Storage Devices

The Xbox 360 ships with a standard dual layer DVD-ROM drive, our unit had a drive manufactured by Hitachi-LG. 


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The drive features a standard SATA interface, but like the DVD-ROM drive in the original Xbox, the 360's DVD drive also features a proprietary power connector as you can see from the picture below:


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Since we're still dealing with a dual layer DVD drive, disc capacity hasn't grown since the release of the original Xbox, which may serve as a limitation for future games (potentially forcing them to multi-disc releases).  Generally speaking, original Xbox titles  used less than half of the 9GB DL-DVD capacity, leaving some room for growth for Xbox 360 games.

Microsoft has also reduced the size of the data that is required to be on each disc by a few hundred megabytes, combine that with the fact that larger game data can be compressed further thanks to more powerful hardware and game developers shouldn't run into capacity limitations on Xbox 360 discs anytime soon. 


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The $399 Xbox 360 system ships with a removable hard drive by default, which can be used by game developers to enable disk caching to reduce subsequent load times, as well as for content to be downloaded onto from Xbox Live.  If you wish to play any original Xbox games, you will need to have a hard drive present, as that is where the emulation data is stored since original Xbox games are not directly compatible with the Xbox 360's hardware. 

Final Words

And there you have it, four years since the original Xbox launch, Microsoft is back with part 2 (or 360 if you prefer).  While many doubted that they would last beyond the first installment, Microsoft has proven its worth and credibility in the console gaming industry. 

While we do have tons of long term questions about the architecture and platform of the Xbox 360, only time will answer them.  Until then, the Xbox 360 launch is less than a week away so if you're eagerly awaiting one to be delivered, at least now you don't have to worry about taking yours apart - happy gaming!

The Wireless Controllers
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  • fuzzynavel - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Thanks for the article....shame slash-dot has killed your bandwidth!!

    Seems like a good point about overheating...maybe worth waiting till 65nm chips start showing up...won't get one in the UK till way after christmas anyway!!(haven't pre-ordered)
  • Face27 - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Is it my connection or is anandtech being really slow, its not loading any of the pictures which is what I wanna look at. I'm guessing this is quite a popular article.
  • zech - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    The article was slashdotted:
    http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/11/16/1432205.s...">http://games.slashdot.org/games/05/11/1...5.shtml?...

    Anandtech's servers aren't handling this /. very well. But this is one of the first Xbox360 interal reviews (in a PC-hardware sort of fashion), so I'm sure every Xbox360 forum out there is posting links to it.
  • ItsOnlyMonday - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Yes, these pictures are on multiple forums, somee even lack proper credits.. :-\
  • gamigin - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    [quote]
    game developers shouldn't run into capacity limitations on Xbox 360 discs anytime soon
    [/quote]

    Prominent game developers disagree

    From "http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56...">http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=56.... Note that this interview was before the next gen console debate in 2004.
    [quote]
    The danger is currently the storage medium (DVD), and one we thing we’re all praying for in the next round of hardware is that they don’t just go, ‘It’s DVD again’. We’ve done some clever stuff with compressing it, but we were virtually full on the disc with Vice City – this time we’re overfilling the disc to the max.”
    [/quote]
  • quanta - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    If the developers worry about that much on not enough space to store sound samples, they should have invested on text to speech technology a long time ago, instead of relying on prerecorded sample. Unlike the cheesy Macintalk TTS in the 1980s, modern TTS can accurately simulate human speeches, even the emotional tones. Hey, Ananova uses it, does it not? That way the developers don't even have to worry about rehiring dead/retired/on-strike workers doing voices for games based on century-old movies!
  • gamigin - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Voice synthesis is great but it's really not at the point of replacing voice actors for dramatic games. Can you imagine watching a movie with the voices of your favorite actor dubbed in by a computer? Not quite the same.

    Also, it's more than just voice overs; a lot of space is used for graphics, models, textures, landscapes, animation data, sound effects, and music.

    Most current games don't need more capacity than standard DVD at the moment but some definitely do and others could at least take advantage of it.
  • quanta - Wednesday, November 16, 2005 - link

    Actually, the emotionalal aspect of TTS is already been done by http://www.computing.dundee.ac.uk/staff/irmurray/s...">various people. In fact, many commercial grade TTS software that supports http://www.w3.org/TR/speech-synthesis/">SSML already able generate emotionally sounding voices. It's not Microsoft's fault that game developers don't try to use/refine the existing TTS engines to make them usable for voice acting applications.
  • Xenoterranos - Thursday, November 17, 2005 - link

    Ywah, sure, but can you get a computer to do a dead-on Ray Liotta? I think not my friends, I think not!
  • quanta - Tuesday, December 6, 2005 - link

    Why don't you try it first before commenting? You can find some demos on http://www.nuance.com/realspeak/rvoice/english.asp">Nuance rVoice's site. Depending on the title, the TTS voices sound better than the real live voices in some games.

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