This would be awesome if they did and even though I know the price of the 120GB is a giant ripoff I would purchase one just for this reason.

-Having 4 or 5 of your favorite games on HD=
-Less load times.
-Less noise-no DVD having to stream textures non stop. I mean you know when a something big is about to happen in games because you hear the DVD drive start working overtime.:)
-Less wear and tear on your discs.
-No getting up from your chair. Just have a game menu that lists games that are fully installed select and play.(I realise this last one might no be doable because of piracy concerns.)

i agree i would love to put my top games on there

Holy crap that is to funny. I was just thinking about this yesterday and was going to post it.

I would really like the idea. Heck I bought an Elite and have a 120GB HD. It would be nice to have something to use that space for as I don’t do to many downloads.
I do see an issue with copy protection though. We would probably still have to insert the game disc every time we wanted to play. Otherwise people would rent and borrow games and just copy them to the HD. Even if we did have to insert the game disc I would still like it for shorter load times and less noise.

Another thought is this could be a selling point for the 360. Because the games are on DVD this is extremely doable. But because the PS3 uses Bluray discs they would have a hard time offering it.

It would be a great idea. I was just noticing how quiet the system is when playing demos vs. a game on DVD.

I will predict that they'll never do it because it's logical and makes sense.

I would run out tomorrow and buy the 120 gig HDD if I could place my games on the HD to take advantage of it's speeds and low noise. And I too think MS charges WAYYYY too much for the HDD so that is saying something.

It's not hard to do. The same thing a PC does. IT does a simple DVD check on start, and cache's most of the game to the HD. This would solve noise issues, ease streaming issues for developers, heat issues as the DVD wouldn't need to spin so much and create more heat, and help alleviate space constraints as more compressed files on a DVD could uncompressed onto the HD and kept there until the owner wanted them gone.

There are so many many more reasons to do this then not to I just don't understand the logic. Yes, they have to be careful with piracy, yes the core would be left out...who cares the core was a BAD BAD BAD idea to begin with ( as it's forces developer's into making games without the HD requirement).

I don't connect the Live, have no need to. So really my existing 20gig HD is only saving my games, and cache's those few games that do use it to some extent. It's basically a complete waste of space right now. Some games do cache to the HDD a little but not enough for it to actually matter it seems. When I did connect to live, the 20 gig or shall I say 14gig hard drive was certainly nowhere near enough since I filled it in 3 weeks.

This would be fantastic. I used to do this w/my PS2 and the "HD Loader" disc or whatever it was (yes I was one of the 200 people that actually had a PS2 HDD) ;) . It was the best for the GTA games...no more getting stuck on the bridge. I never even bothered with the piracy aspect which I'm sure most people used it for, I was happy with not having to swap games all the time and the reduced load times.

That all being said I'm not holding my breath.

Count me in as one who would buy a 120 Gb HDD to do this.

MS could use Live to "authenticate" that a game DVD is only copied to one HDD (make it a requirement to be connected to Live before a game is "ripped" to the HDD) to keep the piracy concerns at bay.

Of course, this would kill the market for "used" games, but then, MS would probably like that.

It will absolutely never happen outside of homebrew. I think MS is too afraid of piracy concerns to get that kind of freedom to the system

the DVD drive kicking into overdrive when big events are happening in game has really bothered me for some time now. Especially in FPS. The drive noise acts like my own "spidey sense" when to take cover or watch my back. It really detracts from the immersion in the game at times.

It will absolutely never happen outside of homebrew. I think MS is too afraid of piracy concerns to get that kind of freedom to the system

What piracy is there that I could do by being able to rip to the 360 HDD that I can't already do with a PC right now (and much easier, since my PC's on a real worldwide network and has a DVD burner)? I mean, really, what are you gonna do with a game on your 360's HDD, other than play it on that 360?

What piracy is there that I could do by being able to rip to the 360 HDD that I can't already do with a PC right now (and much easier, since my PC's on a real worldwide network and has a DVD burner)? I mean, really, what are you gonna do with a game on your 360's HDD, other than play it on that 360?

Put it on a friends HD. It will never happen.

What piracy is there that I could do by being able to rip to the 360 HDD that I can't already do with a PC right now (and much easier, since my PC's on a real worldwide network and has a DVD burner)? I mean, really, what are you gonna do with a game on your 360's HDD, other than play it on that 360?

Without requiring the DVD in the tray it could open the door to piracy. You could buy a game, rip it to the HD, give it to your buddy and so on. There are ways that M$ could deal with preventing the piracy but is it worth it to them?

