Time to upgrade that Xbox 360 hard drive. According to a letter from Marc Whitten, you’re going to be able to copy your disc-based games to your hard drive and reduce load times even further after the Fall Update.
Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive. Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game.
What an insanely cool feature! Microsoft, you stepped it up big time. Kudos!
Here’s the full letter from the press alert:
MARC WHITTEN LETTER ON THE NEW XBOX EXPERIENCE
Dear Xbox LIVE Member,When we launched Xbox 360 in November 2005, Xbox LIVE was integrated directly into the console. Back then, Xbox 360 was the first system to deliver access to experiences beyond just the disc in the tray. With the Xbox guide and dashboard you had access to everything on your console as well as your community.
We also imagined that Xbox experience would continuously improve over time, through the power of software.
Since launch, you’ve always pushed us to continuously innovate. It is because you spoke with one loud voice that we added new features like background downloading, 1080p support, movies and TV shows, video chat, a Marketplace blade and instant messaging.
Over time, as we’ve delivered more and more content into the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, we’ve heard from many of you that it has become increasingly difficult to find the games and content you want.
And that brings us to today.
Because of your feedback, we started rethinking the entire Xbox experience. What we discovered was that we could not only provide a better experience for you, but also something that reaches out to new audiences.
What John Schappert unveiled for the world on stage at E3 was just a sneak preview, so I wanted to share some deeper details on some of the new features in the new Xbox experience.
Here is a look at some additional features you will find interesting:
Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive. Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game.
Access Xbox LIVE Marketplace on the Web. Browse and purchase Marketplace content whenever you want from Xbox.com and it downloads automatically to your console. Purchase that new map, television episode, the latest Xbox LIVE Arcade game or set up a movie to watch when you get home from work.
Dashboard built into the new Xbox Guide. For everyone who loves the blades interface, it’s not going away; they are now built directly in to the new Xbox guide. Every feature and option is available right from the guide. You can even access your full games library at all times. No matter where you are (in dash or in game), immediately call up your games played list and directly launch a game.
LIVE Party system. Create a party of up to eight friends, and stay with them from one game to another, or watch a Netflix movie together, or share a slideshow of your personal photos. It works with all Xbox 360 titles, not just upcoming games. LIVE Party allows up to eight people to chat in the dashboard, so you can meet up before playing.
Xbox LIVE Primetime. This whole new category of games is going to give you more reasons to get online with your friends. Games will support everything you’d expect, like Achievements and leader boards, but many of these games will include real prizes. You can invite your friends, and even set a reminder for an upcoming show. Each game is broadcast simultaneously, so everyone is answering the same questions. Many events will have a live host, calling the shots as they happen.
Avatars. Your online identity started as a Gamertag – it then grew into a personalized Gamercard. Now, it has evolved even further into avatars. You can express your style, check out new outfits and share this with the community. Avatars will also be integrated into Xbox LIVE Arcade games, LIVE Party, as well as retail games.
New display support. Because you asked for it, we are adding 16X10 over VGA or HDMI, and support for 1440×900 or 1680×1050.
This is only the beginning. Over the next few months, we will share more details on the upcoming changes.See you online,
Marc Whitten
Gamertag- Notwen
Pretty sweet
Yea that is pretty awesome. There are a few games that I think could benefit from that. I wouldn’t put some games on the HD because it would be a waste but a few would be Lost Odyssey (so much loading that reducing load times is a huge benefit) and that’s about it for now. A lot of the FPS’s are online and if you load faster it isn’t gonna matter because you will have to wait for everyone anyways. I’m sure there are a few other games that would benefit from this.
No more scratched discs!
Leave the disc in the tray to prove you own the game? I bet within a year of this coming out, someone will have figured out how to sucker the system into thinking a game is in the tray when it isn’t, opening the door wide open for people to download/install bootleg games. And didn’t the Microsoft fanboys make fun of Sony for doing installs on the PS3?
you can just rent tha games and copy’em to the hard drive. simple as that. now u just have to spend like 5 bux instead of 60.
