The Future Of The 360: Installs to Come?

The 360, with a typically smaller hard drive, hasn't had mandatory game installs to date but with the announcement of a New 60gb model, could this change?

[The Wood]

all this 'hdd' and 'have to install' bickering would stop. Both consoles are loosely based off pc's and pc's benefit from having hdd's. We cant want all of pcs's good features without accepting some of its drawbacks if you can even call them that.

[KBDuB]

I agree with almost all of what you said, except the part where you said the bickering would stop. No, it would not. It would cause the 360 fanboys, that originally dissed the PS3 for having it, would say that they like it, which then would cause the PS3 fanboys to bring up the 360 fanboys dissing it at one time. So, no, the bickering would not stop. =(

But, yes, I agree with the other things you mentioned. =P

[edhe]

Optional installs would be nice - with a move towards full installation based off an encryption key from the dvd so i can load retail games like arcade games..

..however the change to 60gb is more likely a sourcing issue - it'll be more expensive to get an old 20gb drive than a newer 60gb drive.

[mistertwoturbo]

The bickering will never end!

BTW Fist of the North Star rules!

[damrightfresh]

They are not getting rid of the arcade SKU.. i doubt their going to be future install on the 360..But if it does happen a lot of xbox fanboys will get owned because they always talk crap about the ps3 have mandatory installs..I don't think any games on the 360 is graphically good that will use the feature..

[Tarasque]

The 360 will never have manditory install's maybe optional but never manditory. It doesn't need install's it can read the data from the disk fast enough with right programming. People will be saying the 360 will have demo install's next.

[player911]

Because there are so many HDD-less Arcade 360's out there. Optional installs would be ok I guess... but at the same time games don't really suffer from long loading times either...

I think if they were gonna have optional loading times, they would have done by now.

[name]

The only thing that would stop the stupid bickering is if sony and microsoft stopped making video games and everyone had to buy wiis. Then it'd just be universal complaining.

[Fishy Fingers]

Think Id stick to the PC if that ever happened (although I have a Wii).

[TheColbertinator]

Fishy,have you noticed how PC's have installs and several discs.Maybe the reason people buy them is because the games ARE GOOD.Pay attention Microsoft and Sony.

[dantesparda]

Love the show, but the reason they have multiple discs is because they are on CD's usually when its the DVd version, its only one disc

[EastCoastSB]

Have a bubble.

[power of Green]

Doesn't even make any sense when it is the Arcade SKU that posses the biggest problem if you wan't to see it that way. Wake me up when the Arcade SKU comes with an HDD.

I know the PS3 fanboys were trying to approve this because the notion of this theory soothes PS3 feeling when it comes to the real reason the PS3 must do the installs. This is comforting to PS3 fanboys as it justifies the PS3's short commings.

It will only cause even more PS3 fanboy anger as the 360 already matches PS3 install performance(almost not worth boasting about one way or the other) now having a *supposed* boost in performance if this were to come true would be a bigger mess in the fanboy fight. Yet watch there will be only PS3 fanboys in here.

[TheColbertinator]

Well Green,I know that installs would really hurry up those loading times.Games like Oblivion and The Club have some pretty annoying loading moments.

[power of Green]

"The only thing that would stop the stupid bickering is if sony and microsoft stopped making video games and everyone had to buy wiis. Then it'd just be universal complaining."

Not true at all this bickering can be solved by not trolling or Hating on MSFT to the point where people go out of their way to destroy a company like far left loons or emotional European Soccer fans hating on the other team and fans.

360 fans don't troll for anti Sony news 24/7 nor do they spend more time keeping up with the PS3 than the 360, flocking in overwhelming numbers in PS3 thread to bash, boast and attack Sony and their fans lol.

#3 in the gamerzone posted:

"If it happens, i feel sorry for the 20GB owners who may now have to buy a new hard drive."

I think the people that actually have to install who own the 20gig PS3 need feeling sorry for. You shouldn't worry about fiction that doesn't even make sense as if 60gigs is enough room for MSFT to greenlight every dev to allow this function with so many games coming out. This would defeat the purpose of MSFT's plans on Digital content.

[whoelse]

If it happens, i feel sorry for the 20GB owners who may now have to buy a new hard drive.

[gaffyh]

Yeah you see this is why MS shouldn't have any HDD installs cos the 20gb (which is actually only 13GB) is not enough, so now if HDD installs do become mandatory MS has just shafted most of their ~20 million install base.

