come on give some money to take a HDD

I hope more games require a HDD. If having a HDD can make a game better, I want to see it. It was stupid for MS to not just put it in as standard equipment in the first place.

I agree it wasn’t smart not to make it standard, especially if it’ll compromise free-exploration games like GTA. Wonder if Sega will get away with it though with Microsoft.

I don’t see this as a problem and hope many more companies follow with HDD only games. Honestly if you have a 360 without a HDD you are missing out on half of the features and should get it anyway. I don’t see the Core system lasting too much longer anyway, first price drop and the core system will probably go the way of the dodo.

LiquidG: would be a smack in the face of existing Core owners tho. Don’t think MS will do that to their customerbase.

I would like to know WHY the game needs the HDD, for thouse who dont know much about tech, it doesnt make sence to require one unless the save file is too big or the game will be patched regularily with additional content. The Xbox360 has LOTS of on board memory, and thats faster than loading from disk, and with a high speed DVD drive, there isnt much of a gain from loading from disk anyways.
So my only guess as to why it needs the HDD would be something to do with save game size because these games do have alot to keep track of (entire teams of players and their stats that change as you play).
If its something else though, I cant guess what it would be.

“it doesnt make sence to require one unless the save file is too big or the game will be patched regularily with additional content. The Xbox360 has LOTS of on board memory, and thats faster than loading from disk, and with a high speed DVD drive, there isnt much of a gain from loading from disk anyways.”

Like I said above, for streaming free-roam games like GTA I would see the point: the harddisk is numerous times faster than the DVD, games don’t speed up like hell when you have a HD that’s used for caching for nothing.

For a football manager game I have no clue though.

Actualy, with 512 ram in the machine, and a 12x DVD rom drive, cashing to the hard drive doesnt improve it as much as you might think. Ram is the fastest thing next to CPU cash, and there is enough there to make the difference minute. On a PC its different story, as it was on the first xbox. Less ram, and slower DVD drive had HDD cashing make a big difference.
So even for free roaming games like GTA or the up comming Oblivion, HDD makes a difference, but not a big one, not one that would make sence to make the HDD required.

Couldn’t Microsoft lower the cost of the Hard Drive a little bit for the people who didn’t get one? Especially if it’ll be required for some games. It just seems like they owe it to the consumer after all the promises of consoles available and for the simple fact that they lied about everything working without the hard drive.

I’ve got the $399 sku, but come on….$99 for 20gigs? Where is that acceptable anywhere else except for on the xbox360?

Chris: accessories are the moneymaker for MS. They’re reputedly losing $320 per sold Premium, so they have to make up somewhere.

Also, $99 for a 2.5″ laptop HD isn’t that insanely expensive. Don’t compare it to 3.5″ desktop harddisks.

All i’m saying is that if you’re going to support ‘HDD Required’ games(and break away from your previous stance) give all the people who didn’t buy the $399sku (and who also thought that they could play all the future games) a break.

I always hear about Microsoft trying to make their console more appealing to people of all ages. So when like a Grandpa, or someone that isn’t always tuned into all of the details of what they need to play hears “This is all you need.”, i think it turns a lot of people away when the next thing they hear is “No, sir…now you’re required to buy this $100 piece of hardware for your grandchild’s console to work with this game, but not this one…oh and that one needs it too.” I think that’s what keeps a lot of people away from gaming. They aren’t used to all the normal things that we as gamers know and accept about what we’ll have to buy in the future. And now, with most of the games being $60, $100 for a HDD is a lot to squeeze out for some people. $49 here, $60 there, $20 there. It all adds up.

I know Microsoft needs to make money. I love my xbox360. I’m not against the company or anything, but i’m also sure Microsoft knew about these games requiring the HDD a long time ago. They could have just mentioned that some games in the future might require an HDD at the very least last year.

The thing I find suspicious is that Microsoft explicitly said there would be no compromises for non-HD owners except caching speed, and that a third party publisher is now releasing an HD-only game. Wonder if Microsoft could shed a light on that.

Curry said: “For a football manager game I have no clue though. ”

If you’ve ever played any of the Champ Manager/Football Manager games on the PC, you’d know why, trust me. The amount of data contained in each save is absolutely insane - on a totally high-end PC a couple of years back, my Football Manager save took (after 7 seasons of the game) something close to 35 mins to save - it contained THAT MUCH data. It’s terrifiying!

I hope more use it… The core was a retarded idea, a stupid move to make it appear as though they’re launching a system at the same price range as the previous generation. Games WILL benefit from using the hard drive, and more better make use of it.

What they should do is get rid of the core system and sell only premiums. Offer rebates and such for everyone who bought the core to get a hdd. That should solve most problems and allows game developers to work on one system with something everyone will have. This was the advantage the regular xbox had.

great idea richard.xbox is superior in part due to the hard drive. lets keep it that way, even though ps3 will have one.