XBLA File Size Limit Increased...Again

[Queasy]

Link - They should have gone with the inside joke and made it 360 MB. yuk yuk yuk

Q: And you're upping the size of Xbox Live Arcade games as well to 350 megabytes?

David Edery: Yeah, it's a steady progress. We've been listening to our partners, listening to our customers to try and get a feel for what's right. We don't want the size limit to hit the roof because we think there's some value in promoting small pick and play experiences that don't cost USD 20 million, it's good for the ecosystem.

 

[purbeast0]

you know people bitch about the installations on the PS3 games (me included), but now that I think about it i don't mind at all because at least every ps3 has a damn hard drive and the devs can take advantage of that fact.

same can't be said for the 360 unfortunately.

 

[erwos]

Nice little jump there. It would have been nice if they had put it up to 450mb, but I guess they're trying to leave room on the 512mb cards for some save games and other DLC.

Then again, size limits suck, so let's get rid of them!

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: purbeast0
you know people bitch about the installations on the PS3 games (me included), but now that I think about it i don't mind at all because at least every ps3 has a damn hard drive and the devs can take advantage of that fact.

same can't be said for the 360 unfortunately.

I think I'd rather have a hard drive as an option rather than console game installations be the norm. And your statement that devs can "take advantage" of standardized hard drives can mean good OR bad. You can keep your hard drive if it means a stupid 25-minute install everytime I bring home a new game (I'm looking at you GT5😛). Of course the main cluprit here is the slow-ass blu-ray drive.

EDIT: I wonder if this will pave the way for Portal on Live Arcade now?

 

[pennylane]

I'll take a slow-ass blu-ray drive over a loud-ass DVD-ROM drive 😛.

What was the original size limit? Seems like 150MB was only after an increase (based on the title of the thread)

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: fanerman91
I'll take a slow-ass blu-ray drive over a loud-ass DVD-ROM drive 😛.

What was the original size limit? Seems like 150MB was only after an increase (based on the title of the thread)

When the 360 launched, the XBLA limit was 50MB.

 

[Kabob]

I'm assuming this is a move for Soul Calibur specifically. Similar to the first bump up being for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

 

[Queasy]

Originally posted by: kabob983
I'm assuming this is a move for Soul Calibur specifically. Similar to the first bump up being for Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

That and the Penny Arcade: <long title here> game that is coming out tomorrow.

 

[herkulease]

Seriously Microsoft should just take my idea.

Drop the Core/Arcade model completely. Pull all the 20gb hard drives off the market and mail them to people who have 20GB hard drives for FREE.

If people who already bought them have them provide serial # of hard drive and system and refund their money.

Takes out of the confusion, elminates a bullet point for sony and shuts up developers bitching about having to deal with not having standard drive.

There can't be that many core/arcade consoles anyhow. I'm guessing only 10% or so are people with the core/arcade.

 

[BladeVenom]

I think they should all have had hard drives, but I can't imagine MS ever giving them away.

 

[mugs]

I think Microsoft did the right thing by making the hard drive optional, because for some people it's really a needless additional expense. If I didn't have broadband Internet, I have no idea what I'd fill that hard drive with other than saved games. Believe it or not, there are gamers out there who are not like us. :Q

Now, it would be nice if they upped the size to 40 GB. 20 GB is pretty small.

As far as developers not being able to count on the hard drive being there - really, I haven't thought loading times were at all unacceptable this generation. The first time I did notice a long loading time on my 360 was when I was playing GTA: San Andreas actually. The loading times in that game were longer than for 360 games. Considering that the Xbox only had 64 MB of RAM vs 512 MB for the 360, I assume the 360 must have reverted to a lower drive speed when playing Xbox games (I also noticed that it was very quiet). But really, it's pretty good this generation. Loading times haven't been a big deal to me.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Have you ever played Mass Effect? I haven't but I heard that it has extremely long loading times.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: AstroManLuca
Have you ever played Mass Effect? I haven't but I heard that it has extremely long loading times.

Yeah, I had heard that. But Microsoft doesn't need to include a hard drive in every system in order to allow developers to install stuff on the hard drive, as long as the installation is optional. My assumption has always been that Microsoft just won't let developers do installs like Sony does.

An optional install allows you to speed up loading screens. A mandatory install allows you to speed up loading on the fly (or rather, allows the developer to assume that data loaded on the fly will load much faster).

 

[MikeyLSU]

I still don't understand the limit.

I mean, if you bought a 360 without a HDD, you know what you were getting into and you just wont' be able to play larger online games unless you buy a HDD. It really is very simple.

BTW, I much rather the PS3 way. I'd rather wait 5-10 minutes to play for a better experience and lower loading times.