Loading games from the 360 hard drive - older games will benefit the most

[Queasy]

Link

When The New Xbox Experience update hits at an unspecified time this fall, gamers will be able to install full titles to their system hard drives. And there's no doubt?every game will load faster because of the faster transfer times compared to DVD. But some will see marked improvements while others will be moderate to unnoticeable. Microsoft Germany explains:

There are prominent examples, for instance: Project Gotham Racing 3, one of the first games for the Xbox 360. There the load times have been very long; those are going to get reduced immensely. Recent games are already optimized; there the gain is relatively small.

New games will see less of a benefit because related game information is written to DVDs in closer proximity. And just a factoid if you didn't know it?titles on the PS3 often double-write information, exploiting the space on Blu-ray discs to compensate for the slow tech.

I may have to give Oblivion a try with this. Of course, the other benefit is the lack of DVD drive noise whether it is a newer game or an older game.

 

[RedRooster]

I think that's gonna be a great feature!
I agree 100% that the disc checking is necessary, but it would've been cool to have full games sitting there like in the arcade you could just start up whenever you want without having to get up.
It'll still be most useful though.

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: RedRooster
I think that's gonna be a great feature!
I agree 100% that the disc checking is necessary, but it would've been cool to have full games sitting there like in the arcade you could just start up whenever you want without having to get up.
It'll still be most useful though.

i dont think that matter so much cause like 90% of people out there who have HDD's can only fit 1 game on their HDD anyways

 

[R Nilla]

I need to see if I can make room to fit at least one game on my 20GB HDD. I can't remember how much free space I have, but I'm sure there are some demos and videos I can delete. I wonder how much Mass Effect would benefit from this. Maybe the elevator speed would become more realistic. :laugh:

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: R Nilla
I need to see if I can make room to fit at least one game on my 20GB HDD. I can't remember how much free space I have, but I'm sure there are some demos and videos I can delete. I wonder how much Mass Effect would benefit from this. Maybe the elevator speed would become more realistic. :laugh:

I think they should have added "The Girl From Ipanema" muzak to the elevator sections.

 

[Kev]

All I care about is getting rid of the dirty disc error. It will be nice to be able to play college hoops 2k8 without it crashing every third game.

 

[DaveSimmons]

The elevators are still there on the PC so a lot of the level loading must be CPU-bound not disk-bound.

For when I get my Jasper 360:

I don't care so much about performance as the noise and drive wear. DVD-ROM failures seem to be the most common problem after RRoD and they cost $99 to fix after the first year, unless you jump through hoops and void your RRoD warranty with a used drive off eBay.

So Jasper + run-from-HD could mean my 360 will last forever.

 

[ric1287]

all i care about is the noise. please let the leaf blower stop and I'll be happy.

 

[Drekce]

This type of feature is exactly why I bought the Elite. I knew that there would be plenty of data in the future to consume that 120GB.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: purbeast0

Originally posted by: RedRooster
I think that's gonna be a great feature!
I agree 100% that the disc checking is necessary, but it would've been cool to have full games sitting there like in the arcade you could just start up whenever you want without having to get up.
It'll still be most useful though.

i dont think that matter so much cause like 90% of people out there who have HDD's can only fit 1 game on their HDD anyways

I'd have to clear stuff off to fit 1 game.

Really though, I've never had a problem with the load times, and I don't notice the noise. The first time I actually was annoyed by a load time on my 360 was when I was playing GTA: San Andreas. I also notice that the DVD drive was near silent when I was playing that game. From that I theorized (perhaps incorrectly) that the DVD drive runs at a lower speed when you play old Xbox games. IIRC the Xbox had 64 MB of RAM vs 512 MB on the 360 (shared with GPU), so if the DVD read speed was the same for both the Xbox load times should be relatively short.

Another explanation (or partial explanation) could be that developers are getting less lazy and loading more stuff on the fly.

 

[mindcycle]

As long as i don't have to hear the DVD drive spin up and down i'm happy. That thing is loud.

 

[Supermercado]

Originally posted by: mindcycle
As long as i don't have to hear the DVD drive spin up and down i'm happy. That thing is loud.

Agreed. I don't play all that many games concurrently, I mostly just stick to one or two so I'll just install one of those on the hard drive. The big thing for me is not having to listen to the DVD drive.

 

[erwos]

Originally posted by: Drekce
This type of feature is exactly why I bought the Elite. I knew that there would be plenty of data in the future to consume that 120GB.

I bought mine because I knew, one day, Microsoft would finally integrate Zune Marketplace and Live Marketplace. I suspect that time draws near, from the rumors I'm seeing online.

 

[CKDragon]

Originally posted by: Supermercado

Originally posted by: mindcycle
As long as i don't have to hear the DVD drive spin up and down i'm happy. That thing is loud.

Agreed. I don't play all that many games concurrently, I mostly just stick to one or two so I'll just install one of those on the hard drive. The big thing for me is not having to listen to the DVD drive.

Forza 2 surely counts as an "older game", shorter load screens telling me that I'm able to gift a car to a friend would be a positive. Perhaps if we can convince everyone on F2 night to install to the hard drive it would help our group's load times, as well.

 

[Golgatha]

Ok, Sony sure as heck better bring this same feature to the PS3. I don't mind putting the disc in the drive to play, just load the actual game data from the HDD please!!! I have a 320GB drive that's just begging for this feature.

 

[DaveSimmons]

There isn't much point. Developers have always been able to count on the HD being there to cache data as needed for improved access.

Mandatory HD installs of key data has been a fanboy knock against the PS3 all along.