Future Games Will Require the HDD
While many were surprised by the fact that MS was planning to drop the Core from it's SKU line-up, it finally helped XF make sense of something we stumbled upon late last week. Recent rumors regarding games being "dumbed down" abound, coupled with word from our contacts last week that the the Core was being discontinued had lead us to believe MS was about to make a big change to the way 360 games are made.
As many people will remember, the original XBOX was capable of some very large games that contained great AI and graphics for the time. To put it simply, this was possible because the data on the DVD was able to be compressed quite heavily, because it was then streamed off the disc and uncompressed in the HDD that every original XBOX had. This allowed for shorter (and less frequent) load times and also allow for much more data to be placed on the DVD.
XF has learned that MS has plans for the 360 to do the very same thing. Games requiring the HDD will initially have a "HDD required" logo clearly viewable on the front of the case [seen above], as well being listed as requiring the HDD on the back info panel of the case.
No word yet on the first game that will start this trend of requiring the HDD. But we have some ideas. XF will elaborate on this story as soon as we have more. While it would be fun to "speculate" at possible games that will require the HDD, we'll stick to what we already know.
