Microsoft needs to make some "hard" choices

GamesIndustry.biz has learned that Valve asked Microsoft if it was possible to place its award-winning Orange Box title, Portal, on XBox Live Arcade (XBLA) for download, but that it was rejected.  

Yes, rejected...  It was rejected because the current limit for the size of an XBLA game is 150MB (recently increased from 50MB).   Why is it limited to 150MB?  Because Microsoft wants to offer a version of the XBox 360 without a hard disk, and the maximum capacity of their current proprietary memory card is 512MB...

Microsoft, don't you think it's time to give up on the configuration without the hard disk?  Game developers have to make sacrifices which affect the overall quality of games because of that configuration.  

For those of you who aren't aware, there are optimizations that can be made to improve the performance of gameplay both online and offline if there is a hard disk present.  However, developers can't make that  assumption with the 360... And because of the increased complexity of detecting whether or not there is a hard disk, and the concern over making sure both versions perform the same; these optimizations usually go unimplemented.

Microsoft, it's time for you to make some hard choices...