@zanella: Riiiiiiiigggghhhhhttttt. Considering the current pricing schemea that they have for 5400rmp drives; I would have to guess that a 20gb SSD from M$ would cost about $799. Not very cost effective for a $199 system add-on....

Mr.SithNinja

@jrog: I'm assuming that it checks the disk only at startup.

ripfire

i think that is fantastic for when you first get a new game and play it frequently. After you begin to tire of the game take it off the hard drive. an ssd would be sweet but i would also like to usb a 1tb mybook external hd to it.

yungjerry703

Don't you still have to put the disc in to play the game in the first place? I was hoping they'd address this issue ultimately.

jrog

@mrbonuscup: If you have the standard 20 gig hhd, you are most likely only going to be able to get one game at a time on there. Remember the 360 system files use something like 8 gig.... or is it 12?

Anyway...... just install your mosted played game of the moment, and then uninstall it when you have a new favorite.

robinandtami

I could care less about the speed improvement - does it mean you can take the disk out and have a SILENT room instead of the junk MS drive they put in that is loud as all hell??

Has anyone noticed the noise difference playing from the HDD vs the disk??

jriga

most of the 360s games are about 6.5GB

Johnny Chimpo

well how much space do ripped games take up? 3 GB might be ok if I can get my top 4 on there.

mrbonuscup

@BrianV2: Presumably, if/when it catches on, more games will be optimized for it and the system itself will be tweaked to make better use of it.

PipeRifle

Add a solid state drive and the difference will be major. C'mon MSFT, put in a big SSD for us!

zanella

I thought it would have been a bigger difference

BrianV2

It will be useful for when you are actually playing the game, to try and avoid those times you a travelling really fast down a street and suddenly BAMM the DVD drive has trouble loading the textures fast enough and your driving on what seems to be thin air.

ZhannTk

Cost/Benefit ratio doesn't do it for me.

Renegade05

Plus, it depends on the game. Some will load faster, some slower. Ultimately this is a major luxury. I remember playing Burnout on my PS2's HDD. Loading levels was MUCH quicker!

JEmlay

This woulda helped with Oblivian back when. Either that or I shoulda just got it for pc instead of 360.

DarkHavoc99

i think if i had the room it would be a nice feature because my discs are scratched to hell

lukejf01

itll def help with the rendered stuff since itll have access to those map files and allow for a much smoother graphics overall

but when games start getting designed for this expect much better implimentation

and if i recall correctly
this is only for certain titles unless they add updates for each game to make it compatible

rezin khanz

@DarkHavoc99:

Oblivion killed my system fast. Must have been all the constant loading.

OGHowie

GTA IV is still a newer game. They said it would make more of a difference for older games (Mass Effect and Crackdown!). But the best part of it all is that it's optional for ANY game. Whoo!

TheMurderer

@jrog: Piracy would run rampant if you didn't have the disc in the drive. Ripfire's right, it's only for start-up.

TheMurderer

@jriga: I don't think you can take the disk out. The disk NEEDS to be in the drive at start up (for copyright reasons), but then the game plays entirely from the drive, and the disc ceases spinning. You can't take it out, but it won't spin except for the first few seconds or so. So MUCH less noise!
Yay!

TheMurderer

@Renegade05: Um, free? What's the cost? Space on the HDD?

PipeRifle

Quite frankly, the loading time doesnt even matter to me. Reduction of noise is what will make this feature amazing. They should have had a mic up to each 360 during the video, with the left speaker for the left 360, etc. That alone will make this the most welcome feature of the new 360 experience.

diabolusunknownTheSecond

This sounds interesting. Sure, I may only be able to fit one game on it with my shitty HDD, but that will help matters. Now, what I really want is a xbo360 5 disc changer. I can have the controller at my couch 15 feet away that is able to turn on and off the xbox, but I can only play what ever game was in there last without getting up.

shockwaver

someone stab that guy

rezin khanz

@PipeRifle: I'd assume the cost is for a drive that actually has enough space to fit a game on it. If MS brought the 120GB drives, or even the 60GB drives into the stratosphere of reasonable pricing, it would be worth it.

