allocated a ton of cash for the HDD when the XBOX was first speced out and hadn't figured in price reductions. OR, they were stupid and got locked into a contract that had them buying 8GB HDDs for $70 at bulk in 2002-4.
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9-17-2008 @ 2:03PM
Sarge said...
http://www.alts.net/ns1625/winchest.html
This site gives you a chart of the history of hard drive costs. In 2001 $70 bucks would have been right. But in 2004, they were getting a bad deal. But who knows what other costs associated with the console were. Still all that hard drive was a waste at the time. Even now I prefer that a HDD is not a requirement. If it were, developers would be filling it up with mandatory installs like the PS3. I'd rather fill it up with the content I choose. In another 2 years I would be ready for a new XBOX, and hope they start thinking about going big with the hard drives if they really want DLC to become the future.
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9-17-2008 @ 2:32PM
carnage rules said...
That site is f@#king funny. 18 mb for the very low cost of five thousand dollars. That will hold 2 to 3 mp3's or 0011000011000100100100100111100111101...
What a deal.
9-17-2008 @ 2:42PM
vidGuy said...
The first harddrive I remember having around my house was a 3MB drive that my dad paid $1000 for around 1985. By that standard, today's terabyte drives would cost $349 million.