The decision to sacrifice space for the DVD message was probably made in 2004 or earlier. It probably seemed like a very good idea at the time - 6.8 gigs of game assets sounded like a lot back then, and DVD players had just hit mainstream. The largest PC games in late 2004 were about 5 gigs installed, and it was rare to find them sold on DVD format.
360 Disc Space *spin off*
- Thread starter vanquish
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Another possibility is that HD-DVD was still in the cards for quite some time, and the DVD layout wasn't given as much thought until it became clear that the DVD (backup) scenario was becoming more and more likely. This could mean that it would be one aspect of the machine that wasn't discussed with developers nearly as much as other aspects and/or cause another department (CE perhaps) have more impact on this decision.
But could MS remove the video in the future, freeing up the GB for devs?
Only if they change their security checks too.
What does that mean? Is it feasible?
Yes. It's feasible but not without changing their security measures.
Currently, part of the information MS uses for security checks and submits to XBox Live is the presence of and crc check of the video partition of the Games' DVD. If they remove the video partition on Game DVDs, they would need to know which games it should ignore that missing information for.
Currently, part of the information MS uses for security checks and submits to XBox Live is the presence of and crc check of the video partition of the Games' DVD. If they remove the video partition on Game DVDs, they would need to know which games it should ignore that missing information for.
So it is feasible then? A firmware update could allow that.
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