Xbox 360 MMOs allowed hard drive requirement

by Alexander Sliwinski { Aug 14th 2007 at 11:15AM }

Microsoft confirmed at Gamefest 2007 that developers working on server-based MMOs for Xbox 360 are allowed to request use of the hard drive. This is one of those "duh," but not explicitly ever stated things. Microsoft will bend the rules for these HDD required games on a "case-by-case" basis, but now with more ground rules compared to the Final Fantasy XI days.

The way it will work is developers will have to say how much space they expect their game to take and it will have to be explicitly stated on the box. Even if they don't think they're going to require all the space in the beginning, they're supposed to give the expected upper limit they'll need. As Ian Lewis, software design engineer at Microsoft said, "Feel free to require 30GB for your game; that's just going to make your potential audience a lot smaller."

Microsoft says designers can get around the console space issues by offering up lower resolution models and textures, make areas off-limits and stream assets from their server. Silver Xbox Live users will not be required to purchase a gold membership, however everyone will have to pay for the MMO's subscription fee separately from the Live membership. An MMO with a separate subscription fee still sounds like a tough sell on a console, but for the right game, anything is possible.

Tags: harddrive, hdd, mmo, online, xbox360

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

FrankTheCrank @ Aug 14th 2007 11:21AM

Games are so intense today, having a hard drive is a must. I think most developers are using hard drives to store cache data. Optical drives are still to slow and hard drives allow data retrieval at much faster rates.

VF5(PS3) eats up about 2.5GB of HDD space.

Get rid of the CORE360 already, drop the Premium to $299.

mr nimblewick @ Aug 14th 2007 11:44AM

Man, you are smart.

FrankTheCrank @ Aug 14th 2007 11:53AM

Thanks man.

FrankTheCrank @ Aug 14th 2007 11:53AM

Thanks man.

J.Goodwin @ Aug 14th 2007 11:58AM

Are you kidding me?

Your argument that every 360 should ship with a hard drive boils down to: "The PS3 is incapable of running a simple 3d fighting game that doesn't even feature online play without eating up 2.5 gigabytes of hard drive space, so you should have to have a hard drive for your games too?"

Please.

There are lots of good reasons to have a hard drive on 360 (backwards compatibility requires it since the Xbox had mandatory storage, you can't do much with the marketplace, XBLA, or video marketplace without it, and a large number of compelling games are on the XBLA right now), and you can make a strong argument that Microsoft should at some point ship a hard drive with every unit, but the mass market is dominated by people who pick up a new console when it hits $200 and only buy Madden every year. These people do not need a hard drive on 360 any more than they needed it on PS2.

Alex K. @ Aug 14th 2007 12:36PM

please keep in mind that the PS3's disc drive is actually a lot slower than the Xbox's 360s, as far as seek times (remember the oblivion devs?)

LeChuck @ Aug 14th 2007 11:22AM

I played EQoA on PS2 and it's save file took up about 3 MB on the memory card. So it's entirely possibly these games will have very low HDD requirements. It's good they're lifting the restriction though.

JL @ Aug 14th 2007 11:29AM

Take that Core owners.

I knew this was going to happen. As soon as they said, we will make sure that developers only make games that can play on any 360...etc. that they were lying.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 12:37PM

yeah...take that Core Users, now your $280 machine is totally worthless.

unless you buy a hardrive of course and still end up paying less than $400 altogether..

.

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 12:57PM

So essentially, they're forced to pay Premium price to not get everything in the Premium package.

Man MS is really giving the farm away to these core users.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 1:10PM

what aren't they getting? the headset? chrome tray?

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 1:14PM

wireless controller.

SoulBlade @ Aug 14th 2007 11:31AM

m$ is still hosed - they still will require devs to code to the lowest common SKU which is the core, so most devs won't have this luxury.

I love this part: "Microsoft says designers can get around the console space issues by offering up lower resolution models and textures, make areas off-limits and stream assets from their server." Yea... make the game worse because they screwed up.

VampireHunter Z @ Aug 14th 2007 11:35AM

I really don't see the reason for loading an entire game on HDD. The only thing they need the HDD for is updates and expansions. I can't imagine that going over 5GB. Reading the game from DVD is more than enough.

