Stripped: Xbox 2

Written by David_Redge

M-System’s CEO, Dov Moran has confirmed that the successor to the Xbox will not include a hard drive. You may know that M-Systems was recently announced as the official supplier for the Xbox 2′s flash memory units (memory cards) and is considered a relaible source.

“Microsoft has taken the hard disk out of its Xbox. The only thing left will be a CD; that’s all. At some point, when users want to save their e-mail messages, copy music, or anything like that, the only storage they’ll have is what we give them.”

Very little is known about the M-Systems memory units however, they are said to be considerably bigger in size than current ones.

The lack of a hard drive could implies several things the new memory cards will be rather larger than expected, Microsoft may intend to expand on its server-side storage feature implemented in Xbox Live 3.0.

The lack of a hard drive means we could see an end to custom soundtracks in games, as well as some of the other multimedia features showcased in Xbox Music Mixer for example. With the removal of the hard drive, its fair to expect the Xbox 2 to be significantly smaller than the current machine.