To this day, many folks wonder why on earth Microsoft abandoned the original Xbox so quickly while there was still plenty of money to be made off the old girl. Peter Moore, current head of EA Sports and former Microsoft executive, has offered to shed some light on the issue, stating that the main reason the Xbox was dropped was due to the costly hard drive.

“Not having a hard drive in every Xbox 360 was a hard decision, but we wanted to get price under control. The hard drive in every Xbox killed us; we were still selling it at $199 and the hard drive was like $70. That’s why we prematurely left the original Xbox, because the more we were selling -- there was still great demand -- it was killing us, and there was no way to bring the price down.

“So in the end we determined at around the 25 million unit mark that we just needed to slow this thing down and just not sell any more, and move to the 360 as quickly as we possibly could. And to this day people still believe we left the Xbox too early but it was purely for financial purposes.”

And now you know: the reason why the Xbox was abandoned and why some Xbox 360s don’t include a hard drive is because it really eats into Microsoft’s profit margins; it’s just that simple. I wish all executives were this forthcoming about their dealings. I have a feeling there would at least be moderately less scandal and turmoil that way.