Hard drive's impact on video gaming

[Sis]

(Taking a suggestion from Acert to create a new thread.)

There's a lot of debate about the Xbox 360's lack of a standard hard drive. The argument tends to be that without a hard drive many new game innovations won't be seen (things such as Halo 2's seemless loading or Forza's tire track memory).

Now I love the hard drive, simply for it's unlimited storage. But I don't believe the hard drive did anything at all for video gaming. I've pointed out that seemless loading and quick load times are possible on the PS2 (GTA:SA, God of War), so the hard drive is not a requirement for this.


So I'd like to take a step back and say: Given that the PC world has had a standard hard drive since forever, what video game mechanics are found there that are just not possible in the console space?

I'll start:
1) Downloadable content (not a good one, because I believe the PS2 offers this)
2) Expansion packs (Ghost Recon Thunder Island, Summit Strike, Morrowind: GOTY Edition were all expansion packs released as stand-alone discs on the Xbox--which has a hard drive!)
3) Persistent worlds (this assumes that persistent worlds requires 10s of megs of information)
4) Downloadable games (like Xbox Live Arcade). Unless it'd fit on a memory card, you gotta have a hard drive for this one. Ironically, I believe that the Arcade games are targetted at the casual gamer, where the hard drive is not.


What other breakthroughs do you see on the PC front that you don't believe will be possible on the console side without a hard drive standard? Note that I really struggled to come up with video game mechanics--I wonder what Spore requires for storage space?

.Sis

(Acert, mind re-posting your follow-up here?)

 

[Guden Oden]

Personally I believe the hullabaloo over the harddrive is a rather large storm in a fairly small glass of water. Tire track memory, is this really the best application of using a harddrive in games? Besides, with the x360s great ability to generate textures dynamically, this seems ideally suited to not simply be stored down as textures on a harddrive, but rather as draw data to be applied during loading or rendering, thus taking up magnitudes less storage.

 

[V3]

I don't think a lack of standard HDD is a big deal, as long as you can add it on in someway.

As for how useful it is for games, well I think its useful for games that requires really big save files. Perhaps a game that can learns and keep adding to its AI database till no end. But a game like that probably gets progressively slower as it learns more. So perhaps not useful either.

So really I think its as useful as we have already seen on PC and Xbox and certain extent PS2. Anyway what did Xbox came up with ? Blinx's time control ?

 

[blakjedi]

Is there application for virtual memory on a console? Witha HDD a game can support virtual memory giving devs more room to breathe...

 

[Guden Oden]

Swapping is terribly slow. I don't think anyone would be happy to have their console start stuttering because the game had to page something in/out from disk all of a sudden. No thank you to virtual memory...

 

[blakjedi]

Swapping is terribly slow. I don't think anyone would be happy to have their console start stuttering because the game had to page something in/out from disk all of a sudden. No thank you to virtual memory...

Isnt that what PC games do? Isn't that what "cached" games from this generation do?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I thought the reason games use an HDD on PC is because Windows forces the use of a swapfile regardless Since way back when, people with enough RAM to run the OS and software still had the HDD thrashed regardless. How many games create a file for writing to during gameplay, that either create it at install time or require you to have n megabytes free on your HDD if you want to play?

AFAIK mostly the HDD is just used so you don't stream off the CD and for chunky save games. That's it. Other stuff like downloadable games you either stream from a website or only take a few megs and would easily fit on a 256 mb flash storage which'll probably a general standard (except for XB which is limited to 64mb for goodness knows what reason, save to sell more cards).

 

[Jawed]

Shifty, you're so far off-base that I'm not even going to bother correcting the string of your lies about the PC architecture.

Jawed

 

[AlNom]

hm... well if devs cache to the hard drive exclusively, they won't need to have multiple copies of data all over the DVD disc...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Shifty, you're so far off-base that I'm not even going to bother correcting the string of your lies about the PC architecture

Well you should because I don't claim to be any expert. I can only talk from own and friends' experiences from over the years as my education on PC hardware is fairly limited. If I'm that far wrong communicate how to the world so anyone reading my post gets to hear 'the truth'.

