While a HDD is faster, it doesn't necessarily mean the game will need it.  I mean just look at many PS3 exclusives, i.e. Killzone and Uncharted, that don't require an install, yet are some of the best looking games and don't have ungodly load times.  I would imagine next gen games should be able to pull off the same thing, or better, with an 8x drive.  Of course, there's always the 12x option.    I'm sure those will be relatively cheap by 2013.  Though, that may be overkill.

That's exactly what I mean. Those games use the HDD as cache. They might be slower if reading and writing were done on the same physical device as is the case with Halo 3.

With a 8x drive you can display blu-ray quality fmv while loading 30mb of game data per second and decompress it to HDD cache. There should be no need for any initial install next gen.

/Facepalm at the last few posts.

Every game uses the HDD as cache EVERY GAME. But that doesn't change the fact that if you have a SSD the read speed is gonna be 10 times faster than the fastest blu-ray drive on the market. Having cache at a seperate HDD or a different partion is just as effective as having disc plus cache. (Even more so due to the faster read speed from the HDD).

Pre rendered cut scenes is the only thing that will take advantage of bigger discs (only because you don't want 20GB of junk lying around on your HDD wasting space), rest will be better of the HDD drive in every way imaginable. Pre Rendered cut scenes is imo a thing of the past, but i guess it helps some games like FFXIII who is like 70% made up of it.

Games like Halo 3 who where slower of HDD was only because the way that game was scripted, every game made today (for the 360) loads faster from the HDD. Even if its only like 2 second difference, there is a diffrence. In most games there are a huge difference.

Microsoft will use Blu-Ray for that matter because Blu-Ray will be the standard for the next 5-10 yrs.

Oh, lol.  Sorry, misunderstood you.  Thought you were speaking of initial install plus Blu-ray speeds. 

First of all, how do games work on a 360 arcade?

Making different partitions is actually slower then not using partitions.

SSD drives are probably overkill, not worth the extra money. A 5400 rpm hdd should be at least 5 times faster  compared to the fastest read speed of 12x dvd, yet it's hardly ever twice as fast after installing. I would like to see one next to a regular large capacity HDD but that's not going to happen.

Personally I hope pre-rendered cut scenes make a come back. That's the time you pay attention to all the details, that's the time the game should look at its best. Rendered in engine it's usually when the game looks the worst. Why limit the artists by the game engine. Use it to make something spectacular instead of a few people talking in front of a static backdrop as happens so often now.

And most importantly use it to load the game in the background. I find it really annoying to sit through boring under performing cut scenes that are interrupted to load the next part, and then still have to wait to load the next section of the game after it is finished. No wonder people rather skip them.

What is preferable, buy a game, wait for it to install, and wait for it to load between cut scenes. Or the way Uncharted 2 handles it.

Ofcourse it's all moot if developers want to force digital distribution on us. Why bother optimizing for blu-ray hdd combo if you rather have people download the full game. Maybe we will see another generation with DVD, install a heavily compressed dvd to the hdd or download it as your only options. That probably also means no pre-rendered cut scenes or low bitrate and no uncompressed sound to save space. I hope that doesn't happen.

1) Sony has to buy into Blu-Ray as well. They own somewhere along the lines of 10% of Blu-Ray, so effectively they have to pay 90% as much as MS does.

2) MS has to buy into DVD

3) Blu Ray is/was expensive because of the parts and manufacturing, not because of the cut going to the Blu Ray consortium

microsoft will not be going blue ray they dont like it , they denied request for years to be members of the blue ray assocation , even with halo legends blue ray they were not happy that it was on blue ray

This would be the way if the games all have mandatory installs which they should have, no reason to make the media limited. Blu-ray can be standard though (for the raw data and cutscenes), but it doesn't have to be as every game should be played of the HDD. Which yeah means that there will probably be some digital distubtion service for all games, which is cool.