Xbox 360 Update Will Block Unauthorised Memory Units

@Jay

I don't have either console, but multi-platform releases are usually superior on the 360, as DigitalFoundry comparisons on Eurogamer repeatedly show.

It's odd that for once Sony aren't the biggest rip-off proprietary format asshats in the game. BOO to M$. Boo, I say.

I really don't get Microsoft's stupidity. They have put two MASSSIVE barriers in front of people so they are much, much less likely to buy downloadable content. There's the points system, which completely destroys the possibility of an impulse purchase. Which is the very thing downloadable content is meant to cater to..! Then, there's this storage problem. They charge stupid prices for piddly storage, so some one can't just download a movie or a game without first clearing out half their stuff. Sure they put a way too small 20GB hard drives on most of their install base. But things have changed fast in the last 3 or 4 years so lets let that slide. Still, to fix the situation they should be almost giving hard-drives away to get their content business started. Soon 100 other companies will get a small, cheap (free?) video delivery STB under people's TV's and Microsoft is kneecapping themselves out of being leader. The 360 has some very strange "last gen" business practices and they are very slow to dump them.

If Microsoft (or anyone else :D ) would like to give me a job as a business analyst or something, you can contact me at joeyplonker via g-mail. :P Thanks for listening. Tip your waiter.

@Geoff - How many people have third party memory cards is irrelevant. The point is that there are people that spent money on third party memory cards as an, at the time, legitimate way of giving themselves extra storage without giving in and spending far too much money to get themselves a proprietary HDD for their system.

@Tim - whilst technically true, DigitalFoundry do generally find 360 versions of a game to be graphically better, you are normally only talking a small number of pixels, and the difference would go unnoticed by your average gamer.

@Jay: Wow, your feelings toward Xbox are the exact opposite of mine. I've had a PS2 and now have a PS3 and I'd probably have been guilty of saying the PS3 was better than the Xbox until I won one. I am so amazed at how much better the Xbox360 is over the PS3, not in terms of graphics or processing power, but in how easy and feature rich the Xbox/XBL platform is. Sad to say but if I was buying today I'd get an Xbox for two reasons: Game Invites and X-Game voice chat. The PS3 relies on each game to implement game invites meaning you have to both be in the game already. With my Xbox I simply start up a chat (or party as it is now) and talk to my friends no matter what activity they are in. If they want to play they/I send a game invite or if not we just chat while playing our seperate games. I play Xbox online with friends all the time because it's so easy and I've never played on the PS3 with friends because it's just way too complicated.

That said Sony have it completely right in terms of storage on the PS3 allowing you to use any standard 2.5" HD and they even show you in the supplied user guide how to upgrade it (warrenty intact). I'm sorry Microsoft but £100 for a 120GB HD is just wrong given the price of storage today. You should be giving those things away as a loss leader and making money from content purchases (games on demand, etc).