The New Xbox Experience is coming in November and Microsoft has stated that it will require a minimum of 128MB of space for users to be able to download and use the new dashboard. When it was first announced, everybody jumped on Microsoft’s back and began to question what would happen to all those people who got suckered into buying the Core or Arcade versions of the 360. Well, to bail out the most thrifty of their fans, Microsoft has instigated a “Memory Upgrade Program” that will give owners of the gimped systems either a free 512MB memory card or a significant discount on a 20GB hard drive. If you choose the hard drive, it will run you $20. The details of the program can be found here: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/hardware/memoryupdate/default.htm
It’s really cool of Microsoft to offer up a free solution for people who went the cheap route to hop into the current generation of consoles, but it really shows how shortsighted Microsoft was when they chose to remove the hard drive from the 360 as a standard feature. Not only could developers not count on the hard drive being there, neither could the internal teams at MS. I have no idea how much this program will cost Microsoft, but here’s hoping that with the next console the hard drive is standard. Heck, even the Wii has more built-in storage than the 360.
