10 'Revolutionary' Gaming Features That Already Happened 20 Years Ago

8. Internal Storage

The advent of Microsoft's Xbox brought a number of new concepts with it, not least of which was the idea of an internal hard drive that could be used to store game saves. The idea was a long time coming and it quickly made the memory cards of old look completely redundant. By the time the seventh generation of consoles came around, all of the major players featured some form of internal storage as standard - and that has continued on into the present day, with some console hard drives now rivalling some PCs in terms of storage capabilities. But, hang on a minute... The SEGA Saturn brought the idea of internal storage to the table long before Microsoft's Xbox. The only real difference was that, unlike modern consoles, the Saturn used RAM as its storage method of choice instead of ROM. As anything stored on RAM is only kept while there is power running through the console, the Saturn shipped with a lithium battery that would ensure data was retained when the console was turned off. Of course, this battery would eventually run out, but it was easily replaceable - as long as you could stand your saves randomly disappearing in the process.