500 MB Limit? Imagine...

[kidkit]

I'm sure many of us here have downloaded a few demos, some larger than a gig even, and though the hard drive is only 20 gig with about 13 usable to the user I still manage to fit 11 or so of this giants on there. So I was thinking it would be great if there was an uper echelon version of the XBLA, exclusive to the Hard Drive users of course... Push the Size limit up to something like 500 Meg, and charge a little more for the games. The first 'flagship' game could be An online only version of Halo 1, which has never had online on xbox, only the pc version. Something like that would be a Huge hype monster for Halo 3 (like it needs it...).

Moving on, something like this kind of opens the door a little wider for full titles down the road, but smaller developers and budget game developers would have a more realistic means of selling there titles at a lower cost (so they'd actually sell a few) with less risk (cost of manufacturing etc). And maybe get some 'newer' classic games on our arcade..

Just a few suggestions / examples

Vigilante 8 (online only)
Basic Sports Games, maybe something like a rockstar table tennis
Quake3, Counter Strike, Day of Defeat etc.


Make sense? foolish idea?
Something to talk about at least.

[Number 13]

I think once bigger hard drives are released, it's something to think about, but not at the moment, not with the 20gb ones...

[Curry]

I've discussed the subject of the size limit with Major Nelson and there are 2 main reasons for the 50Mb size limit: being able to fit on a memory card and effectively enforcing a very hard limit on developers not to make $60 retail games for a $5 to $15 platform. I think the release of the 256Mb memory unit may in the future mean the limit might get increased to 100 or 200, but nowhere near the 500Mb that would constitute a retail game. It would simply give the developers way too much room to compete with the games that were meant to be on the platform (like Geometry Wars and the coin-ops) as such taking away the whole idea.

Keep the arcade platform for the arcade games and the retail platform for the retail games imho :)

[kidkit]

Ah yes, I suppose the limit that high would blur the line too much between Arcade versus Full Game.

I really like what this Live Arcade is doing for digital distrubtion, as with Steam, I'd be happy to see stores and hard copies out of the picture on the next generation of consoles =]

[Curry]

Microsoft is also highly surprised at the unexpected success of Arcade :) Apparently it outsold expectations by a factor 4 or something in the first months :)

[kidkit]

Sounds like Marketting to me, even so I'd have to say I'm very pleased with the content on the Arcade thus far and the distraction it has provided (along with downloadable demos and trailers) while we wait for the next big Retail game.

I mean.. an online game you can play over the net with full voice chat for only $5us / 5 euros, that's brilliant :)

[Rival24]

At this point I’m disappointed in Arcade. There’s not a single game on there I’d like to play. The last new content was uploaded 2 months ago or something… Let's just hope Street Fighter and Pac-man come out soon.

[TRIGGER M4N]

At this point I’m disappointed in Arcade. There’s not a single game on there I’d like to play. The last new content was uploaded 2 months ago or something… Let's just hope Street Fighter and Pac-man come out soon.


Is that why 3 out of your 5 last played games are from Arcade?

[Rival24]

Is that why 3 out of your 5 last played games are from Arcade?
:D There's an explanation for that :P I just finished Crystal Quest, I showed Feeding Frenzy to a friend and I don't play Geometry Wars because I 'like' it, it's more that I can't stand having only 40 achievement points. hehe :P

[TRIGGER M4N]

Lol, ok.

[kidkit]

Heh, I'm pretty sure Microsoft wanted SF to be out right now in this big open window of minimal releases to fill the void... Too bad capcom can't get their act together.

[Nino]

Is that why 3 out of your 5 last played games are from Arcade?
:D Owned.

I really hope that they raise the memory limit, when I was at Streamline Studios they were having a pretty hard time fitting everything within the 50MB limit. 50MB is really too small imo, I agree that Arcade games must be small and more like 'gamesnacks', something you play just to waste some time in between playing 'real' games, but 50MB is just too small for any good game. Make it 200MB so we can have some good 'next-gen arcade' titles on there. I mean an bitesize original 3D fighting game would be awesome but that would take well over 50MB. I'd hate it if Hoopworld, Small Arms or Mad Tracks would lack features just because that limit.

