Square Enix confirms move to buy Tecmo - breaking
Blu-ray won't give PS3 its win, says AIAS boss
Source - Xbox 360 GTA IV DLC won't hit till early 2009
July 18th, 2008 @ 14:19
According to this Gamespot article, Microsoft’s supposedly seen a 30 percent improvement in load times on games installed to the 360 hard drive, although no direct source is given. From the article:
One of the not-so-cosmetic changes in the fall update will be the ability to let you play your games directly from the hard disk. The new feature will let users install all of the game content directly onto the hard drive to improve game load times. Microsoft reports that it has seen a 30 percent improvement in load times in internal testing. As an interesting data point, Microsoft went out of its way to tell a group of reporters that the full Devil May Cry 4 hard disk installation took roughly 10 minutes on the Xbox 360. The installation took twice as long when we conducted our own installation tests on the PlayStation 3. Another side benefit of having games installed on the hard disk is reduced noise, since the optical disc no longer needs to spin up. However, you will still need to have the game disc in your optical drive while you’re playing it, presumably as a piracy check.
More through the link.
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July 18th, 2008 at 2:22 pm
Interesting but pretty much pointless for everyone who doesn’t own a Elite and absolutly pointless for all those without any HD at all.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
10 minutes?! Fucking hell.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
It’s quite strange that I find this more exciting than most of the stuff shown at E3.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I’m pretty sure this was the most interesting thing of the whole show, actually.
Ten minutes isn’t half bad. I think I’d probably install everything, given that I tend to only play one game at a time.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:34 pm
They really need to announce a caddy. To please the geeks and otaku you know?
July 18th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
Sounds very good to me, it’ll be interesting to see if it has any positive effects on certain games that rely on streaming data constantly too. Playing PS2 San Andreas from hard drive versus from disc was a night and day difference for example.
July 18th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I recall your comments on how much improved Yakuza was from HDD, Whizzo. That’s what popped into my head when I first heard this announcement.
I still can’t quite believe they’re going to allow you to do it. Legally. It’s great!
July 18th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
I played Yakuza from HD (a legal copy running using the very first version of HD Loader) and I remember a lot of complaints about how the load times for all the fights were painfully long. I lent the game some time later to a friend who was hard driveless on his PS2 and then witnessed the load times, ouch!
On the 360 it’ll already be caching stuff to the hard drive anyway so it probably won’t make as much difference but for something like Mass Effect where you would see definite texture loading going on it’ll be nicer to play I’m sure.
Not that I care about that title too much, I have the PC version!
July 18th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Yeah, HDLoader installs take about 10 minutes for a DVD so this is no surprise. As with HDL on the PS2, the 360 is most likely copying the disc image direct to the HDD. This method also preserves any data-level protection and a disc check can simply involve a hash check at any random location on the image as well as the Disc ID along side the standard disc check. A random hash check would stop people from getting around the protection with a simple image patch.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Interesting stats. Is the read speed of the Blu-Ray drive really that much slower than DVD? I knew there was a difference, but this is a much bigger difference than I expected.
10 minutes for a 9gig DVD versus 20-odd minutes for 4-5gigs for a PS3 install? That’s a huge difference. No wonder the PS3 devs like you to install stuff.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
I was always under the impression that it was the seek times that were slow on a blu ray rather than the read times (which are comparable to a dual layer DVD). Not sure why that would affect an install though.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Can’t wait for this update and all the complaints of bricked consoles that comes with it.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:24 pm
God, yeah. It’s going to be absolute hell. Plus it’ll get delayed until the Spring.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
@Blerk
I think someone did some analysis of the PS3 DMC stuff and found it copied loads of little files across rather than a big PAK of data which was then uncompressed. That would explain why a PS3 install would be much longer as Psychotext points out it’s seek speeds which are more of the issue.
Effectively a full ISO copy can be streamed start to finish with no messing about, an install of a large number of elements is going to take longer.
July 18th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
I’ve found that some Flash memory devices are terrible at reading/writing multiple small files. 100 files at 1MB each would take about 3 to 4 times longer than a single 100MB file simply because of the way it seeks to the location it’s accessing. It effectively walks through the entire array until it gets to its desired location.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:36 pm
I’m confused about something. I know that some people don’t have HD. I don’t know why, but they don’t. I only have the 20 GB one that came with my 360 when I bought it. While I have not really ever filled it up (I erase demo’s when I’m done and don’t really buy movies and such), I haven’t needed the space. I am excited to be able to write to the HD. However, why would someone not have a HD? If you don’t have a HD, how do you save games? I let a friend borrow BioShock once and he didn’t have a HD and had to play the same thing over and over again.
If you don’t have a HD, how do you play a game like GTA4 or BioShock, Oblivion, etc?
July 21st, 2008 at 9:39 pm
They use memory cards. The arcade comes with a memory card, doesn’t it?
July 21st, 2008 at 9:43 pm
Which is great once it comes to installing games…for Mircosoft, cause then you have to buy another product made and sold by them.
July 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Yeah, there’s a memory card in the arcade ecu. There wasn’t one in the core though… that said, there wasn’t one with the PS2 either (well, not the one I bought) so I wouldn’t have though it was particularly complicated for people.
July 21st, 2008 at 10:29 pm
I didn’t own a PS2 so I didn’t know that. I just know the only person I know who didn’t have a HD couldn’t save his games.