SiN Episodes Xbox 360 bound?
Ritual Entertainment, developers of the soon-to-be episodically distributed SiN Episodes, has revealed their interest in porting the title to the Xbox 360;
after all, the two are a natural pairing. We've written about the immense potential of the Xbox Live service as
disruptive technology, capable of undermining the retail channel by
distributing games digitally right onto your console. The episodic nature of SiN
Episodes demands this kind of distribution, and Valve's Steam platform is capable of handling it on the PC side
and it would appear Ritual is hoping Microsoft's Xbox Live service can do the same on the console side. While there is great promise in this strategy, both for Microsoft and developers, there are limitations, not the least of which is storage requirements. The Xbox 360's hard drive is just not designed for massive game downloads. With just 13 gigs free, and the SiN package coming in at over 2 gigs on the PC, the option of purchasing games and leaving them on your console forever is simply not a possibility. Will they release larger hard drives or simply allow you to download games over again when you want them, swallowing the bandwidth cost?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
AoE @ Jan 6th 2006 3:12PM
Although thanks to the size of SiN Episodes it's probably comparing apples and oranges; I've (accidentally mind you) blown away a few of the xbl arcade titles I've purchased and re-downloaded them without repurchase. Additionally, the download agreement for all of the xbl content I've downloaded states that you'll be able to redownload any purchased downloaded content as long as it remains on live...
p-diddy @ Jan 6th 2006 3:28PM
what's the deal with the comments? Half the storeis have javascript errors that prevent browsers (both IE and Firefowx) from showing the comment/submit/etc area. This isn't one of them, but the tetris story above it and the XBL story below it are examples. Been like this for about a day. I looked for a link to email someone but couldn't find one.
-p-
Andrew Fong @ Jan 6th 2006 7:12PM
Seriously, it'd be nice if they put out a 100+GB HDD out there, but considering these are laptop size drives, the cost would easily be $150, more if Microsoft wanted to make a profit.
Unlikely, but here's hoping they allow some way to hook up your own HDD to the 360 (they could have some auto-format option that wipes the drive to prevent hacking) or someway to stream game files to the 360 a la Media Extender.