Valve Bemoans 360 Hard Drive

Apparently Gabe Newell had some choice words for Microsoft concerning their video game development and their decision to make the 360 hard drive optional:

Look, I spoke to some people at Microsoft, and as I said, I can't point to a single feature in Vista that I care about that solves problems for us at all. And I had the same conversation with the Xbox 360 guys. It's like, Xbox 360 doesn't make my life any better, and in fact, it makes it a lot worse, as you're telling me I can't count on having a hard drive.

-- Gabe Newell: Xbox 360 Makes My Life Worse

Not terribly surprising since that's what the mumblevine has been saying since the Core System was announced. Having dealt with Microsoft's "revolutions" in the web development world for years now, I wasn't expecting much from Vista or XNA than some prettied tools and a lot of marketing speak myself. Microsoft still probably has some of the best developer tools on the planet, but they've even better spin doctors.

Most notably, quotes like that make me think that it was really smart of Sony to release after the 360. Hopefully they are taking notes about the price, the dev tools, the hard drive, etc., and it pushes them to make a better product.