Your point about a PC is not even relevant. We are talking about 360s which are currently in a controlled environment as far as hardware/software.

I just mentioned this in my last thread as something I really wanted.

There are a number of ways they could do this. How about you have to purchase this game online to install it to your hard drive like an xbox arcade game. Are those being pirated all over the place?

Online downloads seems like such an easy way to sell more games. I cant believe they are not racing to do this.

If I had to bet. Id say the next xbox will allow you to install to the hard drive.

It would be simple to tie the game copied to the HD to the Processor ID key of that particular xbox during transfer so that any copies made off of the HD would not run on another 360.

With that being said, I am sure that the "community" would be able to circumnavigate ANY and ALL protections eventually.

I just mentioned this in my last thread as something I really wanted.

There are a number of ways they could do this. How about you have to purchase this game online to install it to your hard drive like an xbox arcade game. Are those being pirated all over the place?

Online downloads seems like such an easy way to sell more games. I cant believe they are not racing to do this.

If I had to bet. Id say the next xbox will allow you to install to the hard drive.

Well, the PS3 is already doing this with Warhawk. In order to do this, MS would have to change their own restriction on downloadable game content size.

Without requiring the DVD in the tray it could open the door to piracy. You could buy a game, rip it to the HD, give it to your buddy and so on. There are ways that M$ could deal with preventing the piracy but is it worth it to them?

Considering that those ways are probably simple and the benefits would be significant, it's worth it to ME.

Is it worth it to them? Probably not. After all, spending an extra $1.25 on an optical drive that doesn't sound like a weed whacker wasn't worth it to them. And honestly, I'm not sure doing anything more than they already do is worth much of anything to them. We already bought the console. Their work is done. And when anybody suggests otherwise they're usually met with lame excuses about why something cool can't possibly happen.

Considering that those ways are probably simple and the benefits would be significant, it's worth it to ME.

Is it worth it to them? Probably not. After all, spending an extra $1.25 on an optical drive that doesn't sound like a weed whacker wasn't worth it to them. And honestly, I'm not sure doing anything more than they already do is worth much of anything to them. We already bought the console. Their work is done. And when anybody suggests otherwise they're usually met with lame excuses about why something cool can't possibly happen.

It would be worth it to me as well. Not having to worry about leaving a game laying around and coming home to see my 1 yr old playing frisbee with it would make it worth enough for me.

This would be awesome if they did and even though I know the price of the 120GB is a giant ripoff I would purchase one just for this reason.

-Having 4 or 5 of your favorite games on HD=
-Less load times.
-Less noise-no DVD having to stream textures non stop. I mean you know when a something big is about to happen in games because you hear the DVD drive start working overtime.:)
-Less wear and tear on your discs.
-No getting up from your chair. Just have a game menu that lists games that are fully installed select and play.(I realise this last one might no be doable because of piracy concerns.)

I, for one, personally hope not.

It's the same reasons I'm not a fan of downloadable movies. If you have a vast collection of games (or movies) on your harddrive and it fails, you lose the entire collection. If a disc gets ruined, you lose that one game (or movie).

I'm sure there'd be some type of history or receipt of what's been downloaded like Live offers, but then you'd have to download your entire collection once again. And if it's a vast collection...

But, I'm sure media downloads are going to be the future at some point, though. Everything seems to be pointing towards it.

I, for one, personally hope not.

It's the same reasons I'm not a fan of downloadable movies. If you have a vast collection of games (or movies) on your harddrive and it fails, you lose the entire collection. If a disc gets ruined, you lose that one game (or movie).

I'm sure there'd be some type of history or receipt of what's been downloaded like Live offers, but then you'd have to download your entire collection once again. And if it's a vast collection...

But, I'm sure media downloads are going to be the future at some point, though. Everything seems to be pointing towards it.

The way PSN is doing it, there is a history of your purchases and you can download all of your content up to 5 times, on any PS3. Assuming you dont have 5 HDs die, you should be fine.

Nevertheless to some degree I agree with you. Hard media does have its advantages and having everything on 1 harddrive can be risky.

I'd love to DL my games, but unless they could work something out with the DRM so you could store it to a networked media drive and allow you to burn at least one copy for backup I don't think it would be practical. 120GB is not enough to pay $60 per game to DL 1 copy that is handcuffed to the drive with no way to transfer it once it is downloaded. If they would allow you to save to a media drive then they could bust electronic distribution of games wide open :cool:

unless they could work something out with the DRM so you could store it to a networked media drive and allow you to burn at least one copy for backup I don't think it would be practical.

good point

Not having to worry about leaving a game laying around and coming home to see my 1 yr old playing frisbee with it would make it worth enough for me.

