Xbox 360 Fanboy

The problem is if there was no limit, all the people who bought an Xbox 360 ARCADE would be screwed.

I think limits can be a good and a bad thing. I have over 40 XBLA games on my 20GB HDD now, along with videos, themes, gamerpics, demos, and my regular game saves (of which I have quite a few). While I would want to have the choice for longer, more involved games on the platform, I don't want a lot of bloated games taking up any more space than necessary. I mean even Ikaruga is under 50MB, IIRC, and that game has very high production values, from the tutorial, the graphics, gameplay and sound.

@Andrew

That's not true. The people who bought an arcade system can upgrade at any time. I have a premium system, but I still bought a memory card. People aren't stupid. If they want to watch videos from the marketplace or get a game that is too large, they should just get a message that says that they don't have enough storage space. It never stopped people from buying 4 - 6 PS and PS2 memory cards. And PS2 memory cards are still $25 for 8MB.

I can understand if they paid the same amount as the other systems and were screwed, or were never given the option of upgrading, but that isn't the case.

@PeacefulOutrage
XLBA's Ikaruga is bloatware compared to the Dreamcast version which weighed in at around 18MB.

I'd like to know if this limit increase is too little or too late for the SSF2HDR team to take advantage of.

Andrew is probably correct. If a game is only 300mb, that means you can pack a hell of alot more of them onto the lowest 360 Harddrive size in circulation. That is probably microsoft's reasoning behind the ridiculously small size that XBLA games are allowed to be.

All the small size does, is send business over to the PSN and to Steam. When you can put out a game with no restrictions on PSN, or Steam (on the PC), why would you limit yourself to developing a game that needs to be that small?

Anyone else not a huge fan of XBLA games? They all seem like games I can play for free on one of those flash arcade websites. Except for a few exceptions like Carcassone (or however you spell it) and uhh...lord...Galaxy Wars? (The one that the 360 came with a demo of)

Or maybe they did this because of Castle Crashers? Behemoth declares CC is done and sent to certification, couple days later MS announces increase in storage.

I'd be interested to know how big CC will be ;)

Because of the 360 Arcade and the need to fit XBLA games on the 512MB memory card.

I agree though, I'd prefer to see no limit...and the 360 Arcade possibly eliminated.

@Scott
There is no reason to eliminate the arcade system. What MS should do, though, is allow developers to release games at any size they choose. The developers know how many people they are alienating when they release their games, and since it would be their profit, it should be up to them. People can always by a HDD, so even 512 shouldn't be the limit in that respect. If I was an arcade owner, the only way I would cry foul is if MS were giving incentives to create larger games to force people to upgrade their hardware. Otherwise I see no problem.

Make bigger memory cards.