Sorry for the long thread title, but I just wanted to follow forum rules about subject headings... anyway...

Why on earth did R* not give 360 owners the option to install to the HD? All the issues associated with the technical quality of the 360 version compared to the PS3 version, is due to reading off the DVD drive. Also, reading off the DVD drive will cause heat (never a good thing in a 360), noise, and reduce the life of the drive. I assume lots of seeks, and that's not a good thing to do to a DVD drive.

Here is the killer, they will have DLC for the 360, so the code to read data off a hard drive already exists. It's not like it would have been a huge development effort to treat the main game like DLC, and just stream it from the HD.

If I was a 360 only owner, I would find out if this is due to a MS policy (or technical limitation), or find out if this was the discretion of R*, and send whomever is responsible a petition.

360 owners would be happy that GTA IV is coming to their console any small problems within the game would be overlooked.

Not complete? Right...

Not every 360 owner has a HD so it would be unfair on those who didn't have one that those with were getting better version.

Assuming the pop-in issues really are a significant problem:

I am also curious about why installation is not possible on the 360. Many people would probably not care and just play on, but it would be nice to have that option. The 360 version was said to be 2 weeks ahead in development relative to the PS3 version, so wouldn't it be possible to implement this?

It's indeed possible that it was due to a policy from Microsoft, because of the Arcade units. But if installation was optional, I don't think Microsoft really would forbid that. Of course there would be a lot of Arcade-SKU-bashing, but I don't think they really care.

All in all, I'm a bit baffled. Again this is all assuming that those pop-in issues really happen a significant number of times, which I'm not sure about yet.

Not complete meaning if they had added the option to install to the HD, The gaming experience would be better. The delta between those two experiences is what I mean. 

@mods: please ban this guy for trolling. Thank you in advance.

Shit like this is only meant to get into a fight.

All 360 owners can have a HD. It's an upgradable option to those with the core or arcade.

I agree that the title was a bit trollish, but speaking as a 360 owner, I think the core question is actually relevant. I was thinking about the same thing yesterday.

Why not make it optional?