Darkest Daze

@ripfire: I wonder how many times it can be said that YOU NEED THE DISC TO PLAY THE GAME. It's only been in, oh, I don't know, every single article that talks about the New Xbox Experience. Because everyone thinks they're so clever making exactly these kind of claims. Obviously Microsoft thought of it.

PipeRifle

@deadhouseplantz: Hate to break it to you but...

ripfire

@robinandtami:

I think most 360 games are dual layer idk if the 360 just caches part of the game or the whole thing but if it was the whole thing it would be around 4.7 GB for single layer and 8.5 GB for dual layer, plus idk if they decompress the data either

SlimDan22

I wonder if the fine folks at Microsoft have heard of this little company called Gamefly. Where you can rent games from there and return them and get new games. I would just rent games I like, rip them, and return them the same day. Granted, if I need to disk to access Xbox Live, then that might hurt. But having 15 games on a hard drive instead on top of the 4 out at time would save me money.

15 times $60 = $900, not bad.

deadhouseplantz

would this allow people to rip to hdd with a rented game? youknowwhatimsayin?

tsvb

@onewiththewurlitzer: True, but I give it about a week after it launches before someone figures out exactly what file or file marker it is that is being checked on the disc and a no-disc hack is made. Can't be too much different than the PC.

Mr.SithNinja

@tsvb: to quote piperifle: " I wonder how many times it can be said that YOU NEED THE DISC TO PLAY THE GAME. It's only been in, oh, I don't know, every single article that talks about the New Xbox Experience. Because everyone thinks they're so clever making exactly these kind of claims. Obviously Microsoft thought of it. "

onewiththewurlitzer

Dude this is the smartest and dumbest thing Microsoft has done. THE ENTIRE GAME ON YOUR HDD?...Really...you...you don't see the ramifications of that happening? At least Sony was smart enough to do a PARTIAL download and not a FULL.

daftrok

now just add wifi a blueray player and some cell processors and you'll have that ps3 you secretly been dying to have. :)

Kartune

@Kartune:
But i would have to sacrifice great games, great online play/support, and money out of my pocket. :(

mr30gZune

@Mr.SithNinja: I do agree with this. It definitely opens up the realm of piracy to the tech-savvy. Especially with all the media streaming, it's only a matter of time before someone encodes a program that the Xbox thinks is an Xvid but actually lets you play your ripped copy of Gears of War 2 or whatever. Still, it's amazing the number of people who think "Wow! I can put the game on my hard drive? Guess I'll never buy a game again, SUCKERS!"

PipeRifle

knew it from the beginning it's a waste of time to copy the games to the HDD.

krom

ummm.... rent from blockbuster = keep as long as you want?

Mactacular

@Mactacular:

Course I might have looked at the link first stating you need the disc still.... *mentally calls self noob*

Mactacular

good thing i have have about 40 gigs of space still on my hdd. i'm getting pretty excited about the NXE

awperk

Wonder how this works for games with multiple discs. Lost Odyssey *cough**cough* =D

PsychoticLad

@PsychoticLad: I've actually wondered about that too. According to a post that is repeated all around the internet, from July:

"Playing games from the hard drive will work fine for multi-disc games; in fact, you can pick which discs you want to rip (but a disc swap for the correct disc in the drive is required)"

Not sure on the actual source, though. Another site said playing multi-disc games "works awesome" but again, no source. Still, seems like a safe bet that they at least thought about it and there is some functionality there.

PipeRifle

This feature does me no good. I have a 360 but I also have a 2 1/2 year old and a 9 month old baby. Come back to me when Microsoft can provide child care with their video console units, now that would a major development worth getting my attention...

pupaboy3

@mr30gZune: playstation has great games, their online is catching up, and the ps3 comes with wifi more hardrive space and a blueray player and it only costs $100 more.
it would cost you more than $100 to add those features to your 360. Wifi alone costs $100.

Kartune

I believe its still mandatory to have the game DVD in your drive to play it whether its on the hard drive or not, similar to the "Full Install" option on many PC games.

The big question: How good will this work with Fallout 3?

DrGonzho