Sad but true, 360 Core owners are about to get screwed. Microsoft claims, as recent as last week, that Core users would never be excluded for their lack of a hard drive seem to have turned out to be false. It remains to be seen to what degree this will alienate 360 owners.
At Gamefest 2007, Microsoft revealed that Xbox 360 MMOs will be "allowed to require storage" in the form of a "Master Storage File." It appears that those predicting a separation of core and premium/elite Xbox 360 users have been proven correct. All XBox 360’s are not created equal, and some gamers are going to be regretting this fact in the months to come.
As well, this signals what might be a larger trend for consoles in general. Rather than representing a single mistake in Microsoft’s larger console hardware sales strategy, this might mark the point where the tendencies to become like the PC hardware market initially become overt. With the Playstation 3 hardware and Sony’s questionable decision to include the Blu-Ray drive, the company has taken massive losses with no guarantees on return. Both Sony and Microsoft have introduced levels of hardware into their console offerings, with Microsoft even offering their HD-DVD drive for sale separately.
How soon until it becomes commonplace to make gameplay-dependant components optional in console sales? Once you’ve got users buying separate drives, graphics cards, and RAM, you’re only separated from the PC market in name.
