Clever users with the beta of the new Xbox 360 NXE-thing have noticed something: the size of game installs on the hard drive have decreased. So, good news for those of you with smaller hard drives. (I’m still kicking about with the old school 20GB hard drive. I soldier on.)
For example, someone on the Cheap Ass Gamer forums reported that Left 4 Dead went from 4GB to 3.7GB. That’s a savings of 26 percent!
Then there’s NHL 09, which went from 5.7GB to 5.0GB.
And Rock Band 2 goes from 6.3GB to 4.6GB.
You really have to troll through message board after message board to get a list going.
Why is this happening? There’s no official reason, of course, but people think it’s because the new rips do away with much of the dummy data on the disc.
Now, how useful it actually is to install the games to your hard drive, I don’t know. You’re talking a matter of only a few seconds of load time, so…
For me its worth it simply because the system is very loud when reading a disk and when it is reading the hard drive it is nearly silent.
This is pretty sweet although I do have a 120gb hard drive so it doesn’t make a huge difference to me.
Percentage fail.
Agreed.
7.5% != 25%
Does this apply to games already installed or games installed after the update?
I prefer games loading on the HD for three reasons:
1. No more “Disk Errors”
2. Much quieter
3. Faster load times
I do wish you did not have to have the disk in the drive. I wonder if once you are able to purchase games through marketplace if they will find a way to allow current games to be played without the disk. If they are worried about users giving their disks to others then at least give me the option to send them my optical media in trade for being able to play from the HD.
1. = Not true.
I ripped L4D and I still get disk is dirty/cannot be read errors.
4.0GB to 3.7GB is not a 26% drop…
That’s NOT a savings of 26 percent!
Not sure why a writer who doesn’t know the advantage of installing a game on the HDD has a job writing a tech blog…
fucking dumb ass. make it more fucking dumb when you HAVE to bold and color high light the words and say “how useful”.
mother fucker dont even own an xbox360.
and turn around and write blog about it.
he actually does have a 360. i’ve seen it. he plays that jewel game on it.
It’s funny how the dumbest people on the internet are always calling other people dumb…
That’s not “bold and color high light,” it’s called a hyperlink.
its cool becuse it saves the life span of the disk drive. and its silent which is nice.
A 360 would be hopelessly outdated by the time the disk drive became likely to give out. HDDs in PCs, which in many cases suffer significantly more wear-and-tear than 360s, often last 10+ years. I’ve heard of 20 year-old PCs booting up.