The NXE dropped today. If you weren’t aware, welcome to the future. One of the big features is the ability to install full retail games to your hard drive. I’ve been using this for a couple weeks with Rock Band 2 and Gears of War 2 and love it. Not only does it speed up loading times in some cases, but it reduced the wear on your DVD drive and makes the Xbox 360 a whole lot quieter.
However, not all games are created equal. Trying to run Halo 3 from your Xbox 360 hard drive will actually increase loading times. Ouch. Here’s the quick and dirty: Halo 3 caches maps to the hard drive in the “utility partition” of the hard drive. This was used to speed loading times from the DVD. Even if you install to the hard drive, the game still goes through this caching procedure. Now here’s where it gets tricky. When playing from disc, you’re loading from both the hard drive and the DVD. When playing from the hard drive, you’re trying to read from two locations on a single source. You can only do so much from the hard drive at once, which leads to slower load times.
Don’t expect Bungie to patch Halo 3 to make it work better from the hard drive. There would be a whole lot involved and it’s just not worth their time. So, Halo players, stick with running the game from the disc. It’s not all that bad to save on the hard drive space, anyway.
Game installs on the PS3 have become a huge problem. We’ve seen hard drives fill to capacity already and there looks to be no end in sight. I was pleasantly surprised when Resistance 2 nixed that huge 5GB install that most games these days require.
This isn’t to say there’s no install. The game drops roughly 350MB of data onto your hard drive, which takes about 90 seconds. Not bad at all considering games like NBA 09 The Inside use over 2.5GB of precious hard drive space.
I just wanted to give credit where credit is due. Kudos, Insomniac! Good job stepping in and putting a stop (or at least a pause) the problematic game installs that are plaguing the PS3. Keep up the good work!
How many times have your now-gen consoles kicked the bucket? I’m on Xbox 360 number 10, so I know how it all goes when the dreaded RRoD shows its ugly head. Luckily, my launch 60GB PS3 is still going strong, as is my launch Wii. One aspect of the Xbox 360 and PS3 that has a chance of dying is the hard drive. Because of the many moving parts, hard drives are prone to failure. With the rigorous usage we put our consoles through, it’s not out of the picture for one of these to go to the land of dead hardware.
Sony has a 10 year life span projection for the PS3 and Microsoft looks to keep the Xbox 360 on the market for at least 5 years. In that span, it’s safe to expect some sort of hard drive failure. How many of you have had a PC hard drive die? I see it happen everyday with drives from a year to 5 years old. With dust collecting in and around the electronics, ball bearings and drive platters can easily wear out and stop working.
It has been 7 months since I purchased my 40 GB PS3. It was made possible by a nice federal tax return; it pays to be a homeowner. Anyway, I could not be happier with the machine. Its Bluray functionality is worth the $400 bucks alone and it has been a rock since day one. Its Xbox 360 brother had to be sent “home” twice since I got it at launch. Nevertheless, my 40 GB hard drive is full. Already. Again, I am not bashing the PS3 at all, I am just wondering how I could have a full hard drive, that is TWICE the size of the Xbox 360, and I have had the console for just over a half of a year as opposed to 3 full years.
This is what I have listed in the Game Data menu (required game installs):
MLB The Show 2008, MGS4, DMC4, Bioshock, Socom: Confrontation (Disc Version), Soul Caliber 4, Pixeljunk: Eden, Warhawk (Disc Version). That’s it.
I had to delete the following just to install the new Socom patch because I had reached my limit:
Siren: Blood Curse (Full Game), The Bourne Conspiracy, and Elefunk.
Are you stuck with the lowly Core or Arcade SKU for your Xbox 360 with no hard drive? You might end up with a surprise come November 19th when the New Xbox Experience requires 128MB of space to download and run. Unless you have a 512MB memory unit, you’re screwed. Even with that, you might be up a creek with no paddle.
Fret not, my minions. Microsoft wants to help. While they recommend clearing out some of your old files to give you enough space, you can enter your Console ID and Serial Number on their website to see if you qualify for either a free 512MB memory unit or a 20GB hard drive for only $19.99. Word on the streets is the hard drives are refurbished, but for $20, you can’t really complain.
While it’s not to see Microsoft helping out some, it makes you wonder why they didn’t plan for this in the first place or take action earlier. They knew Arcade users wouldn’t have enough space for their new dashboard update, so why not start this process earlier? Either way, if you only have a Core or Arcade, you better hit them up for some storage.
Want to know how ripping a game to your hard drive will effect load times after the Next Xbox Experience update drops later this year? Check out this comparison video showing GTA4 both from the DVD and from the hard drive. A good 10 seconds or more quicker is a nice bonus if you have the hard drive space to use. Ch-check it out.
Well, at least they made a step in the right direction. Starting early next year, you’ll be able to load data directly from your SD card in your Wii. Anything you save off (WiiWare, Virtual Console games) can be launched directly without having to transfer things back and forth. This is big for the Wii storage folks out there. However, it may not be big enough.
Personally, I already have one 2GB SD card full from WiiWare and Virtual Console games. The problem lies with the Wii not accepting SD-HC cards, which provide for much larger storage capacity. If the system could accept larger cards, this would be a great success. As it is, the solution seems like a stop-gap until the next Wii system gets released.
Think about all the DLC coming for Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 on the Wii. That’s going to take up some major space. You think a 2GB card is going to hold all of that? I’m guessing the general Wii playing public won’t really care too much either way. At least Nintendo addressed the issue, whether it’s satisfactory or not.
The Wii has some storage issues. Just a bit. Personally, my Wii memory is full and so is my 2GB SD card. If you buy a few WiiWare and Virtual Console games, you’ll be running out of space pretty damn quick. We know Nintendo is working on a solution, but we now know it won’t be a hard drive. Here’s what Reggie said in an interview:
We are working on a storage solution … We have never said that it will be a hard drive nor have we mentioned how we will fix this issue, but we are going to deliver a better way to store the games.
Ummm, ok Reggie. Unless you enable USB storage from flash drives and allowing us to use the SD card to load things in-game, you won’t be coming close to a hard drive. I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
Yesterday, we gave you a heads up on the recent price drop on all things Xbox 360. The 120 gb HDD is now reduced 30 bucks to $149.99. Its still a little steep, especially for that amount of memory, but you are limited to what you can do for memory on the 360. You can drop in a 200 gb HDD SATA drive in a PS3 no problem, but it seems MS designed the 360 to avoid that scenario.
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!
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