FrankTheCrank @ Aug 14th 2007 11:47AM

You haven't played FEAR on the PS3.

The game requires 2GB of free HDD space or it won't play. I can only imagine that this data allows the large levels to load wayyyy faster than optical would have.

VF3 load times are almost non-existent, thanks to the hard drive.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 12:15PM

FrankTheCrank,

you're really much better off playing F.E.A.R. on the 360. even without the hard drive.

.

VampireHunter Z @ Aug 14th 2007 12:54PM

I've only played the demo of FEAR. The thing is demos are stored on your HDD and I don't see any noticable loading speed. Download and play any demo from XBLM and you're still treated to a loading screen almost as long as any game on DVD.

Jumping between maps might be the only concerned. But with programming techniques like streaming this stuff can be invisible.

mccomber @ Aug 14th 2007 11:36AM

The lack of a hard drive in every 360 is still the single biggest mistake MS made this generation.

Vidikron @ Aug 14th 2007 12:09PM

No, that would be the RRoD. But the HDD is next.

BEN @ Aug 14th 2007 11:55AM

Just another reason why I wont be getting another xbox, how long before games are coming out with a HD DVD drive needed to play? the whole idea of a console is that you should be able to play any game on any console straight out of the box, the 360 is showing signs of heading down the pc route of people having to update repeatedly if they want to play the latest games

KEELr @ Aug 14th 2007 2:10PM

I think you're confusing the 360 for the PS3 which requires install this install that, hook up keyboard and mouse, change your HDD... Even Krazy Ken called it a 'super computer'

Rare Hare @ Aug 14th 2007 11:38AM

It's weird to own a 360 without a hard drive anyway. The people that don't have the hard drive probably just need to go ahead and get with it.

riggs @ Aug 14th 2007 11:38AM

"however everyone will have to pay for the MMO's subscription fee separately from the Live membership."

this is one of the reasons why i havent gotten a 360, even though they dont seem like u pay much, those costs compound at the end of the year :\

pseudo.hero @ Aug 14th 2007 12:00PM

It says right in the quote that silver members can play the MMO's as long as they pay that fee. So if you are so inclined to save a few bucks a month not going gold you can just pay the MMO fee.

LeChuck @ Aug 14th 2007 12:00PM

Live Gold is only $50 a year. All it compounds to at the end of the year is $50. An MMO's monthly fees add up but that has nothing to do with MS or the Xbox, that's completely determined by the game maker.

Free Thinker @ Aug 14th 2007 11:44AM

Microsoft did not include a hard drive for 1 reason.

They wanted a console at the $299 price point.
They gave the illusion to the masses that their new system was only 300 bucks.

I would assume that gradually, Microsoft WILL phase out the Core model. I wonder though, will this decision come back to haunt them once Sony's big games start to come out.

Dollar for dollar (available software aside) for me the PS3 is a much better value than the 360. As a gamer, I want a machine that can last a long time, and a machine that can keep my older games from becoming useless.

xXFenixKnight13Xx @ Aug 14th 2007 11:47AM

Sorry but what you got was a movie player, not a game console. Xbox 360 is and will be the lead Next Gen Console for years to come. Sorry POS3 Fanboy.

Matt B @ Aug 14th 2007 11:51AM

I game with it more than watch movies. Nice try though.

FrankTheCrank @ Aug 14th 2007 11:52AM

FenixNight,

Look in your rearview...that's the Wii and it's about to blow right by you and the 360.

I'm not a fanboy, just giving you the facts. After this Christmas, the Wii will be, like you said, "the lead Next Gen Console for years to come".

Free Thinker @ Aug 14th 2007 11:54AM

I had no idea that you can predict the future. What an awesome power you must have. Please use it for the good of all humans and not for your own self gain.

Yes, I have a PS3. Yes it is a high def movie player.
It is also a game machine (8 months into a consoles lifespan is not a good way to gauge what kind of software it will eventually have) it is also a music player, a browser, a photo viewer etc.

I like the all in one aspect of this Playstation.
Of course the 360 (which I am neither a fan of or against) has a bigger more diverse game library. If should, it has been out since Nov. 2005.

