Game DVD hard drive installs coming to Xbox 360.

[diskoboy]

A minor annoyance on the PS3 will soon be coming to an Xbox 360 near you - installing DVD game data onto the 360's hard drive.

Seriously - is this really necessary?? The benefits are barely noticeable on most PS3 games that you have to install...

http://gizmodo.com/5035379/installing-xbox-360-games-is-easy-peasy

[Kitsune Sniper]

Do note that this is -completely optional-. You don't have to do this unless you really want to.

I consider it kinda pointless, not because of the speed issue, but because of the size of whatever files the 360 is creating. If we could use our own hard drives, then that wouldn't be so bad, but what's the biggest drive available? 120 GB? That won't hold that many games...

[Leo_A]

120 gigs would hold quite a few 360 games, I bet you could load up 5-10 of your favorite games and have a ton of room left over for other stuff, I think 360 games only average 4 gigs or so.

This is a nice benefit for a few games that can last for a long time, such as games like Mass Effect and Oblivion, even if loading isn't that improved, saving wear and tear on your 360's drive makes it a nice option. Not to mention the reduced heat the system is putting off that benefits other components, and the reduced noise (A lot of the noise is from the disc drive working, though its never bothered me, but the noise the 360 puts out annoys many others)

Not sure I'm going to bother doing it for most other games like the Call of Duty titles, unless your addicted to online play, they're over relatively quickly anyways.

[heybtbm]

I wonder if this will make Oblivion load faster? Other than that, I can't see the advantage of wasting so much hard drive space (I have the 120 gig...but still). You still need the game in the disk drive.

[Jackattack]

We can't really tell at the moment what the speed improvements are going to be like, but if you compare it to PC games where loading is always much faster than it's DVD reading console counterpart, it has the possibility to make a big difference. However I'm not so sure about heat improvements. For steaming games you're trading off a DVD constantly spinning for a hard drive constantly spinning. I may be wrong, but I would think the hard drive is going to create a lot more heat.

For some social commentary... I can't wait to see all the PS3 haters come out of the wood work who up until E3 thought installing games to the console was the stupidest idea ever, but now that they have the option, it's better news than FFXIII on the 360. Well maybe not that good, but you get my point. The fickle life of a fanboy I guess...

[c0ldb33r]

I'd be all over this if I didn't have the 20 GB version :(

[Kitsune Sniper]

120 gigs would hold quite a few 360 games, I bet you could load up 5-10 of your favorite games and have a ton of room left over for other stuff, I think 360 games only average 4 gigs or so.

But what about videos? XBox Live Arcade games? Downloadable content? Maybe it's a good idea for games that load tons and tons of stuff all the time, but I still don't see much point to this. But I speak solely as an outsider, since I don't own a 360 (and won't until I move to the US, or M$ Mexico gets its act together and starts giving us some decent store items!)

[Leo_A]

What about them? I bet ten Xbox 360 games saved to a hard drive won't be more than 50 gigs or so.

I have 60 XBLA titles, 3 Xbox Originals (Average around 3.5 gigs or so it seems), tons of DLC including such large things as Shivering Isles, many game saves and patches, 'Be My Valentine, Charlie Brown' (Around 75 minutes or so long I think, and is just shy of a gig I believe), the preloaded Titanic video, and I still have space left on a 20 gig hd (Although very small, just room for another XBLA title or two which is why I plan to upgrade to 120 gigs).

I bet I'd still have fifty gigs left when I upgrade to a 120 gig hd if I include all that content and install ten of my Xbox 360 games. Plenty of room for expansion and a ton more videos.

Unless your paying a big mark up and buying full season sets piece by piece over the video marketplace for several different television series rather than doing the sensible thing and buying it on DVD or Blu-Ray, or want to install dozens of 360 games to the hd, you'll never have space concerns.

I can't imagine the hard drive would cause heat concerns, I notice the system is much cooler when running XBLA titles and Xbox Originals, and its basically a external hard drive, its not wedged in with the system's components adding to the heat issues like the disc drive is.

[diskoboy]

Does anyone else think we may be getting a 360 redesign soon, adding all these features? Knowing installing games to a limited 20 or 60gb HD will fill the drives up quickly? Even a 120gb will tend to fill up quick, on a hardcore 360 players rig.

I have a feeling they'll do what Sony did, on a redesign - make the 360 hard drive's a simple notebook hard drive.

[Leo_A]

lt always used notebook hard drives, and they already just changed the hd size. Which isn't a system redesign imo.

[ProgrammingAce]

Back in 2000, the prototype Alpha Xbox1's had the ability to save games to the hard drive as well. The feature was removed after publishers complained.

