You didn't read the article.

"The article does make some interesting arguments about the changes, here are some excerpts:

That hard drive was particularly important. Players could save progress without purchasing memory cards, while games could use the storage for caching data and reducing loading times.

"Without purchasing"

"Caching data and reduce load times"

Having to purchase an extra storage device that was slow and with extremely limited space is not equivalent to including a hard drive.