[Nitrowolf2]

yup both PS3 and Xbox
but perhaps that was the reason why sony pulled the 20GB PS3 model because they knew that 20GB was not enough for bigger games. I mean even with a 60GB i still think i need to upgrade to something allot bigger

[Rock Bottom]

Didn't FFXI had to be installed?

[LostChild]

Yes it had to be installed.

As for the topic, as long as the core is still on the market with no HDD, there will not be a Wide Spread mandatory install for games. Very few games will require an install and they will most likely be up and coming MMO's or games with large single/online features.

[belal]

about HDD UPGRADE ?

ofcourse not, your a bot

[running rampid]

agreed. games will only benefit from installs.

[Cyan8313]

Coming from a lifelong PC gaming experience to a 360 the one thing you notice most in "Loading... Loading...". Some games, Burnout Paradise and GTA4, have seamless loading like PC games have had for ages. But because of the longer seektime for DVD/Blueray it's harder to do and hence pop-in in GTA4.

Now in loading games you even have to load in menus. For instance Fight Night 3 if you call up the pause menu in a fight it takes about 4-5 seconds while it loads it. In Army of Two's purchase menu you have to load for 10 sec when you enter or change Primary/Secondary/etc. To load the models and textures for the weapons. In Top Spin 3 and pretty much every game with custom character creation every hairstyle or clothing takes 5 seconds to load. In fight night 3 loading a small headshot of your opponent takes 10 seconds. It prob loads model and texture and then takes a photo. And lets not forget the loading game also called Lost Odyssey. Changing zone takes 1 minute, goin into combat 30 sec etc.

Now first I blamed this on the small ram. But then I realized if it had more ram we would have longer load times. Bigger textures more models or whatever they would fill it with.
Now in a PC you always have more ram then the game needs and hence it can leave old stuff in there for quick access later.

Now why is loading detrimental to gaming ?
Well not only does it waste a whole lot of gaming time. But it also detracts from the immersion. If you have to sit there waiting for a load screen for 30 sec you start to do other things and think about something else. I find that about 10 sec is the border between acceptable and annoying.

Now if HDD installs would cut load times in half I don't see what it wrong with it. I believe that developers could have the game install the game data in the background like Halo 2 for PC could. You would prob only be able to do it in the menus and possibly the load screens. What they load they simultaneously write to the HDD.

I believe that 40% of loading is due to seektime of the disk. Now simultaneously loading from DVD/Blueray and HDD should cut loadtimes significantly.

Congratulations if you made it this far.

[tojfs7931]

Had loading screens every time you walked to a new section of the game. And it came on FOUR discs!! I'd imagine that the load time would have been significantly less if it required the hard drive.

[Dark-vash]

Well, its true, lost odyssey had a bunch of loading screens, but its a great game, no matter what.

There's a lot of RPG's that suffers from this, so it not a problem for me.

[cyclindk]

Misleading article...makes it sound as though the PS3 MUST have installs or the games wouldn't work; it's been stated that it's just the decision of the developers to make the installs mandatory or not.

The 360 on the other hand cannot allow games with mandatory installs even if the devs wanted to owed to the fact that not every 360 SKU has a hard drive (arcade version I believe).

At the end of the day, which I can't believe the article didn't mention, the 360 will require more installs due to a lack of space on optical discs; either that or you'll be playing games that don't get any bigger, have multiple discs, or I don't know what else.

[VampHuntD]

The point is that the smaller hard drive wouldn't allow for installs cause it was too small. This is probably the reason why the 20gb PS3 was dropped so fast. They knew it. It makes perfect sense that if game devs wanted a more stream line process, both consoles get installs. A 20gb 360 wouldn't last nearly as long and you'd have to upgrade the drive at the insane cost. A 60gb would last for a long while but would also give the room needed for installs to occur.

It's not fact or anything, but it is possible.

[gnothe1]

the 360 doesnt NEED installs. you guys don't get it, the installs are there JUST to help out on the read speeds of blu ray. no other reason. an as far as texture loading that's a problem of the engine. now if EVERY game had that problem then yeah but that texture loading is just a problem of the unreal engine. an not all unreal based game have it.

[DJ]

Why? They're the SAME. Disc drives are a lot slower than hard drives in terms of data transfer speeds.

You should be thankful if Hard Drive installations become standard on the 360. Your games are not only going to look better, but load faster. And for gamers, load times are our number one concern. I still remember playing Herdy Gerdy on my PS2, and the load time for each new area in a level was about a minute each. Almost pulled my hair out, haha.

