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Microsoft Increases Limit on XBLA Downloads
1up reports that XBLA's 50MB size limit is no more. Microsoft has upped that to a whopping 250 MB, just a week after it was revealed that the upcoming Symphony of the Night would be almost double that in size. While this is great for the possibilities of the service, games, and gamers, it does mean that 'Core Pack' owners are now even more 'out in the cold' when it comes to downloadable content. Unless a HDD is purchased for the system, Core Packers are reduced to using the 64MB memory cards, which are clearly not large enough for even one 'expanded' game title. From the article: "However, how many folks are out there downloading Live Arcade games without an HDD? It probably works out to a small percentage. We asked Microsoft about those users and the memory card issues that the console will face with this new expanded size for Live Arcade titles. Microsoft said 'There is already one possible solution in the works for this category of gamer should we decide to increase the Xbox Live Arcade game file size from its current 50 MB limit. As announced at E3 last May, a larger Memory Unit is being developed which will allow gamers who do not own a hard drive to store and easily transport several Xbox Live Arcade games at a time. We have no further details to announce at this time.'"
What kind of margin you think they are making on a 60gig HDD selling at > $100? The 360 is going to run into further disk space troubles with their video services and game demos. I'm already a little dissapointed I have to delete Gig+ demos it took a day to download to make space for things on there. Offering HD video content and music ripping takes up a lot of storage. You cannot do that and get by with a mere 20 or 60 gigs. MS should drop the proprietary drive and allow users to add storage. But I doubt they will considering how much they can sell a drive for. They have to be making a killing on them.
ehhh, I can name LOTS of low size games that suck horribly. I aggree with you on the Gamplay over Graphics front, however the ability (or lack there of) to include stunning graphics does not preclude (or enforce) good gameplay.
Castlevania:SotN is a good example. The game is huge, has nice graphics, and the game is wonderful!
MS is hitting through great things again and again with the 360. Admitedly, yah it sucks if you bought the core system owners, but they already have gotten the shaft on a countless number of things. The soloution to this is to make a new section in XBLA and simply call it "Downloadable games" or some such. Castlevania:SotN is not an arcade game, so dont' put it in the arcade. Keep the arcade games sub 50MB, or stop sellign the crippled core packages. Actualy there are probably lots of people that are perfectly happy with the core and thus they shouldn't stop sellign them.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
XBLA = Xbox Live Arcade. Currently the games (where) limited to 50 megs. Demos can also be downloaded, and most of those are over 100 megs in size.
They upped the size of the Live Arcade games from 50 megs to 250 megs. These are the games that you can either play a demo of, or purchase if you want (and don't have to worry about putting the disk in to play it).
Do they have full games for the PS3 (that you can purchase online and play off the HD) yet? It's good to hear they have the demos and such. =)
*content* wise it is said to be the same. However, this isn't just an emulated version of the PSOne title either. They literally ported it using the original assets and so it has true 16:9 widescreen support and higher resolution textures. All the music, cgi, and cheesy dialog is intact ;-)
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Once you pay for an arcade game you download it, delete it, and download it again later as many times as you want (same for the TV shows). So you wouldn't need a memory card for every title as you suggested.
Microsoft should have never released the core pack.
Why not? The core pack made their platform available to a poorer demographic of users, who happen to be the first adopters in the console game industry, and the hard drive upgrade makes them larger margins than the full box. NPD estimates that this maneuver grew their initial market by 18%, meaning that more people bought a given game, meaning more games were developed, meaning they have a stronger library, drawing in more players. They've been riding that 18%, the interest on that 18% and the upgrade margins on the hard drive for a year now.
Exactly why do you suggest that this was a bad idea? Microsoft has made quite a bit of money and established a much stronger presence for this console as a direct result of the tactic.
StoneCypher is Full of BS