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Microsoft's Tray And Play Unveiled

Posted by Zonk on from the quik-start dept.

Gamespot has a look at Microsoft's upcoming plans for PC gaming. In addition to a definite gaming perspective for the Longhorn OS and a commitment to the XNA studios package, they have word that someday we may be loading PC games much like console games. From the article: "Tray and Play is exactly what it sounds like - dropping a game disc into an optical drive and loading it up immediately, rather than having to install it to a hard drive. True to form, the game itself cut straight to a start-up screen in less than a minute (including the game's own built-in load time)."

2 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Lame by OAB_X · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Always make a backup of your CDs. Alcohol 120% is even able to make (almost) 1:1 backups of SecuRom 4.8+ protected games with a bit of work that are playable on (almost) any system. I rip all my music CDs to my HDD then put them on my bookshelf.

    A CD will not decay if it is handled properly, dont stack your CDs, dont leave them outside the case. if they dont have a case, get one, even just those paper sleeves.

  2. You're forgetting something by Guppy06 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    "True to form, the game itself cut straight to a start-up screen in less than a minute"

    It looks like they forgot to include the OS boot time in their calculations. Throw that in and I'm sure it's still up around 3 minutes at least. Real consoles can go from power-on to title screen in less time than it took this tray-and-play to finish throwing up splash screens.

    Of course, more interestingly, considering all the DRM crap we've had snuck on us thanks to AutoRun, why do I forsee myself turning this "feature" off for security reasons?