Portal: Still Alive tips scales at 629 MB

by Justin McElroy on Oct 22nd 2008 10:25AM

Is there some point at which an XBLA game has enough girth to drop that adorable "Arcade" moniker and just be, you know, a game? Weighing in at 629 MB, Portal: Still Alive seems to be pretty close to that limit. That means that if you're not sporting a hard drive in your 360, you're pretty much out of luck. It also means that the previously announced 350 MB limit has just been kicked in the teeth.

Still Alive is almost double the last King of Bytes: EA Sports Fantasy Football Live Draft Tracker, which boasted a comparatively paltry 334 MB. We've put a line out to Microsoft to see if this is a one-time thing or a new policy -- we'll let you know what we hear.

Tags: breakingnews, portal, portal-still-alive, valve, xbla, Xbox-360

Reader Comments (50)

That's alot of cake.

Sooooo, is this the full game??? Not an add-on, or anything? Full game? Wowza. Damn even my backlog of downloaded games is getting too big. Braid, Castle Crashers, Lost Winds, FF: My Life as a King, Strong Bad Ep 1...

And now I have to buy this and World of Goo...

Sigh

if they have a brain in their heads they did kick the fuck outta that stupid as 350MB limit......

how the FUCK you gonna have the best digital distribution and then cap how big a file can be???

thats just stupid........

Because there's no competition.

ROFLAMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT............

PSN MAY Be a behind at some things compared to Live Marketplace......but you all forget Microsoft has been doing this for almost 7-8 years when the PSN is JUST half that.....

Siren: Blood Curse says "hi".

Really though, this limit is pretty silly. The people who are going to pay the most for downloadable content aren't the ones who buy the $199 Arcade.

[Insert F-word here]

@heyyou.......

Dont Mention Siren.......lol......it made people with the 40GB PS3 cry.....I mean I have a 320GB HDD and REFUSED to download that.......if they Release it on BD tho I'd get it......but I'm not taking up THAT much space for ONE game......

It's strange that the company boasting that digital distribution is the way of the _near_ future has these extreme limits.
And to the dude who says there is no competition, please don't be a blind fanboy -
we know the PSN is lagging behind Live (although even that could be debated, they both have their pros and cons), but first and second party titles like Warhawk, GT5:Prologue, Wipeout, SOCOM and 3rd party titles like Burnout Paradise show that Sony are actually taking advantage of their HDDs and are taking digital distribution seriously.
From personal experience, any disadvantage that comes from not owning a physical disk is outweighed by being able to jump from game to game with just a few button presses (the disk tray should be where COD4 lives).

http://ihavetheprincess.wordpress.com

That 20gb HD of mine barely has 3 gigs left...and that's after I cleaned out anything I didn't need.

*sigh*

600mb is a little ridiculous...maybe Valve just decided to screw compression altogether...

Well, they have to fit the Source engine in there, which is a 2GB download for PC games off Steam.

So I'd say they did a pretty good job.

yep, same here. especially with all the RB DLC songs. they need to have a super sale on that 120gb drive...

Dang 2gb...I guess they did do a good job...wonder what the load times are then?

They need to allow the use of any hardrive...I'm not paying $150 for $120 gigs...4 or 5 years ago I weighed $1 a gig but now it's more like $.50 a gig.

I'm not sure what it's like in America but here in England you can grab a 1TB hard drive for around £70 ($140), that's £30 less than the 120GB 360 HD.

I found a 1tb HDD for $89.

More importantly, how is the game?

It's Portal.

Go see the reviews for Portal: flash map pack,SUPRISE! Its the same thing... except free!

Considering PSN is happily serving files over 3GB, XBLM looks pretty stupid with a file size cap.

Arcade owners are well aware that their memory cards cant hold that much information. They've forfeit the privilege of playing downloadable titles greater than 500MB. It's perfectly within their capabilities to install a hard drive if they want to up the ante.

Just get rid of the cap already and start rolling in the obscene profits of additional HDD sales. Seems pretty foolish to even debate it.

