Xbox 360 to allow you to DL and play ALL Xbox 360 games from Hard Drive!

[greenmedic88]

It's an option; there is no negative in adding functionality, particularly if it noticeably enhances playback performance.

But all 360 games have been coded to run off DVD. That means all load times, streaming schemes, etc. are based upon DVD read times, not HDD times. They aren't optimized to run off HDD since that was against the former MS policy.

While it should assist with streaming textures greatly, which should theoretically eliminate texture pop ins, load times will still be pretty far from lightning quick. It would be about the difference between the load times for a game like DMC4 on the PS3 and DMC4 on the 360.

As soon as this is up and running, I plan on installing Mass Effect since the load times in that game are frequent and long enough to be a distraction. If I don't notice a significant difference (I still notice the lengthy elevator rides), I'm going to say it has minimal benefit on existing games and hope that in the future, developers will provide coding to optimize performance via HDD installs, same as the PS3.

I'll see for myself if it takes "15 minutes."

I already know how long it takes to copy 8GB of data off of a DVD from a faster 16x DVD drive to a faster 7200RPM HDD, so I'm only humoring the overly optimistic. It's over 20 minutes for an 8GB disc image, straight video file copy, no install.