Competition is a good thing for us as gamers. More competition means better games, and cheaper prices. I hope Microsoft keeps pouring more money into it's games division. It will make for better gaming experiences on the PS3 AND the 360.

Vidikron @ Aug 14th 2007 12:13PM

@Fenix

Awww... damn. And here I was planning on buying 6 or 7 games for my PS3 in the next few months. I didn't realize it only did movies.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 1:48PM

but it's certainly been a long several months eh Vidi?

my PS3 is almost at 400 Folding@Home work units...and my team in the top 1000 in the world with nothing to play until this fall.

can't dismiss the perception of PS3's game drought until those games actually come out. otherwise we'd all be playing Lair and Heavenly Sword by now...

.

cc123 @ Aug 14th 2007 11:47AM

So Microsoft's answer for size limitations is to downgrade the game?

...that doesn't exactly work for me.

Dave @ Aug 14th 2007 1:20PM

That's a solution they suggested for people interested in catering to those without harddrives or if they elected to limit the size of the file created. They could probably, if they chose, limit quality for those without harddrives or for those who chose to limit their file size. Anyway, MMO developers are being given the green light to do as they please. That's the point.

J.Goodwin @ Aug 14th 2007 11:49AM

I love how a sensible approach to file management and a consumer-friendly labelling strategy are regarded as proof that Microsoft A. Screwed up by not putting a hard drive on every machine and or B. Screwed over people who bought a core system.

Steam uses the same hive file system, it is intended to prevent massive hard drive fragmentation.

Knowing how much storage a game is going to require ahead of time is only fair to people who often aren't allowed to return games to stores except in exchange for the same title.

Aside from that, everything remains the same as it was the day that Final Fantasy XI was released lo these nearly two years ago: some games can require a hard drive, and MMOs don't require you to pay for Live to play them.

Wake me up when the Playstation 3, the "more powerful machine that is the consumer's friend for including a hard drive" uses it's massive storage and free networking to deliver even one MMO, let alone an RPG that isn't already out on 360.

Neptune @ Aug 14th 2007 11:58AM

Well NCsoft will be releasing several MMOs exclusive to PS3 (to my knowledge).

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 11:59AM

The question here is simple -

Can all the xbox360s play all the xbox360 games released?

Can all the ps3s play all the ps3 games released?

Gee I wonder why anyone would ever think MS screwed over core users.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 12:07PM

B13,

how did MS screw Core users?

they got a game machine for $300 and can easily upgrade at anytime, combined, for still less than the cost of a PS3.

.

Vidikron @ Aug 14th 2007 12:15PM

And I love how your response to obvious 360 shortcomings is, "But what about the PS3??".

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 12:19PM

Digi, I'd be interested to know how you would upgrade a core unit to a level comparable with PS3.

Like how much would modding your MB to add a HDMI port cost?

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 12:29PM

wow Bl13,

so now HDMI is required for MMOs?

what won't you say?

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 12:34PM

"they got a game machine for $300 and can easily upgrade at anytime, combined, for still less than the cost of a PS3."

If you mean just to play MMO's, I can upgrade my PS2 to play FFXI for much less money than any model of 360, that must mean they're all bad value, right?

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 12:41PM

so now we're talking about PS2s?

whats your next topic, universal health care?

.

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 12:49PM

So first you insinuated you can upgrade a core 360 to PS3 level for less than $200, which is clearly false, then you changed your mind and decided as long as you can play MMO who needs a PS3, to which I countered you don't need a 360 either. But yes clearly I'm the one changing the subject.

Digi Smalls @ Aug 14th 2007 1:02PM

no, i said they could upgrade to the level of a 360 PREMIUM.

i mentioned it was for LESS than a PS3 only because that is its main competition and what *you* were comparing the 360 to.

we're talking about necessary items for MMOs here, and HDMI and Blu-Ray aren't.

.

bl13 @ Aug 14th 2007 1:32PM

Yes you can in fact upgrade a $300 system to a $400 system without spending $500.

I only brought up PS3 since the comment I was replying to brought it up. I get your point that if you have a core 360 and want to play MMO you can just buy a hard drive and not sell your 360 and buy a PS3. If you only look at playing MMO's, then yes, that's the way to go.