[JEDI WOLVERINE]

For an install - if its 1 big install at the start then sure i can make myself a cheese sandwich and a cup of tea whilst im waiting.

If its an install each chapter (mgs4) then im not gonna be happy.

Lost Odyssey 4 disc swapping time < MGS4 chapter installs by far.

Microsofy really does need to allow 3rd party cheap HDD ability though - 120gig for £70 would be reasonable (though obvioulsly still dear compared to some) and would last until the next xbox gets released

[Isaac]

LO < MGS4, as in MGS4 > LO

[Cuddlefish]

Even games that use the 360 HDD like Oblivion to cache data don't have installs. 7 gb of the 20 gb hdd is partitioned so developers know they have a certain amount of space they can use for this purpose. On 360 "installs" or caching of data is all done in the background without the user even aware it's going on. If the game detects an HDD it caches the data. On PS3 the user has to do the install and manage their hdd space manually. On 360 I know I can use that 13gb of free space for whatever I want and know I won't have to give any of it up for a game install.

[DJ]

"Press X to begin installation", then yes, it is a lot of work. Haha.

[Dzpool]

the Xbox 360 is a direct read system it reads the information off the disk them loads from there the main reason this was designed was to try to stop pirateing it is to easy to figure out how to pirate an installed game in this computer driven generation

[JEDI WOLVERINE]

Lost Odysssey disc swap is far more beneficial time-wise than waiting for massive chapter installs ala MGS4.

Get a stop watch if you want proof - or just trust someone who knows.......

Also in my book Lost Odyssey 5/5 --- MGS4 4/5 (very nice but something aint quite right with it thus drops 1 point)

[doshey]

okay lets see i would rather play the greatest game this gen and wait for the chapter install instead of having 4 disc that have to make sure i dont lose one for a damn mediocre game

[Montrealien]

@doshey

I still have originals of Fear Effect, Chrono Cross, FF8, FF9, FF7, Driver 2, Legend of Dragoon, Parasite Eve 2 and....get rdy for this, MGS 1 and a few more I can't name off the top of my head, an I never lost a disc.People have to realized that disc swapping is not that bad.

And yes, I got annoyed at every install time of MGS4, but that is just me, I am allowed to not like waiting for a 3 minute install just to watch Mission briefing 2 for the first time and realizing that it is one of the most boring Cut scenes in History in one of my favorite games of all time.

[-Maverick-]

PS4 and the next Xbox will have installs. Its the fufure...consoles are becoming more like PC's and the higher end the games get...you have to have installs. Microsft just wanted a cheaper console on the market. Next gen everyone will be installing just like everyone will be using Blu ray.

[n00bzRtehgey]

this is an obvious truth in both regards. but 360 was too early to have a blew-ray drive in it. it would have made no sense at all to have either type of new drive in the 360. even PS3 was too early with blew-ray, and sony was lucky it won. pure luck. M$ is smarter than that.

[DJ]

Multiplatform development would be a little easier, and 360 owners would benefit from better graphics AND shorter load times. Talk about a win-win situation.

The only thing that stands to sour that lovely future is Microsoft's ridiculous pricing on 360 hard drives. I guarantee that if $120GB drives were sold for $80, they'd sell like hotcakes. The drives only cost $50 to make anyway, so they'd still be making some sweet profits.

[gnothe1]

would you please stop it, your being a smart a55 dummy. you say with installs Your games are not only going to look better, but load faster. load faster i might agree but look better. look at the same game that have installs on the PS3 an not the 360, do the PS3 version look better absolutely not!!. does incharted have installs,NO!! isnt uncharted the best looking PS3 game to date ,so that just OWNED that ststement
plus heres another quote from you.

To hate on 2x Blu-ray's speed is to hate on 12x DVD speed.why? because their the same. come on dude I dont see developers making comments about the slow read speeds of dvd9. i dont see developers putting duplicate data on a dvd 9 to increase the machines ability to FIND the data. come on DJ man, you been talking crap WAY to long NOT to have a clue!!

