360's Mem Unit getting a bump to 256MB?
by Christopher Grant 
{ May 11th 2006 at 11:30AM }
Apparently Microsoft didn't have time during their admittedly busy keynote to announce the new 256MB Memory Unit. Lucky for us, a Word doc on their site confirms that such a beast exists:"With four times more capacity than the original, gamers can easily store and transfer even more Xbox 360 saved games, Xbox Live profiles, full Xbox Live Arcade titles and other entertainment content downloaded from Xbox Live Marketplace."
It's unclear if this model will be replacing the currently shipping 64MB MU, or is simply an additional, larger, and most likely more expensive, alternative for space hungry gamers.
[Thanks, Richard]
Read - Xbox.com's Xbox 360 Accessories (.doc)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Footlong! @ May 11th 2006 11:49AM
Sweet, now when are they gonna announce a larger hard drive
Nate @ May 11th 2006 11:50AM
If you can transfer Arcade titles, does that mean you can give them to friends for free?
LunarDuality @ May 11th 2006 11:55AM
Anyone else notice that in that doc they also mention a "Wireless Receiver" so that you can use your wireless controllers on your PC! Nice. I love my wireless 360 controllers and didn't want to have to buy a wired controller just for the PC. I wonder how much that will set me back.
boots (former bd) @ May 11th 2006 12:00PM
"If you can transfer Arcade titles, does that mean you can give them to friends for free?"
Doubtful. There is probably going to be DRM on that thing. You might be able to copy it to a Memory Card, but it will have to be deleted from your system at the same time. Also, if you want your friend to have it, you'll have to delete it from your Mem Unit. That way you won't be able to play it anymore unless a)You buy it again, or b)You get it back on your Mem and then on your 360. That's what I'd like to bet. After all, DRM *is* the future; at least for the health of business.
Another alternative would be subscription based Arcade. That way you play anytime with your account, and you don't have to rely on Mem Units or HDDs (but you do have to rely on internet connections for that). That way businesses don't have to risk their profit, and you don't have to buy memory or hard drives. It's a win-win situation.
soco @ May 11th 2006 12:10PM
along with all arcade titles there's like an additional file that says you bought the game. like a key of sorts, which you don't see in navigating. so when you transfer the game, this key isn't transferred with it, so although you can copy the games onto a memory card and take them to friends houses, if the friend is logged in under his gamertag, it'll just be the free version.
ZildjianKX @ May 11th 2006 12:10PM
Nate: All Xbox Live Arcade demos you download are actually the full games, but when you buy them it unlocks them for both your specific Xbox 360 and your gamer's profile. To play the games on another 360 (if you transfer or download the game) you have to login with the gamer profile you bought the game with. Hope that helps.
Abe @ May 11th 2006 12:13PM
Speaking of Arcade titles, won't this mean that now they can up the size of LIVE Arcade games to 256MB-ish instead of the 50MB (or whatever the limit imposed now is) due to the rule of needing to fit on a memory unit.
Spooky @ May 11th 2006 12:24PM
Now if they could only increase some of the BC games! I want to play chronicals of riddick already!
ITGuy @ May 11th 2006 1:23PM
Dammit...with memory so cheap these days, why in the hell can't they make a WORTHY leap, and make it at least 512 MB...preferably a 1 GB. That way I could download a whole 360 game demo and take it to my mate's house to play.
Seriously Microsoft...if you ever read this, please make it at least 512 MB. I won't buy the 256 MB version (and I say this as the owner of the 64 MB 360 memcard and a 2 GB USB pen drive).
Don Jose @ May 11th 2006 1:35PM
The news of a possibity of larger hard drives didn't piss me off, but this does. I had to buy 2 of the 64mb ones before I could even find a hard drive. rrrrgggh.
epobirs @ May 11th 2006 2:07PM
All of the Xbox 360 accessories have a substantial profit margin at their recommended prices. Part of this is to make the loss on the console itself and the rest is necessary to make retailers interested in giving shelf space to the products. Someone who buys the Core System and one memory unit has brought that system a good chunk closer to profitability a Core System alone. A guy who buys enough wireless controllers for four players on his system has more than erased the original subsidy on his Xbox 360. The loss is much smaller than it was for the original Xbox and a few accessories can make up the difference so that the games are genuinely profitable.
Still, $40 for a 64 MB memory card is quite a lot. It's proportionally fairer than the pricing for Sony's 8 MB PS2 cards, especially after five years but it doesn't compared very well to the price of SD cards that Nintendo will be using on the Wii for those who exceed the built-in 512 MB or need data portability. (Although, if the Wii is never truly 'OFF' it should be possible to remotely access its saved data from another Wii connected tot he internet. Hmmm.)
So, I'd hope this replaces the 64 MB unit and isn't just a more expensive choice. As time goes on, the less financially able need reasons to buy the Core System instead of staying with an older platform. The Core System itself will drop in price and many Platinum Hits and other heavily discounted games will appear, of course, but the cost of a reasonable amount of data storage could still hold people back from choosing the Xbox 360.
