This is another fine example of why Microsoft needs to figure out some way to get larger capacity discs for the Xbox 360.
Bioware's highly anticipated Mass Effect 2 has been announced to span over two discs. While PC gamers can just do the two disc install, Xbox 360 owners will need to swap out the discs which could lead to scratches and dirty discs.
Apparently, the moment in the game where the disc swap is needed has been carefully integrated and will not interfere with the gameplay, but that still isn't going to help me avoid any damage to my discs.
According to BioWare’s Chris Priestly’s post on the game’s official forums “Even though there is a disc swap, it occurs at a carefully planned place in the game (that does not interfere with gameplay) and is done once,” Priestly explained and then went on to reassure that “You do not swap back and forth. 1 swap and then done.”
Well, at least it isn't as bad as Lost Odyssey and Star Ocean 4 which came in a set of 4 DVDs each, both of which were terribly packaged in my opinion.
12/05/09 Colton West
Agreed, swapping 2 discs isn't convenient, but you not damaging discs isn't a ownership guarantee for any game you buy; that's a matter of being responsible with your stuff. With situations like the 2 disc issue, its obvious XBox 360 may need a major update/upgrade in hardware but they'll eat bullets before they convert to Blu-Ray.
ReplyDeleteFor years I've been facinated by the storage of data since I came across an strange occurence of an impossible feat. My PC was running dial-up on a 56k modem and I was downloading Netscape Web Browser. This file was just over 50MBs, which on a 56k is like 2 years. But surprisingly my download finished in under 10 seconds! Confused, I thought must have downloaded the wrong thing, but I didn't. The downloaded file was under 1MB, how could this be? I'm still puzzled to this day.
Here's what I learned... data can be compressed to a degree that bigger and bigger hardware or media will be unnecessary to accomplish high quality media.
With compression in mind, my guess is that Microsoft might be working on doing just that; compressing data that won't require super hardware or media discs to access it.
How far away is that technology? Given the renewed OS success of Windows 7 over Vista, it should be an indicator of where MS is going. Smarter usually beats Bigger.
Erskin