RYU I completly agree with you...
For starters making "add-ons" which generally become requirements for new games isn\'t what i\'d expect from sony, fine the HDD might be for the internet and saved games but to have it as a must for playing games isn\'t on.
Patches are a definate no in my opinion. I purchased a PS2 to get away from the buggy games of PCs. As soon as you add patches you start to gain incompatablity problems (for exampe two differnet people using two different versions of the tekken tag patch, this could cause problems).
As for the XBOX DVD remote, it wouldn\'t of been hard for them to allow you to use the controller, with the remote as an optional extra. By not doing this, and only including the remote they know that you are bound to probly get a remote even if its just for a few DVDs, so basically its a money making scheme.
I suppose the same could be said for memory cards (£30 here for a memory card which is essential for playing nearly all PS2 games).
As for the PS2 games, there are some really good titles coming up and not all are ports, try reading some internet gaming sites for more details, im sure the same can be said about the XBox as well.