Kotaku
As promised in my post about the PSP's innards, here's some more tidbits about the Xbox 360.
I'm hearing that rumors of an Xbox 360 removable hard drive that doubles as a media player, nicknamed the Xpod, is just that. Apparently, even Microsoft hasn't decided if they want to create such a beast. But if they do, rest assured that it won't be selling for the $100 upgrade price that will get you a hard drive, backwards compatibility and WebTV at launch.
I also found out a little more about the whole backwards compatibility issue. The reason Msoft is going with two Xbox 360s at launch is because they wanted to save money on their new system by removing the hard drive, but the box needs a hard drive to guarantee backwards compatibility.
Interestingly enough, nVidia still owns patents on some of the original guts of the Xbox, so Msoft would have to pay royalties to the graphics company to use backwards compatibility. By moving this functionality to a $100 add-on, Msoft only has to pay royalties on that smaller amount of cash, instead of the full price of a new unit. Clever little buggers aren't they?
On the design side of things, it sounds like the removable hard dive will be designed to fit into a port near the top (or left side if you stand it on end) of the Xbox 360 and will easily slide in and out of the console.
Stay tuned for more Microsoft state secrets as we near the MTV kick-off of the Xbox 360.
RSS
