J Allard sez there could be multiple Xbox 360 versions
We kind of read it between the lines before in our interview with
Steve Ballmer, but apparently J Allard doesn't think the
Xbox 360 is a "one-size-fits-all" device for the next five years. Apparently he mentioned telling their developers not to necessarily count on a hard drive being present in the system when designing games, which implies a version that doesn't have a drive (as
previously speculated). But hell,
while they're making alternate versions of the system, who's to rule out one with a next-gen optical drive? Still,
we're pretty sure that if they do release a next-gen drive-based 360, it's probably not going to be with the first round of systems.
[Thanks, JamesO]