Victim of Culture

Microsoft is killing itself softly with its hard drives

From a business perspective Microsoft has done a great many things wrong with the Xbox 360.  It ignored the potential threat of the Wii until far too late.  It released a system with a major design flaw that later cost it a cool billion dollars to fix.  But it has also done things right, and making the peripherals proprietary, including the hard drive, is one of them.

But it has never been a popular decision with consumers, and for obvious reasons.  Microsoft prices its hard drives at crazy inflated prices that keep most from ever upgrading.  At the same time, the limited size of most Xbox Live Arcade titles has kept this from being an issue and most simply abstained from upgrading.

Then came the new Games on Demand program which allows full Xbox 360 titles to be bought and downloaded directly to the system, and suddenly 20 GB of space doesn’t sound so large, or even the newer 60 GB drives.  Approximately ten titles would fill the larger hard drive, and even the jumbo 120 GB hard rive would only hold 20 or so titles.  So, who is this new program for?  Check out the list of announced launch Games on Demand.

• Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft)
• LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga (LucasArts)
• Rainbow Six Vegas (Ubisoft)
• BioShock (2K Games)
• Mass Effect (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Ridge Racer 6 (Namco)
• Burnout Paradise (EA)
• Meet The Robinsons (Disney)
• Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis (Rockstar Games)
• Call of Duty® 2 (Activision)
• MX vs. ATV Untamed (THQ)
• Sonic the Hedgehog (SEGA)
• Viva Piñata 2: Trouble in Paradise (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Need for Speed Carbon (EA)
• Test Drive: Unlimited (Atari)
• Fight Night Round 3 (EA)
• Need for Speed: Most Wanted (EA)
• The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (2K Games/Bethesda Softworks)
• Prey (2K Games)
• Viva Piñata (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Karaoke Revolution American Idol Encore (Konami)
• Kameo: Elements of Power (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Perfect Dark Zero (Microsoft Game Studios)
• Dance Dance Revolution Universe (Konami)

Suddenly, the hard drive issue isn’t just one for consumers, but Microsoft’s bottom line.  What’s a Microsoft to do?  Open up external hard drive use to consumers.  Nintendo does this already, to some extent, with its SD card slot.  You can buy any SD card and plug it in for expanded storage.  Granted, it still isn’t what most fans want, but it’s a hell of a lot better than what Microsoft is offering.  Sony is the gold standard in storage solutions allowing consumers to buy a hard drive off the shelf and plug it right in.

Microsoft needs to follow suit or risk submarining its own sales.  The future of content distribution is digital delivery, whether we as consumers like it or not.  Valve has worked it beautifully with Steam on computers.  If Microsoft hopes to keep up to date, it needs to make it easier for gamers to do so as well.

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