[Nature Boy]

I think it's a cool idea. I've got a 20 GB drive and can see me totally using it. I'd love to speed up the load times in GTA. And when I've beaten that I'll install Orange Box or something.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

I'd be much more interested in this feature if Microsoft would release a 1st party drive at a price more reflective of the cost of an ACTUAL 120 Gig HD (Around $75)

[s1lence]

Well considering you still need the disc in the drive and all that jazz, i'm not that interested. If my system will be more quiet by having it on the HDD....I'm all for it.

[Nature Boy]

I'd be much more interested in this feature if Microsoft would release a 1st party drive at a price more reflective of the cost of an ACTUAL 120 Gig HD (Around $75)

As someone mentioned, they're laptop HDs, not PC HDs, but I'm totally on board with you. I was at a game store yesterday and they wanted $200 for the 120 GB and $120 for the 20 GB (no typos here...). WTF?

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

As someone mentioned, they're laptop HDs, not PC HDs, but I'm totally on board with you. I was at a game store yesterday and they wanted $200 for the 120 GB and $120 for the 20 GB (no typos here...). WTF?

Yup. While slightly more expensive than standard drives, even laptop HDDs aren't THAT expensive per Gig.

[Iron Draggon]

POINTLESS! If you're gonna do that, why not just switch to PC gaming? You can get much bigger hard drives for much less, and much cheaper games too!

[Leo_A]

I think its a pretty nice feature that isn't causing a bit of harm by having. I think its more pointless to give us a hard drive, and not let us take full advantage of it in ways such as this if we so wish.

Spending 10 minutes having the disc rip itself on to a hard drive hardly erases the differences between console gaming and PC gaming, and installations don't make PC gaming, its just something you must do before playing a game. The experience of the games are what makes the difference between PC and console gaming.

[Sudo]

I wish you could use any standard 2.5 inch SATA drive like the PS3. No way in hell I'm paying $180 for a proprietary 120GB HDD when I can buy a 320GB drive for my PS3 for $100.

[Cryomancer]

Sounds good to me, will save my disc drive some wear. That's the only peice of hardware I've had issues with thus far, so the paranoia factor is high for me in that department. Will also increase load times, I'm sure.

[Zing]

This sounds like an attempt to get people to buy their larger, overpriced drives. Brilliant!

[Leo_A]

Sounds good to me, will save my disc drive some wear. That's the only peice of hardware I've had issues with thus far, so the paranoia factor is high for me in that department. Will also increase load times, I'm sure.

It should decrease load times, not increase them.

[SegaAges]

I'd be all over this if I didn't have the 20 GB version :(

QFE

I only have like 2 gigs left too.

[otaku]

I think its great (especially since my 360 drive is on the fritz now and then) its much more convenient however I need a bigger HD thanks to all my Rock band content I only have a few gigs left, big HD needed!

[mailman187666]

I don't think it rips the entire game to the hard drive when you choose to do an install. Actually as far as I know, all my installs on PS3 have usually been under 75MB a piece. I'm not going to argue the fact that a bigger HD will be needed though. I got the 60 gig PS3 and about 12 games installed, save files, and downloadable content, and I still have plenty of space left.

[Iron Draggon]

I think its a pretty nice feature that isn't causing a bit of harm by having. I think its more pointless to give us a hard drive, and not let us take full advantage of it in ways such as this if we so wish.

Spending 10 minutes having the disc rip itself on to a hard drive hardly erases the differences between console gaming and PC gaming, and installations don't make PC gaming, its just something you must do before playing a game. The experience of the games are what makes the difference between PC and console gaming.

How is it any different from installing a PC game? It's not, it's the exact same thing, except they're charging you 2-3 times as much for the games and the hard drives! But if you enjoy the "experience" of paying 2-3 times as much for the exact same thing that you could be getting for 2-3 times less, then by all means continue to enjoy your "console experience". Meanwhile, I'll be playing the exact same games, in higher resolutions with higher framerates, at only a fraction of the cost for "the console experience". Which means that I'll have tons more games in my collection, cause I'll be saving tons of money on 'em!

I know what you mean up to a point, as I used to be a console gamer myself, but that was way back in the 16-32-64 BIT eras, when the only way you could ever play all those games was to own all those consoles. But now it's not like that anymore. You may miss out on a few "exclusive" games that don't get ported to the PC, but you won't miss out on most of them, plus you'll get to play all the PC exclusives that don't get ported to the consoles!

To each his own, but I just don't see the point in owning all the modern consoles anymore, when you can enjoy most of the games for all of those systems on just one "system", at a fraction of the price. Especially when the latest trends are to make "the console experience" as much like "the PC gaming experience" as possible, at 2-3 times the price. So now they're trying to sell the idea of installing all your games to your hard drive as the latest new feature... a feature that's been standard on every PC ever made since the invention of the PC decades ago... and you still think it's worth more?

