Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

I saw an article over at nextgen.biz (via Xbox-scene.com) where Aaron Greenburg (Xbox 360 and Xbox Live group product manager) defends the US$180 price of the 120 GB HDD.

What we have done is release a smaller laptop size drive. If you compare what we are offering with a real plug-and-play drive the closest thing would be to take a 120 gig self-powered external PC drive and in that case we are seeing those retail at anywhere from $160 to $200 for comparable laptop sized external hard drives.

Unfortunately, this is the usual tactic that Microsoft (and other companies) use to defend a pricepoint that is jacked up because of the opportunity for exploitation that exists with having a proprietary interface. In this case, the small gray box that the 120 GB HDD sits in. Greenburg throws a lot of stuff at you, but let’s spend a few minutes breaking this down. The acceptance of his explanation is somewhat dependent upon the reader being uneducated. So, let the education begin.

The hard drive used in my current 20 GB add-on is a Seagate 20 GB 2.5″ SATA 5400 RPM, w/2MB cache. One of the points that GamerScoreBlog and MajorNelson have tried making is that these drives are higher quality, and must match certain criteria for speed and quality. Um… if that were the case, they would’ve used 8MB cache and 7200 RPM, for starters. And for what it’s worth, Seagate doesn’t even sell piddly 20 GB SATA drives anymore. Yeah. Nothing like quality…

So, let’s give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt on drive specs, and we’ll look at 2.5″ SATA drives with 8MB cache. For whatever reason, Seagate doesn’t commercially sell anything but a 60GB drive in this configuration. So, let’s look at Western Digital. The best option for us is the WD Scorpio 120 GB drive. (Which, incidentally, is rated to be 50% faster than my current 20 GB HDD. 150MB/s vs. 100MB/s.) The model number is WD1200BEVS. This Froogle search should give you an idea of what to expect for a 120 GB drive which is likely to be 50% faster than what is needed by the Xbox 360. Huh. About US$80.

Granted, you are also basically getting an external closure for your drive as well. Here’s one I found at one of my local shops, made out of aluminum, rather than cheap plastic. Price? US$11.00.

I find it more than a little disingenuous to claim that it costs $160-$200 for something that in reality will set you back about $90.

Now, that being said, I do believe that Microsoft should charge whatever the heck they feel like charging. What I don’t appreciate is this kind of marketing drivel. So, make sure that when you get the chance, educate your friends on what the hard drive market is REALLY like. That is the only way that Microsoft is going to charge a reasonable price, is if we refuse to pay it.

At the risk of voiding one’s warranty you could also conceivably use third-party software to format this WD Scorpio drive to make it Xbox 360 ready. It’s actually not the difficult to do. You may want to wait until the Spring Update, as I’m not sure if the current Dashboard and kernel will support the larger drives, yet. But then, this would completely circumvent Microsoft’s current proprietary scheme for less than half of the $179. That would be too bad.