Lack of HDD forces Saint's Row to scale back game...

[Sis]

I would have preferred a hard drive for games but IMO this sounds like a time issue more than anything
....
And to add to another poster's response, a HD drive would have made this problem worse, not better, as first gen HD drives will be slower than a 12x DVDROM.

It's the seek times that kill it, not the transfer rates, I believe. But I agree with your first point: it sounds like they just don't have enough time to implement the system without leaning on a HDD.

See...HDD's can and do add features to games that would otherwise not be possible, they are not just about "faster load times"

Are you suggesting that the Xbox 360, without a HDD, is incapable of playing games that involve flying aircraft?

Otherwise, this is just the same, tired argument that we've all been in agreement with from day one: that the HDD made developer lives easier in some cases, especially with regards to streaming content.

.Sis

 

[MfA]

Now objectively looking at it, considering Moore said the primary SKU in the US will be the HDD model, and Japan is only getting the HDD model... I guess I would im high personally and require the HDD, or at least make use of it.

That's assuming microsoft will allow you to make HD only games, Im sure they will make an exception for MMORPGs ... but normal games?

 

[Acert93]

That's assuming microsoft will allow you to make HD only games, Im sure they will make an exception for MMORPGs ... but normal games?

MS has already said that game companies can. What hurdles they have to jump we do not know.

Anyhow, my main point what is stopping them from having HDD only features? A LOT of games "require" a memory card to do anything meaningful with the game. Similarly, many games have requires a periphrial or addon to get the most out of the game.

A couple devs have talked about adding special content or features for HDD owners or making HDD-optimizations. So what is stopping them from "closing the airport" for non-HDD owners?

Time.

I think their issue, as others noted, is time. Obviously a HDD does allow you to do some things technically you cannot without some form of storage, but this does not seem like one of them. Sis said it pretty well: HDD makes life easier.

 

[MfA]

Could you give me a quote?

 

[Qroach]

I wonder if this was implimented 6mo ago and they then found out that there would be no HDD (which devs have known for a long time) or were developing it and realized their engine was too demanding to pull this off without a higher streaming media source?

The hard drive not being attached is not something devs new. developers know about this well over a year ago. This wasn't some recent change by MS.

MS hasn't said that you can make HD required games. online games are a different story since you need the hard drive to be on xbox live. The only thing MS demands is that you make your game work without the hard drive, but again that doesn't apply to online games like MMORPG's. Any game that is xbox live "only" will require teh har drive to be attache for use of live.

 

[Johnny Awesome]

It's all bullshit anyway. A great developer could get around this "problem".

 

[[maven]]

It's all bullshit anyway. A great developer could get around this "problem".

So why is it then that we don't have "The Perfect Game" yet?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Are you suggesting that the Xbox 360, without a HDD, is incapable of playing games that involve flying aircraft?

Does this sound like even a remotely logical assertion? Of course I don't think X360 can't do flying games.

Point is the HDD is a performance tool, and not having causes features to be cut. I would propose for everyfeature the we hear about, there's many more that get cut in the development livefycle that we never even know about.

This is for everyone who says HDD does not add to games, Saint's Row would have been a better game with a HDD, it would have allowed them NOT to cut this feature, you can argue to the cows come home about how they 'could' do it. But the hard fact is they AREN'T, and if it had a HDD they would have.

So no HDD will result in lesser games, maybe not in the fantasy world of "well a good dev could get around it" but in the real world of budgets, timelines, and performance constraints.

On a side, I know Saint's Row isn't supposed to have any load times, but what's so bad about having a few load screens while you're flying around? It worked OK it GTA...

 

[shred5]

I hate to say I told you so...and I know the HDD arguments is deader than dirt...but...



See...HDD's can and do add features to games that would otherwise not be possible, they are not just about "faster load times"

I posted this in another thread and I think it fits here too..

Yea this is a bad thing really... MS should have made the hd standard in my opinion... But The PS3 will have this problem too considering it dont have a hard drive plus blueray has a slower transfer rate than DVD drives.. That said the additional space on blueray does allow for more uncompressed video, audio and textures.....

Also why is Japan getting the hardive standard.. Because the the developers complained about a lak of a larger format dvd drive like hd-dvd... It proves MS knows they made a mistake...

 

[Inane_Dork]

Saint's Row, FYI, has no loading for indoor/outdoor transitions. Considering the amount of detail in the levels combined with GTA not quite removing this loading time (even with a hard drive), it seems to me that Volition tuned their engine for stuff other than flying.

On an entirely personal note, I would gladly trade the ability to fly for eliminating loading screens.

Volition probably designed Saint's Row with a hard drive in mind...

MS has been clear for a long time to not expect an attached hard drive. The only way for you to be right is if Volition has severe ear wax problems.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I posted this in another thread and I think it fits here too..