[DJ]

I've never seen a developer complain about Blu-ray's storage capacity or drive speed. In fact, the very developers that you're vouching for don't even agree with your wild accusations. Let's see what Bethesda had to say about Data Duplication:

"Bethesda's Pete Hines also commented that recent reports of data duplication on the PS3 Oblivion disc have been exaggerated, and this technique isn't different from the similar strategy that was employed in the creation of the Xbox 360 game last year"

That's right, Data Duplication was used on the 360 version first, completely negating any claims that it was invented to counteract slow read times off of Blu-ray since the PS3 version didn't even exist at the time. And Uncharted is NOT the best looking game out right now. It was recently supplanted by MGS4.

[Tunerboy8732]

I'll just upgrade my 20GB HDD to the 120GB HDD.I dont mind the price I just havent got one yet because I have no need for one since I dont play online but game installs would definetly make me buy one.

[IaMs12]

Reason i loved the consoles because they were different from the PC... different games, more relaibilty while playing and more, NO waiting for installs lol... what is the point of having consoles anymore??? they arent that reliable (RROD and 2.40 firmware updates) at least the PC you can upgrade anytime you want, as well as cheaper too.... IMO PC will take over eventually because it will all be the exact same

[The Wood]

no ati vs nvidia.
No 1gig ram vs 2 gig ram.
No upgrade every 3-4 years.
How many people can run crysis on full.
How many pc games do people really care about nowadays really?.

Consoles is where its at and the balance of power, accessibility to the masses in terms of price and the sheer simpleness of buying a console vs a gaming pc should not be overlooked.

One of the only things that would take consoles back to the oldskool would be if they went back to a cartridge based media and at that seems improbable at the moment

[IaMs12]

well think about it there is fighting going on with the RAM between the PS3 and the Xbox 360... the graphics they produce.. MS uses ATI in 360 not sure what SONY used in PS3.. its all the same now they are fighting over something INSIDE the systems just like computers... Oh this game has 30FPS but the 360 has 40FPS and vice versa... thats what i liked about consoles they were consistent now a days thats changing..

[n00bzRtehgey]

considering how fast DVD-9 load speeds are compared to the very slow blur-ray drives.

but, if there were installs, just think how amazingly fast and how large of an improvement the loads and performance would be? it would utterly eclipse PS3, considering PS3 needs a minimum of FIVE gig installs for one game just to run and load almost as fast as its 360 counterpart.

ownage.

[Solid_Snake666]

i got noob of the week on a podcast lol what an idiot bill gamtes M$ ASSS KISSER ....LAY A BIG WET ON EM SPORT!!!! LMAO

[GUNS N SWORDS]

i consider it not necessarily a bad thing, but with or without it games right now seem to be running just fine ( coming from a gamer that has over 24 games, so far)

in any case games for 360 could have had the option for installing as far back as 06. they could have simply just made it an option and not made it mandatory that's all. also, given the space on even a 20 gig HDD i'm still able to have whole xbox games on it. (i know i know, even the simple thought of this theory makes ps3 gamers pissed)

[59fifty8]

i hate bots always making sh*t up, i use to own a 360 and my first game was oblivion i remember waiting 5 mins for loading screens dat suks, wen my 360 broke down, and this is true it got ring of death i gave it to my cousin and got a ps3. i am alot happier, i remember getting gears and the lag on the online was horrible my old live name was nightsalker0208 im not sure if i still have it though its been a little over 6 months. but now i love playing cod4 with no lag, really mgs4 play it before talking installs 3/2 mins, and its the game of the year so far so many people rated it most gave it 10/10 or 9/10 really check g4.com. thats the going rate for 360 game 4 disc, dame.

[iGrenade]

I really can't see why other gamers HATE waiting 2-3 minutes for an install... I mean c'mon... seriously? 2 minutes and you're already crying? I've been a gamer all my life and for me, the installs are welcome, so the game can run more smoothly and have shorter load times, etc. Of all my time gaming, I really don't mind load times either - only <30 seconds of loading and people start complaining? This is really sad. I say bring the mandatory installs. Actually optional installs would probably solve everything. With the 60GB 360 coming... I think they should. People who can't wait 5 minutes for an install shouldn't deserve to play video games.

@n00bz DVD has inconsistent reading speeds. Whereas BDs are consistent throughout each sector and layer. You could say that it's equal.

Question - Are there any 360 games that feature no loading times? (like Uncharted on the PS3?) I haven't come across one yet.

[LittleDozer]

LOL I love the picture for this article.

[LittleDozer]

The installs generally don't even take as long as they say they will. Haha I love all the PS3 and Bluray puns in the game. i.e) Being told to swap out the disk, but oh wait! It's dual layered! lol!