PlayStation 3 owners who are running out of space on their consoles, storing all downloadable goodies they've been hording over the months, may be a bit disappointed with the recent statement released by Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida, regarding the possibility of adding an external hard drive peripheral.

In an interview conducted by videogaming247, Yoshida mentioned that Sony has decided to forgo the optional hard drive for the PS3 after looking at Microsoft's own Xbox 360 console. He mentioned that this was done in an effort to provide "seamless gameplay" and solid digital distribution.

While the extra hard drive option was originally included in their plans upon the development of the console, they decided to go for better quality in the end. Here's a quote from Yoshida explaining Sony's decision:

Like Microsoft did, we could have had an optional hard drive and settled for cheaper combinations of hardware, but if we had done that - from a [development] standpoint - we cannot rely on every consumer to have a hard drive.

So that really helps us to focus on [the fact that] every consumer has a hard drive. Now we can cache data so that gameplay is seamless.

He went on to cite Uncharted as a good example of how the PS3 can already rely on its own hard drive to cut down on loading times. In addition, the compulsory hard drive gave developers a sort of measuring sticks to create games for digital distribution within a couple of gigabytes in size.

---

Related articles:

• SCEE's Reeves on possible introduction of PS3 external hard drives
• Two terrabyte external hard drive now available from Western Digital