@cd – sorry, that doesn’t work. You need to have the disc in the tray for validation to load the games. If you don’t have the disc in the tray, it won’t run.
Matt Banks,……… you are a complete ass wipe it will work
How then Smart ass i Have been looking for about 1 year too
ideally someone figures this out, but you gotta expect MS to be smarter then that (maybe?) and there will be some failsafe. with that said, ive seen what a modded xbox and a blockbuster card can do, and well, id be pretty psyched if all i needed to accomplish that was a piece of software written by some
hax0r.
how do you play the games without the disk?
Just insert any game disc upside down and it will trick the xbox into playing games from the hard drive.
@dylan
you’re an idiot.
it doesn’t work without the game disk being in the drive.
@nostars
yeah, people will probably find a way into tricking the cpu into believing it’s the game that’s in the disck drive, versus some blank dvd. it’s just a matter of time.
and hopefully,
it doesn’t take too long.
freeware for the win, please.
agreed – dylan, you’re a tool. It doesn’t work. not by default anyway. That was the first thing I tried.probably the first thing anyone would think of – rent the game instead of buying it. duh.
surely an upside down disk won’t trick the xbox. I totally agree with guner4991 – Microsoft may not be the most loved software/hardware house, but they’re not exactly noobs.
hopefully that NXE patch comes out before too long.
There is a program that reads xbox360 disc and it creates a crack file but i cant tell you how to move it to your xbox 360 but you need expensive cables
There is a way to play xbox 360 games on your harddrive without the disc with the new NXE dashboard. There is a hacked file out in Toronto, Ontario Canada in some Chinese game store. They are selling them like mad!!! I’m sure it will get around soon. The hacked file goes on a USB stick or also known as a flash drive. The file is approximately 6Gb. and there are “game files” that go with the hack. The game files are small.. (couple Mb) Each specific game file has that protection code where normally your 360 disc drive would read to make sure the disc is in the tray. The game files make your 360 think that there is no disc in the tray. So therfore all you have to do is rent a game, copy it to your 360 harddrive and you are able to play the game without the disc using the USB hack. The USB stick plugs into a special card reader though. And of course you would have to have a bigger harddrive if you want to rack up a huge library of ripped games. There are also updates that come out for this hack. For example, when a new game comes out, they update the hack with the new game file.
I got halo wars for free sonnnnnnnnn and all it took me was 5 minutes to go and rent the game and rip it on my harddrive
great discovery man please try to help us all out here by finding out how to get one of those magic USB sticks for 360!
ok, for real or you just blowing smoke up our ass. can someone help here and find a link to a site that explains more on this.
Yeah there is but you will get fucked if you go on xbox live microsoft will find out and you will pay big time in jail and fin $100,000 so never plug your xbox 360 to a telaphone line or your moderm
ms is going down
@anonymous (March 13, 2009),
Do you or any1 else know where this Game File Database might be found?
you are all noobs
You guys are total fucking asshats.
@ jebadiah
+1
Yo yo yo dawgs. I got mad skillz! I got all da best games fo freee with a hack I found on da innernets! I got a 250 gig HDD and ova 30 games on it that I play online all the time! Hit me up on LIVE! My gamer tag iz ‘Jynx765′ yo!
hmm,
probably better hacks will come out, but if microsoft finds you out, they’ll probably freeze your account,
they cant fine you or send you to jail, as long as you make sure you’re not sharing the game yourself,
anything that’s downloaded and used for none other than yourself, is perfectly legal,
well, at least here in holland
in france they’re banning everything that’s downloaded xD, and fining everyone that’s downloading, for that matter…
but yeah, in about half a year/ one year, i think there will be some safe system that tricks your hdd into thinking you own the game after you copied it.
it’ll be like sort of an R4 card the ds has right now, but for xbox 360
though i’ll still buy the original game anyway, just because i download tons of music, so if i start downloading games too,, i won’t have any selfrespect anymore XD