Also, how have I created a 'string of lies about PC architecture'? I only mentioned one point which was the requirement of the use of virtual memory imposed by the OS. Even if that is a lie (and note a 'lie' is a deliberate misrepresentation of the truth, as opposed to just being wrong in one's understanding) it's only one. The rest of my post was speculating if the HDD is used for other things in games, are these files apparent on the HDD? Of the few games I've played that's not usually the case.

 

[Jawed]

Simple - everything you said is the diammetric opposite of the truth.

Jawed

 

[V3]

Isnt that what PC games do? Isn't that what "cached" games from this generation do?

Its like playing games on PC with memory amount well below the minimum spec requirement. There are limit to everything, if not we will be still on 640k with 300+GB HDD

 

[scooby_dooby]

How about making Developers lives easier?

------------------------------

The latest issue of Computer Gaming World has an interview with Gabe Newell, Valve Software’s founder and managing director, in which the developer of Half-Life 2 and Counter-Strike discusses various topics including the release date of Aftermath, Lost Coast and Day of the Defeat Source.

Gabe also had time so discuss Windows Vista, the next-generation operating system from Microsoft due out late next year, and the Xbox 360.

"Look, I spoke to some people at Microsoft, and as I said, I can't point to a single feature in Vista that I care about that solves problems for us at all. And I had the same conversation with the Xbox 360 guys. It's like, Xbox 360 doesn't make my life any better, and in fact, it makes it a lot worse, as you're telling me I can't count on having a hard drive."

As you can see, Valve’s head honcho and former Microsoft employee isn’t happy about the fact that developers can’t rely on the Xbox 360 hard drive and he’s probably not the only developer who feels that way.

 

[AlNom]

Is anyone surprised that a PC developer would say such a thing?

 

[Jawed]

Are playstation developers moaning about the lack of a hard disk?

Jawed

 

[Phil]

Personally I think there a should be a fine line between "making life easier for developers" and "not putting silicon to waste by programming ineffeciently".

I think for certain things a harddrive is inevitable but for other things, it's just not needed. I also think there are a lot of PC orientated developers outthere that could learn a thing or two from (good) console developers. It's a trend now days - with the amount of RAM and harddrive space - you just don't care about efficiency as much as you used to when coding in low-level environments / memory scarse hardware where every single byte of memory counts.

A sad trend - one that is found more and more now days.

 

[Sis]

How about making Developers lives easier?

This is not a video gaming breakthrough or innovation. Let's keep this on focus to the topic, please, and not spiral into a "yes they must have it"/"no, it's no big deal" thread.

I'm looking for examples from the PC world where the HDD enabled some breakthrough gaming innovation that is not possible in the console space...

.Sis

 

[blakjedi]

SO bascially MS should have gone for 768 MB of RAM and dropped the HDD altogether....

 

[Inane_Dork]

On topic, and this was the main thrust of Gabe's comment (which is hacked down too far in this thread), community additions to games are certainly easier with a HDD. They may be impossible without it, but I don't know.

 

[Sonic]

Ok. Let's try to keep this on topic, shall we?

With a hard drive we do have downloadable content. These are such things as new weapon packs, new levels, new characters. Downloadable content does extend the life of a game if the content actually adds in a good way. That is a major plus for having a hard drive and something that the Xbox did in a somewhat effective way.

I don't buy the big immersive world idea as a game like GTA has a huge world on the PS2.

Game demos are one area that a hard drive would help out with. But at the same time one can get a disc from a store or magazine with demos in it so that really is a non issue.

There are instances where a HDD helps out console games, but in the end it hasn't changed the face of video games in any major compelling way. The main reason I want a HDD in Xbox 360 is because my regular Xbox is modded. I wan tthat kind of functionality in my new system (eventually) but looking at it from the greater perspective it really isn't a necessity.

What I would like to see myself is some type of DVD drive that has a read only part to it and maybe a rewritable section worth 500 megabytes or so. That would be something unique.