some MS stuff from an insider [taken from gamescore blog]

[scooby_dooby]

What's your source for this info? I'd be very surprised to see Vangaurd ship on multiple DVD's for PC. And why does it need to be installed on the 360? Typically PC ports are smaller on the console (from my observations) and they do not need to be installed.

I know MMO's need some cache area, by where did this assumption that the entire game needs to be installed on the HDD come from?

 

[assen]

The developers of Vanguard keep officially denying any concrete plans for a 360 version in their own support forums.

The marketing event mentioned by the article on GamerScoreBlog was Microsoft-wide, not only for 360 products.

Put two and two together, apply liberally Occam's Shaving Cream, and you should conclude that they watched, among other demos, Vanguard for the PC.

(For example, in the list there was Flight Simulator, which, AFAIK will be Microsofts flagship Vista game.)

So, MMORPGs on consoles are definitely possible, but we probably won't see Vanguard on the Xbox 360 this year at least.

And, btw, the greatest challenge to MMORPGs is NOT disk space, but the need for chat. Voice comm is nice and all, but is not a replacement for the complex chat system, with logs for the past 30-60 seconds you can peruse, with several channels etc.

 

[Bobbler]

What's your source for this info? I'd be very surprised to see Vangaurd ship on multiple DVD's for PC. And why does it need to be installed on the 360? Typically PC ports are smaller on the console (from my observations) and they do not need to be installed.

I know MMO's need some cache area, by where did this assumption that the entire game needs to be installed on the HDD come from?

It may not ship on multiple DVDs, but it takes up more space than a dual layer DVD. The number of discs it comes on for PC doesn't matter (as you won't have to have them in for longer than the install), I used it as an example because people know how big a dual layer DVD is.

And I'd say its likely that you'll have to install MMOs on the 360's HDD... it is possible that you won't install all of it though (maybe just a few GB of it and get some stuff from the disc as well) -- the assumption came from FFXI which needs a rather hefty install on all the consoles it's on, and if you read what I typed you'll see that I said the console one might not require such size (I said at least the PC version will likely require the full size the X360's HDD would leave, so they'll probably want to do something to prevent that).

 

[expletive]

What's your source for this info? I'd be very surprised to see Vangaurd ship on multiple DVD's for PC. And why does it need to be installed on the 360? Typically PC ports are smaller on the console (from my observations) and they do not need to be installed.

I know MMO's need some cache area, by where did this assumption that the entire game needs to be installed on the HDD come from?

I was in agreement with the 'installed' part becuase the FFXI previews have them game taking up several gigs on a hard drive. I just assumed this was for faster access to in-game assets but i suppose it could be for something else?

 

[scooby_dooby]

the assumption came from FFXI which needs a rather hefty install on all the consoles it's on, and if you read what I typed you'll see that I said the console one might not require such size (I said at least the PC version will likely require the full size the X360's HDD would leave, so they'll probably want to do something to prevent that).

That's the thing, I don't know if FFXI should be held up as a standard of anything, granted we don't have any other console MMO's to judge by, but on the other the entire FFXI install is ass-backwards and WAY too hard.

For example it's a 2.5hour install, and it updates 3 times by the time you finish installing, it absolutely terrible. Not to mention you are installing their POS Play-online viewer...

I just think it's a horrible implementation of a console MMO, so I don't know how much we can draw from it.