The hard drive will always have a major advantage in enabling caching to reduce load times during a game. This isn't viable with lower priced flash devices that can be worn out from frequent rewrites on the scale virtual memory use can produce. (Games don't do this now but the trend is toward that.) So the hard drive will always be desirable no matter how big the memory cards become. Giving those starting out without a hard drive a more functional system only serves to benefit the platform as a whole. In addition to allowing more access to online features, one would hope this will also eventually allow use of backward compatibility downloads.
Tommy @ May 11th 2006 2:19PM
Can I just point out something Joystiq?
Does it not mean 8 times the capacity of the Xbox's memory card? Because 8 x 8 meg = 64 meg.
epobirs @ May 11th 2006 2:19PM
Alternately, if the 256 MB card takes over the $40 price point and the 64 MB card drops down around $20 or thereabouts, this would help those struggling to buy just the Core System.
As it stands, the real price difference is just $60, not $100 since the Core System is crippled without at least a Memory Card. Reducing the cost of entry is important to selling the platform. With a price drop to $279 and a $20 memory card, they could claim a truly usable system for under $300 that is fully capable of receiving all of the features of the more expensive model just by plugging in the accessories. Something for the marketing guys intent on sniping at Sony.
Time and time again I've been browsing at a game retailer and overheard a person, especially parents, buying a new game system. Being told they really need that memory card is an added sting. I can recall a few occasions when the person was so annoyed at learning the true price of the product they walked out with no purchase. Avoiding or reducing that secondary sticker shock would save retailers a lot of grief and make it easier to sell the parents on the purchase.
jon @ May 11th 2006 3:28PM
I don't think were going to see the BC games list grow at all any more. Think about it...who really cares about backwards compatibility anymore??? No journalist or bloggers are talking about it. It's only important for the first few months while the 360 had fewer next gen games. But now that there are more next gen games for the 360...who really cares about Backwards Compatibility. There are only a small minority of poeple that do and it's not worth MS time and effort.
I personally would rather have more Xbox Live arcade titles and a few improvements to the Blade system rather than more BC games on the list. It was all a stupid thing MS had to do because people are foolish and want to think that playing last gen games will be important to them for more than 5 seconds.
MS was right...backwards compatibility was hardly worth it...but just to save face they did it.
epobirs @ May 11th 2006 4:25PM
#11
You couldn't be more wrong. A substantial number of Xbox 360 buyers will be people who didn't own the Xbox. Others will be people who needed to sell their Xbox to afford a 360 but aren't done with the Xbox library. There is substantial money to be made from selling them Xbox games. While many of those purchases will be used games, many more will be from the selection of Platinum hits and other low priced older titles. Halo 2,KOTOR I & II, GTA, and other games just keep selling.
Many worthy Xbox games made little or no use of the Xbox's strength. This is especially true of nostalgia colelctions like the recent Tecmo collection. Why produce a separate version of this for the Xbox 360 when the existing version could be made to run with some effort? While the backward compatibility work has some cost it is far less than that for creating a native version of an existing title that isn't in need of an upgrade.
It is a fallacy to think you're losing XBLA titles to the backward compatibility support. Nearly all of those XBLA products are coming from third party developers and those inhouse Microsoft personnel working on BC improvements don't have any bearing on that.
Jeramy @ May 11th 2006 5:52PM
actually, for some reason, you cannot play live arcade titles on other xboxen. i've attached my hdd to another xbox to find that all i could play was hexic. pissed me off quite a bit.
Dan Choi @ May 11th 2006 8:37PM
"...But now that there are more next gen games for the 360...who really cares about Backwards Compatibility. There are only a small minority of poeple that do and it's not worth MS time and effort."
Jon, I agree with epobirs in saying that backward compatibility is still an important feature for the Xbox 360. Consider the popular LEGO Star Wars which is still off Microsoft's list of BC titles.
The list last updated in March can be found here:
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm
You may have a save for that on the original Xbox, but it's not like you can transfer it over to the 360 (even with a memory card). Not only that, the game won't even work on the 360, so you can't start your unlocking campaign over again if you actually wanted to. A version of the sequel has been announced for the 360 recently, but what about those saves from the first game that are necessary for using half of the characters supposedly supported in the sequel? There's just no continuity with the original as with the PS2 (and, naturally, the PS3 BC) version.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/06/lego-star-wars-ii-jumps-on-to-the-xbox-360/
With so many classics out there already for the Xbox original, it only makes sense to keep the older library alive with BC, whether through retail sales or full game downloads (which would hopefully be enabled with a larger 360 hard drive). Not only that, you'd further discourage unprofitable original Xbox hardware sales and still retain the license royalties from the original Xbox games in the next generation. It's win-win for MS. Why we haven't had any BC updates since March is simply beyond me, however.
Jeramy, someone else may have said this on this thread, but you can play XBLA titles on your friends' 360s, but you will need to sign in with the Live account that purchased the titles in order to play them on their machines.
Isurus @ May 12th 2006 3:09PM
I remember a while back a post that was the possibility of porting a game like Golden Eye to Xbox Live Arcade and Microsoft being quoted as saying that they currently were not looking into this in part because they wanted all Arcade games to be able to fit on a Memory Unit (want arcade games to be available to all users - not just premium users). I wonder if the possible bump in the available memory on the unit is a sign that they are looking to bring larger games to the arcade. Maybe we will get Dreamcast games, etc on the Arcade now. I guess it doesn't hurt to hope.