Yea this is a bad thing really... MS should have made the hd standard in my opinion... But The PS3 will have this problem too considering it dont have a hard drive plus blueray has a slower transfer rate than DVD drives.. That said the additional space on blueray does allow for more uncompressed video, audio and textures.....

Also why is Japan getting the hardive standard.. Because the the developers complained about a lak of a larger format dvd drive like hd-dvd... It proves MS knows they made a mistake...

Most PS3 games will probably just use DVD as well, why would they use BR just to put uncompressed video/files on the disc? That's completely backwards in a system with massive computational power and relatively slow transfer speeds, makes much more sense to compress it as heavily as possible and have the CPU decompress on the fly, taking advantage of the faster DVD read speeds.

 

[expletive]

Most PS3 games will probably just use DVD as well, why would they use BR just to put uncompressed video/files on the disc? That's completely backwards in a system with massive computational power and relatively slow transfer speeds, makes much more sense to compress it as heavily as possible and have the CPU decompress on the fly, taking advantage of the faster DVD read speeds.

Agreed with this. On another thread there was a brief discussion and i think it was agreed that maximizing the transfer rate of the optical disc to the 360 was the best way to maximize performance. (i.e. compressed data moves from disc to memory much quicker than uncompressed and the CPU required to decompress was worth mitigating the relatively slow optical drive).

So interestingly enough, it would make perfect sense for games that dont fill up a DVD to be on one for the PS3.

J

 

[MechanizedDeath]

Not sure if it's already been said, but the HDD in the 360 is not very fast. It's a POS by lappy drive standards, really. Probably a cheapo 4500rpm drive. The transfer rate isn't much higher than the DVD drive. I forget exactly what it is, but it's listed in Goto's diagram. I think it's more an issue of capacity and the ensuing compression. That or seek times, which I seriously doubt. Seek times are more about random access, but that shouldn't be a major issue for streaming landscapes since you can predict fairly easily the grids that are going to be seen next. PEACE.

 

[randycat99]

This is a very good point, and I don't think enough people are at least familiar with it as a possibility. I've heard some claim this was going to be a HD with 50 MB/s sustained thoughput. Yet another was under the impression that 133 MB/s would be reached. Both are quite outlandish for the part that will end up going into the X360, imo. I don't expect this little "mini-drive" will suddenly eschew the best throughput and seek latency of the most "cheetah" style HD's you can put in a PC, just because they both exist mechanically under the umbrella family of "the harddrive". Most certainly, I would still expect them to perform better than an optical drive, but not by great leaps and bounds.

 

[scooby_dooby]

No that's a terrible point actually.

#1. The drive is a 5400 RPM SATA LD25 from Seagate, it's hardly a POS. Yo say it's a POS, then in the next breath admit you don't even know the RPM and model of the HDD, what gives?
Read up: http://www.seagate.com/content/docs/pdf/marketing/PO-LD25.pdf

#2. IIRC, according to From software, the average transfer speed for the DVD is 11mb/s, and average of HDD is 17mb/s. So that's over a 50% increase. In addition seek times are 10x's longer with a DVD vs HDD.

 

[randycat99]

Are you sure you got your units correct, again?

Are you really telling us that all this hubub over harddrives comes from a unit that will be 24x slower than a real harddrive (real = not a POS) that would be put into a high-performance PC? Is this really what you think will be the ultimate "performance saver" for X360?

 

[valioso]

This is for everyone who says HDD does not add to games, Saint's Row would have been a better game with a HDD, it would have allowed them NOT to cut this feature, you can argue to the cows come home about how they 'could' do it. But the hard fact is they AREN'T, and if it had a HDD they would have.

wont the ps3 suffer from the same problem if the HDD adds that much to the gaming experience?

 

[expletive]

Are you sure you got your units correct, again?

Are you really telling us that all this hubub over harddrives comes from a unit that will be 24x slower than a real harddrive (real = not a POS) that would be put into a high-performance PC? Is this really what you think will be the ultimate "performance saver" for X360?

Any current hard drive is leaps and bounds better than an optical drive due to the seek time advantage. Everything else after that (throughput, etc) is just gravy.

J

 

[randycat99]

Apparently not the one that chap has pointed out. A 17 mb/s HD isn't a POS? Can't even imagine how compromised the seek rate must be given the alleged throughput rating...

...and you really think throughput on a HD has been a secondary feature??? It's pretty damn important, from what I've observed for the past, what, 15 years?

 

[Spidermate]

Most PS3 games will probably just use DVD as well, why would they use BR just to put uncompressed video/files on the disc? That's completely backwards in a system with massive computational power and relatively slow transfer speeds, makes much more sense to compress it as heavily as possible and have the CPU decompress on the fly, taking advantage of the faster DVD read speeds.

1080p is a different story, though. I'm sure first party will have first hand in this.