I've got a copy of Madden '06 I'd be happy to donate. I'm sure it would be more entertaining as a frisbee than it was as a video game.

Doh! I read the OP entirely wrong!

DolfanJay wasn't talking about downloadable games...he was talking about installing them to the HD (from a disc, I assume).

Now, this is a good idea. It would be nice to install your favorite games to your HD. It's be just like a PC in this regard. Besides the benefits DolfanJay already mentioned, the fact that it's still on disc means you can delete it from the HD to free up space without feeling that you're losing it.

What piracy is there that I could do by being able to rip to the 360 HDD that I can't already do with a PC right now (and much easier, since my PC's on a real worldwide network and has a DVD burner)? I mean, really, what are you gonna do with a game on your 360's HDD, other than play it on that 360?

on the original xbox, with a simple mod you could install a 200gb hard drive and download games to your hearts content on it. obviously ms knew about this, but of course there wasn't much they could do to stop. i doubt ms is going to make it any easier for the hackers to do the same. itd be nice since itd speed up load times considerably, but im almost 99% sure we'll never see this as an officially supported feature.

the same thing with the ps2. even though it hasnt happened yet, if/when the ps3 is exploited, my assumption is its gonna be massive considering how much more open sony's platform is than ms's

it's a feature I'd like to see. it makes sense as the HDD size increases and they already have the network distribution infrastructure in Live!.

nobody will be shocked to see this come down the pipe methinks.

that being said, they would have to work out the DRM and piracy angles. You wouldn't want to lose your game if your HDD/console died. I'd be willing to lose the transferability and resellability of a physical disk if the end cost to me was less (call it $10-15 less seems fair to me).

Even if I bought a physical copy, it'd be worth it to me to be able to install to the HDD to reduce load times and/or noise level- ala PC games. I'm even OK with the disk needing to be in the tray to run that way, as long as it doesn't access the optical drive during play.

I'm not talking about doing away with the actual Discs.

They could do just like a PC and require the disc be in the tray in order to play it. The other advantages I mentioned would still be there.

-Less noise(This could be the biggest advantage considering its one of the things I dont like about my 360 is how loud it is when a demanding game is being played)

-Less wear and tear on your discs.(How many people complain about scratched discs. This would occur a lot less often if you only had to load the game off the disc once.)

-Less load times.

I'd like to just add an external HD via USB. Obviously microsoft will lose money on the 120gb hd they sell, so there is no point in even hoping they open that port, but it's clearly an opportunity.

Does anyone know if there have been any prog's to allow this? If you can hookup and Ipod via the software, i'm pretty sure someone has attempted to develop an external hd backdoor

I'd like to just add an external HD via USB. Obviously microsoft will lose money on the 120gb hd they sell, so there is no point in even hoping they open that port, but it's clearly an opportunity.

Agreed.

It also could once and for all shut up everyone who is complaining that MS made a mistake by only using DVD9.

Doing away with the actual Physica media is a BAD BAD BAD idea. That is not what this topic was about.

Just a simple install the game to the HD, and leave the DVD in the machine for authentication when you start the game....done. There is ZERO reasons why they can't do this now. Heck some games almost do it now as they do cache some things to the HD, that is why the HD is smaller then it should be as there is space reserved for this purpose. You would still need the original game Disc, so there should be no piracy issues to think about.

Doing away with the actual Physica media is a BAD BAD BAD idea. That is not what this topic was about.

Just a simple install the game to the HD, and leave the DVD in the machine for authentication when you start the game....done. There is ZERO reasons why they can't do this now. Heck some games almost do it now as they do cache some things to the HD, that is why the HD is smaller then it should be as there is space reserved for this purpose. You would still need the original game Disc, so there should be no piracy issues to think about.

I wouldn't say that getting rid of physical media is a bad idea (its being done already on the console and the PC), but certainly mirroring what can be done on the PC today in terms of installing to a HDD should be pretty simple for the consoles of today. It wouldn't shock me to see this in a dashboard upgrade at some point...

I guess the next question is, does anyone have any contacts at Microsoft to request this?

