
In a recent chat with CVG, Bourne Conspiracy lead designer Rory McGuire flat out said that Microsoft made a "mistake" with their decision to not make a hard drive mandatory in all Xbox 360 models. McGuire told CVG that "in retrospect I wish Microsoft had made the choice to have [mandatory] hard drives like Sony did with the PS3." McGuire further went on to explain the development advantages of having a HDD saying that "if you have a hard drive, the whole game loads faster. Obviously you'll be facing a short install time, but the developer benefits from it and you definitely benefit from it as a player." Take that Microsoft!
On second analysis, it's entirely possible that Microsoft could make HDDs mandatory in all Xbox 360 consoles by axing the Arcade and taking out another $1.9 billion hit to ship 20GB HDDs to Core and Arcade owners. Makes sense to us.










Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
3-04-2008 @ 1:41PM
Hexx said...
Short install time? SHORT? How about Zero install time that's short. I want the pick up and play... it's interesting to see games on the PC are even trying this like Halo 2 pc or steam where the install is so seamless that you don't even realize it.
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3-04-2008 @ 1:43PM
Urza said...
Simple fact is the PS3 needs to install games just to load as fast as 360. While both systems have the same about of ram, 360's can be used anyway developers like, while PS3's ram is physically divided between the CPU and the GPU, with some reserved on both sides for it's bloated OS.
Anyone with a 360 knows the hdd is there for DLC and video downloads. Show me an example of a game performing better off PS3's harddrive.
Rory McGuire needs to go back to making his game and stop trying to sound relevant.
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3-04-2008 @ 1:48PM
Sacredleader said...
Am I crazy for saying that making the hard drive mandatory for games that need it is the solution? If you really want to play a game that requires it, then go get a hard drive then. Chances are your not playing anything that will require it if you don't need it now.
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3-04-2008 @ 1:51PM
xFenixKnightx said...
I thought this was Xbox 360 Fanboy??? WTF?!!
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3-04-2008 @ 1:54PM
mike said...
Hello,
I told Microsoft via email, way back in 2006 that they should have added a 10gig or even a 8 gig HDD for the Core and Arcade versions (obviously before Arcade came out) of the Xbox 360.
I did get a response from microsoft, they just said, "I will forward this email to the appropriate department. Thank you for contacting microsoft" Along those lines.
Well obviously the guy didn't get my email... I wish I had power, then it would have happened.
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3-04-2008 @ 1:55PM
Ejab said...
Lmao Urza you own!!
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3-04-2008 @ 1:59PM
Josh said...
While I agree that not including a hard drive in all 360's was a big mistake by Microsoft, I agree with Microsoft in not putting a hard drive in the arcade model. The damage is already done so putting one in the arcade model still doesn't do anything for the core users. All I gotta say is that Microsoft had better learn from the mistakes they made this generation.
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3-04-2008 @ 2:01PM
Jeramy said...
yeah, i'm sure it would cost them about $200 to ship hdds to all core owners. i mean, it's not like 20gb hdds actually cost $100. or they could drastically drop the prices on the hdd retail packages, which would make them more enticing to core owners (though it wouldn't really stop people from not having one, which is the issue here).
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3-04-2008 @ 2:03PM
Tony said...
Why can't they just set up a hook that will install a portion of the game on a 360 with a hard drive? Hell, even the PS2 did that a few times.
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3-04-2008 @ 2:03PM
Matt said...
maybe they shouldn't have even made this shitty system to begin with
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3-04-2008 @ 2:09PM
andyg8180 said...
short install time? Has anyone seen the DMC on the PS3 install? How about demos? gheeyyy... its takes about 5-10 minutes to install the Rachet and Clank demo after the stupid DL... on the 360, you can play right off the bat...
I think Microsoft made a great decision
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3-04-2008 @ 2:21PM
h0mi said...
How about not charging $100 for a 20gb hard drive in the first place, and offering 360 owners different HD sizes for less than 2 arms, a foot and some fingers?
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3-04-2008 @ 2:24PM
IncredibleBulk92 said...
@4 Yes its a blog that reports on news related to xbox 360. Its not an xbox 360 fanboy like you find on the playstation boards blindly bashing other systems and praising the xbox 360.
What the hell happened to the reply system btw? It was flawed but better than nothing
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3-04-2008 @ 2:27PM
TheHostileDwarf said...
What good are your fingers if you already have lost both your arms?
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3-04-2008 @ 3:00PM
mattclarkie said...
While they are at it, make it easier to transfer stuff from one HDD to another. I got an Elite yesterday, but I am still using the 20gb from my RRoD Premium because I don't want to wipe the HDD to transfer it to the 120gb, and I don't want to buy a memory card and do it manually which would take ages, and some saves wont even allow trasfer.
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3-04-2008 @ 3:10PM
Ciaran Gallagher said...
Install times no way! I'm not wasting my tiny 20gb hard-drive on installation files!
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3-04-2008 @ 3:36PM
Sky Shark X2 said...
Sounds like Sony might be paying devs to try and make hard drive installs sound good....or they're getting lazy and don't feel like taking the time and effort to make the game load up quickly without the hard drive. Its funny because no one complained about it untill just recently when certian PS3 games started forcing the issue. Though I might like to see all the 360 SKUs to have a HDD , if this is what will happen if they did then I say screw mandatory hard drives. I believe it was said that in the development phase to hit their target price they could either have 512mb RAM or a hard drive in every box with 256.....if that was true, I wonder which was the better choice....not that hard of one.(for those of you who aren't techincly inclined but have a 360 the better choice was the 512MB RAM, it allows for more detailed textures and data to be loaded into the 360's ram at a time which means prettier better games at a resonable speed)
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3-04-2008 @ 3:39PM
Pro-Truth League said...
Even without installing, an HDD helps a whole hell of a lot, and MS is stupid to not make it mandatory. How can people defend this? Are some people honestly that blindly loyal?
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3-04-2008 @ 3:44PM
Urza said...
@ Sky Shark X2:
If the ram setup on the PS3 wasn't crap and the blue ray drive wasn't so slow, they wouldn't need to install anything. 512mb of RAM the devs could use any way they like would have reduced any need for harddrive caching.. PS3 divided up it's memory between the CPU and GPU.
That's is why the 360 doesn't need a harddrive and a PS3 does, the 360 always has extra RAM, the PS3 doesn't.
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3-04-2008 @ 3:55PM
James said...
$100 for a 20 gig drive? Pricewatch says $35 shipped, and that's not even wholesale. MS should be able to put out a 20 gig drive for 50 bucks, though frankly I'd rather be able to get ~120 gigs for $100 (which is easily doable as well).
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