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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormfalcon" data-source="post: 2503962" data-attributes="member: 11604">I see the split as a bad thing precisely because of past experiences with the PS2 HDD, as well as what happened with the Sega CD and the Sega 32x.  When you make something optional, support for it is going to be abysmal at best when it comes to consoles.  With the PS2 HDD, there was only one app that required it, a handful of games at most (if even that) that actually supported it, and it ended up tanking and actually written out of the current PS2 designs.  Why?  Because developers, unsure as to whether a sizeable number of people are buying the thing opted not to write in support for it.Likewise, the hard drive for the 360 is now optional, meaning not everyone is going to buy it.  It even has a shakier app that requires it than the PS2 HDD ever did: backwards compatiblity that may not even support a lot of games.  Why plunk down the extra $100 when your perfectly-working Xbox does the job, and does it much better?  With that poor an incentive to buy it, why would the consumer do so (the fanboys might, even though there's no reason for it)?  When the consumers don't buy it, why should developers support it?Furthermore, performance in certain games are going to take a big hit without the drive.  Halo and Halo 2, among other games, relied on the HD for level caching due to the higher access speeds it offered.  Without that being there (and all games being developed to assume no drive being in place on the 360), then Halo 3 and other games that would benefit from the HD being there for data caching will suffer quite a bit.Microsoft, thy name is now Sega</blockquote>

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