Why Network Storage Would Be A Bad Idea For PS3

I just read in Kotaku that Sony designers were considering to leave out the hard disk drive altogether when designing the slim PS3. “Another was to leave local storage out of the equation altogether, and instead rely on the PlayStation Network to save all of a user’s game data, personal files and settings (similar to how Gmail works, for example).”

I’m really glad they didn’t. [Heaves a sigh of relief] Ever wondered what would happen if you lost your net connection or just didn’t have access to it? It would really mess up your day, you couldn’t game till the problem was sorted out. What about Bangladesh – the land of the inaccessible and woefully slow net speeds? Try saving your games then, let alone quicksave.

I like to have my save games on a drive that’s, oh I don’t know, in the same place as me. That way I can sleep at night knowing that the 110+hours I’ve put into Oblivion won’t just go away, simply because some Sony employee messed up.

Although, I’m really up for a flash based storage system, which is more reliable and less noisy. “One of those was to use flash memory instead of the conventional HDD the PS3 currently uses, which would have cut down on the size, running costs and even noise levels of the console.” Too bad they didn’t go for it.