On second thought; maybe MS can make it more flexible? Release 'lite' versions of XBLA games that fit within the 50MB limit with less features etc. and then have 'full' versions which are a little bit more expensive but with a large amount of maps and modes etc. That way we'd have better arcade games, the memory card users are still able to play them and MS sells more harddrives. That would make sense to me.

Maybe DenisDenis can shed some light on how they're expierincing the whole 50MB limit thing?

[Rival24]

Maybe DenisDenis can shed some light on how they're expierincing the whole 50MB limit thing?

He already did:

Mad Tracks is a full game squizzed in 50M thanks to the Xbox. This thing can eat, digest, process and dispose of about anything. The original was more than 300M, we managed to enhanced all kind of things, add achievements, make it pretty for HDTV and still have room to put 10M of music!!!
The price will probably be 800MP (we don't favor 1200MP), again, we will listen to Microsoft expertise on this field.

Cheers!

[Nino]

Ohyeah, I remember reading that.

[Curry]

Like I said I think the 50 will be upped one day, but not immensely. Problem is, if you make it 100 devvers will still be complaining that they need more. In the words of J Allard: "the bitches just need to learn to use compression and code better" (in slightly different wording ;) )

[YLA G]

i sayd it before..

you got demo's so large.. so why not BC old games that are less then 1 gb..
examples:

236MB - NTSC - Roller Coaster Tycoon

326MB - NTSC - Namco Museum

393MB - PAL - The Sims

310MB - NTSC - Simpsons Road Rage

629MB - PAL - Micro Machines

733MG - NTSC - Grand Theft Auto III


they can make profit from the BC team

[Sir SpankalotUK]

think over the next year or two we are going to see arcade take off in a big way, maybe m$ need to relax the requirements a touch. I'd love to see some xbox1 games available for download.

[xboxguy]

i sayd it before..

you got demo's so large.. so why not BC old games that are less then 1 gb..
examples:

236MB - NTSC - Roller Coaster Tycoon

326MB - NTSC - Namco Museum

393MB - PAL - The Sims

310MB - NTSC - Simpsons Road Rage

629MB - PAL - Micro Machines

733MG - NTSC - Grand Theft Auto III


they can make profit from the BC team
i would really like to play roller coaster tycoon on xbox, its so hard to find and i dont feel like buying on ebay, not to mention it's not BC. maybe somebody could squeeze RC2 into 50 mb...that would be awesome indeed.

[kidkit]

i would really like to play roller coaster tycoon on xbox, its so hard to find and i dont feel like buying on ebay, not to mention it's not BC. maybe somebody could squeeze RC2 into 50 mb...that would be awesome indeed.

I'd Say it's very possible to remake or recreate a game like RC2 that small. Look at RoboBlitz for Inspiration. Believe it or not but it is using the Unreal 3 Game Engine (for a freakin arcade title!), there are 15 levels even. This is all possible using Procedural Textures.

I'd try to explain them to you but I'd be sounding like a complete fool I'm sure.

http://allegorithmic.com/v2/ProFX_1.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_texture

Wild Stuff :)

[Curry]

Also have a look at the 96KB example I mentioned in this age-old article (http://www.xboxic.com/news/90) :)

[kidkit]

Also have a look at the 96KB example I mentioned in this age-old article (http://www.xboxic.com/news/90) :)

hey, you could have at least linked back near the download link of .kkrieger!

Amazing stuff indeed.

http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger

[Nino]

Ah, .kkrieger. I pulled out my ethernet cable to check if it wasnt secretly streaming textures from the internets because I couldnt believe it was possible to fit a 'fullblown' FPS in such a small package.

[Curry]

Ah, .kkrieger. I pulled out my ethernet cable to check if it wasnt secretly streaming textures from the internets because I couldnt believe it was possible to fit a 'fullblown' FPS in such a small package.
I've written demos in 4KB bootblocks as well in the good old Amiga days :) No 3D stuff though :P

[YLA G]

lol ping pong all the way :)