I wouldn’t put much stock into that report.
Sounds very like someone trying to come up with things. Mario and Zelda, now that was hard, 4 controllers, never!
Hard-drive…didn’t MS get a patent on game console with a hard-drive last year? And saying that they choose hd-dvd just “as a swipe” at sony is ridiculous. The choice between hd-dvd and blu-ray is a massive choice as the more wide-spread one will be much cheaper.