I can hardly wait till they finally complete the evolution of "console gaming" to the point that your only choice will be what brand of PC you want, and all the big game makers can focus on just making games for all the PC's of the world, so we no longer have to worry about what the latest new consoles are... we can just buy the latest new upgrades required to play the latest new games, as I've been doing since the death of the Dreamcast! But in the meantime, I'm still enjoying playing all the latest "console" games on my PC, at a fraction of the cost, while everyone else is paying out the ass for 'em!

[Sudo]

How is it any different from installing a PC game? It's not, it's the exact same thing, except they're charging you 2-3 times as much for the games and the hard drives! But if you enjoy the "experience" of paying 2-3 times as much for the exact same thing that you could be getting for 2-3 times less, then by all means continue to enjoy your "console experience". Meanwhile, I'll be playing the exact same games, in higher resolutions with higher framerates, at only a fraction of the cost for "the console experience". Which means that I'll have tons more games in my collection, cause I'll be saving tons of money on 'em!

I know what you mean up to a point, as I used to be a console gamer myself, but that was way back in the 16-32-64 BIT eras, when the only way you could ever play all those games was to own all those consoles. But now it's not like that anymore. You may miss out on a few "exclusive" games that don't get ported to the PC, but you won't miss out on most of them, plus you'll get to play all the PC exclusives that don't get ported to the consoles!

To each his own, but I just don't see the point in owning all the modern consoles anymore, when you can enjoy most of the games for all of those systems on just one "system", at a fraction of the price. Especially when the latest trends are to make "the console experience" as much like "the PC gaming experience" as possible, at 2-3 times the price. So now they're trying to sell the idea of installing all your games to your hard drive as the latest new feature... a feature that's been standard on every PC ever made since the invention of the PC decades ago... and you still think it's worth more?

I can hardly wait till they finally complete the evolution of "console gaming" to the point that your only choice will be what brand of PC you want, and all the big game makers can focus on just making games for all the PC's of the world, so we no longer have to worry about what the latest new consoles are... we can just buy the latest new upgrades required to play the latest new games, as I've been doing since the death of the Dreamcast! But in the meantime, I'm still enjoying playing all the latest "console" games on my PC, at a fraction of the cost, while everyone else is paying out the ass for 'em!

Not every console game comes to the PC, though. Out of the nine 360 games I own, only one is on PC. None of my PS3 games are.

[Cryomancer]

It should decrease load times, not increase them.

Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant.

[Leo_A]

How is it any different from installing a PC game? It's not, it's the exact same thing, except they're charging you 2-3 times as much for the games and the hard drives!

Where'd I say its any different than installing a game from a PC? My point is you act like this is the only difference between the PC and console gaming worlds, and I'm argueing that it's just a minor difference and the big one is the different experience your typical PC game has compared to a console title. I'm sorry, but I just don't see how being able to preload a console title on to a hard drive means the differences between the two platforms have been erased.

I'm sorry, but if you think the thing that marks the primary difference between PC gaming and console gaming is you have to install a PC game for a few minutes first before playing, you've barely played one or the other.

Very few of my console titles get PC ports, I bet only 10% of my PS2/Xbox/360/GCN/Wii titles I've purchased have seen PC ports, and those that have are console experiences that gain nothing through being played on a PC (Such as Colin McRae Dirt, you don't gain anything using a PC steering wheel since its designed throughout for gamepads rather than the more realistic control a wheel provides, all you gain is annoyance with high hardware requirements to do what a cheaper console does immediately).

And the same goes for the PC titles I enjoy, you'll never find titles like Silent Hunter or MS Flight Simulator being ported to consoles. Both offer distinct advantages and different experiences. I stick to PC games that take advantage of the platform, rather than the few PC ports of big console hits. That means things like racing sims like iRacing and NASCAR Racing 2003 Season with top of the line PC steering wheels, pedals, and shifters. Or flight sims with good throttles, joysticks, or steering yokes. Or the types of games that take advantage of the PC's native control devices such as real time strategy titles, other simulations like SimCity 3000, or the fps's I wish to play online (I can go without a keyboard and mouse for single player experiences, but I'm just annoyed trying to use a gamepad if I want to play online).


Yeah, sorry, that's what I meant.

That's what I figured, but I thought it wouldn't hurt to clarify it in case someone read this and was confused if they weren't sure of the benefits installing to a hd could provide.

[Nature Boy]

It's not, it's the exact same thing, except they're charging you 2-3 times as much for the games and the hard drives!

The Hard Drives I'll give you. The games I won't. Not when they first come out anyway, well before Gold/Platinum/Diamond versions launch. PC Games like Civ (my all time favourite) charge a hefty penny for expansions, then release them all together if you're patient enough. Never happens on a console.

Plus I know my console will be able to play every game ever released for it. As opposed to a new PC game which my computer isn't powerful enough to play because of my PCs age ;)

(But to each his own, as you said! I do love PC games!)