Eurogamer: New Xbox Experience: DVD vs. Hard Disk Face-Off

Eurogamer writes: "For a dashboard upgrade supposedly aimed at attracting the 'casual' audience, New Xbox Experience actually has a lot of love for the core 360 enthusiast gamer. The Party mode craved by Live users has been incorporated, tweaks long asked for have been made to the VGA/HDMI video outputs, but perhaps most surprisingly of all, Microsoft has allowed gamers to optionally install their games to hard disk. This is - potentially - a very good thing.

Eurogamer has never been a massive fan of the mandatory installations required on many PlayStation 3 releases. It has a fundamental impact on the 'plug and play' nature of console gaming, especially when you can be sitting about for up to 25 minutes waiting to play your brand new release. It also forces you to manage hard disk space efficiently, especially if you have a lower-capacity drive in your PS3. There's also the fact that once you've deleted your game install, as you inevitably will in order to get more mandatory installs onto your hard disk, you'll need to wait another 25 minutes if, for example, you fancy a one-off late-night blast on Devil May Cry 4 sometime in the future."

[Sarah Palin]

the point in installs. glad they are optional. the games seem to perform and load just as fast--in some cases it took LONGER with the install. i dont think i will be installing anything, wasting good game time, just to shave a second here, a second there---or in some cases, adding a few seconds.

[NaiNaiNai]

the only game that took time was halo 3. >.> all the others cut time off, 1-10 seconds. which to me is alot. and since it takes around 10 or so minutes to install its worth it to me. plus. lets see what happens when game companys start using this feature. it may make them load faster. as it stands, its also a great way to make sure if your disk gets scratch because of someone its still playable on your drive.
-nai-

[Sarah Palin]

...so far. there are a lot more games in the library they haven't tested, so i doubt halo will be the only one. but i DO have Gears1 and the disc was scratched badly and some of the maps wont load in multiplayer so i can definetly see your point when you talked about scratched discs. i never thought of that---good show nai!

[NaiNaiNai]

XD thanky.

but i was just pointing out that it was for halo 3, on this article. since we haven't seen any of the other games yet its hard to tell. i updated last night threw my flash drive. i installed fallout 3, and OMG it works so much faster. cut the start up load in half. and about the same for the saved game. i have a feeling that this install will work better for the open world games to come. not the game swith alot of load screens. mainly cause they would have a smaller amount of data to load so it will not really be noticed.
-nai-

[Charlie2688]

This is probably the ONLY article that seems to do a good job of explaining what the 360s "install" actually is, that the 360s "install" =/= PS3 Installs and what the real improvements and its affects on actual gameplay vs start up are

Hopefully the people that got confused with the crappy articles regarding the installs will read this to get the whole deal