I'm making a note here: Huge.

MS will probably just discontinue the 256mb card and bring out a 1 and 2GB model.

To be fair, people probably don't buy the Arcade to use the.. XBLArcade

Those "limits" are moronic...the size, price and point limits get broken all the time...so MS might as well drop the instead of pretending to set any rules.

I disagree. Microsoft has shown that they are more like guidelines (if your game is good enough, especially GOTY good, you can have more space), but it encourages frugalness from the developers in a time when the Blu-Ray is encouraging wasted space and lack of compression. A lot of games would be bigger than they needed to be if not for the limit, but since the limit is soft, it allows for extra space when truly needed. As someone else pointed out, even Valve got frugal with this one, since the Steam download of Source is 2 GB. I don't mind having extra space on my hard drive, and neither should anybody else.

Absolute rip-off if you have the Orange Box already.

I guess, except that I paid $60 for Orange Box and I only ended up playing Portal, so that $15 price point is sounding pretty good right about now.

Thats why I rented it. Yeah I checked Team Fortress and HL2 out but mainly just got it for Portal. Excellent game and experience. Thank God for GF.

I rented it and then kept if for $15. It'd be nice if they served up the extra levels as DLC as well. Seems like they'd be able to make more money that way, as most people with the Orange Box aren't going to buy this in addition.

Who the hell buys digital download games without a hard drive. Thats just dumb.

certainly not geeks and otaku!

This version has content that's already free on the PC version of Portal. And if you have The Orange Box, there's no real point to getting this. If you don't have Portal, and only have a 360, get The Orange Box for 360. It's only $30 now.

The 350mb limit is a lie!

I'm guessing the Source engine is a beefy bit of math since it's hard to imagine the graphic assets of Portal taking a huge amount of space, the game uses a tiny amount of unique textures as anyone who has played the game knows. I don't think the GladOS dialog would be that large either.

If the size limit is being killed, then... Then is there a chance I may someday see my dream realized of an XBLA port of Harmonix's AMPLITUDE, with DLC packs in the future?

Amplitude is awesome. I put a PS2 in my car just so I could play Amplitude while I waited for people. It's too bad you can't play it on the PS3; not because of backwards compatibility, because the stupid R2 trigger messes your timing up completely. I would love to have a new version of that to play.

Overpriced and oversized. I will keep my copy of the Orange Box, thankyouverymuch.

Time to get cheaper storage out Microsoft, you have so many wonderful things to download from XBL, but why must your hard drives be so overpriced?

I hear the 60gb will be released as standalone for $99 in November with a 1 month Live Gold subscription or something like that.

Answering your own questions FTW!!!!

It's the same game from the Orange Box with few new levels...

Well that's just freaking great... i don't have space for it.

I do! :D

Hmmm whats more important, file size caps or a free crappy online sevice with no file limits and no games to speak of. Oh and a dying high def format thrown in for a scant $200 more. OK that was petty of me. Portals a good game if you give it and yourself time to understand it. You could find it free on the PC I'm sure or get a used copy of the orange box and have it there.

Where have you been? HD DVD died in February.

dang, that's over three times my download threshold per day.

Just remember the NXE nov 19 you will be able to get a HDD for $20 buck so in there will be no cap soon.

So where's this content available on PC so I can download it. Already have Portal: Prelude and Portal: The Flash Version mappack.

Then you don't need it.Get intellivision lives instead,it is awesome.

No,seriously.

You could also get Braid if you don't have it or Exit.

Have them both already. =P I r smrt gamer.

It's getting some nice reviews across the board and I would like to play those new levels especially because my TOB x360 disc is scratched form overuse.

I for one I'll buy it.

Funny thing Dead Space isn't avalible here,sad face but the Special edition of Fable and my Special edition of Fallout 3 arrive next week,Happy Face.

I don't see how setting a 350MB limit on XBLA titles makes any sense, when many game demos are way bigger.

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Portal: Still Alive tips scales at 629 MB

Reader Comments (50)

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