Teddy

Option 1 no downloading (at least not as the only option):

-I want the disk.
-If I delete it from the HDD only to have to download it again.
-If I want to play Halo3 at 12:01 AM on 9/25/07, I would have to buy the disc. There is no way a huge title will download in less than a day at launch. Would I then have to buy it again as a download if I wanted it on my drive?
-Option 1 sucks

Option 2 no disk in drive to play:

-I would then still have to get up to switch games.
-Option 2 sucks

That only leaves option 3...

Option 3 game ripped from disk:

-MS needs to do this now.
-I mostly only play arcade games anymore, because of their accessibility.
-MS needs to do this now.
-PS3 is looking more and more functional everyday.
-MS needs to do this now.

Let the people who get paid the big bucks to figure out how to keep piracy down to a only the few who are way hardcore and will get around anything. Haven't the hackers already figured out a way to do this anyway.

Give the people who want to pay for the games a way to do it also.

Off the top of my head, I can think of two ways for them to do this:

1. Coupon Code packaged with the game.
-One use linked to the first GT that uses it.
-They could even do two SKU's for each game, one “with” and one “without”.
-They could ship the “without's” to rental places, and charge a couple of bucks extra for the one “with” to recoup costs of a second SKU.

2. No coupons, just set up a system where the 360 randomly asks you to insert a disk for verification at random intervals.
-It could randomly pick a game stored on your hard drive.
-You have 10 minutes to find your retail copy and insert the disk.
-If you put the disk in you're golden, and the intervals between verifications gets longer.
-If you can't find it, you lose "rip" privileges for that game.
-If you can't find it, your verifications come more frequently.
-If you can't verify three discs, you loose all "rip" privileges for that 360.

MS is at the head of Managed Copy, they have a closed system that is hooked directly to their network, with proprietary software and hardware in which users already have to register and pay to get premium services. If MS can’t do it with the 360 and LIVE, then who can?

I guess the next question is, does anyone have any contacts at Microsoft to request this?

Teddy

At one point I had asked admirm and benwaggoner (MS guys) that post in the HD software insiders thread to forward this request to the Xbox guys. I don't know if they did, but benwaggoner had said something along the lines of "that would be a cool feature".

Option 1 no downloading (at least not as the only option):

-I want the disk.
-If I delete it from the HDD only to have to download it again.
-If I want to play Halo3 at 12:01 AM on 9/25/07, I would have to buy the disc. There is no way a huge title will download in less than a day at launch. Would I then have to buy it again as a download if I wanted it on my drive?
-Option 1 sucks



Just a comment on this- there isn't a reason why you couldn't pre-download the game once it goes gold and then just activate it at 12:01AM 9/25/07. Steam has been doing this for quite some time on the PC end of things. No reason that live couldn't do the same if MS was serious about digital distribution.

Tomb Raider Anniversary Coming to Xbox Live Marketplace (http://xbox360.gamezone.com/news/06_18_07_02_06PM.htm) While this is for only one game, if it is successful and a there is a high demand for it for other games I could see Microsoft adding the feature to install games in a fall or spring update.

Microsoft was founded on steal all great ideas!

Just a comment on this- there isn't a reason why you couldn't pre-download the game once it goes gold and then just activate it at 12:01AM 9/25/07. Steam has been doing this for quite some time on the PC end of things. No reason that live couldn't do the same if MS was serious about digital distribution.

That could work. It would have to be sold at a discount since it wouldn't have any resale value.

Tomb Raider Anniversary Coming to Xbox Live Marketplace While this is for only one game, if it is successful and a there is a high demand for it for other games I could see Microsoft adding the feature to install games in a fall or spring update.

Microsoft was founded on steal all great ideas!
Hmmm... Why do they require you own the "Legends" disk if it's a full retail game and not just an expantion?

$60 Billion in MS points over the last three years...wow, no wonder they can front R* a few Million for episodic exclusives.

Hmmm... Why do they require you own the "Legends" disk if it's a full retail game and not just an expantion?

$60 Billion in MS points over the last three years...wow, no wonder they can front R* a few Million for episodic exclusives.
My guess is to reward those who own TR Legends with earlier playable content.

That could work. It would have to be sold at a discount since it wouldn't have any resale value.


Which I mentioned in my first post on the subject of pure digital downloads. IMO 10-15 bucks less seems fair to me, but I don't get to set the pricing of these things. They'd also have to figure out how to make sure I could re-download it if it was lost, and if I could transport it around or not (ie log into my live account at my friend's place and download it and play there or if that would be specifically disallowed).