Live being a secure network is a problem in that massive titles are the antithesis of secure, stable, and quality. That means that a massive title for live must be stable, require minimum downloads, and must go through the live service for safety reasons.
Massive title developers rarely put a premium on any of those things, and in some instances seem downright incapable of doing them. Most massive developers prefer the fast, sloppy, and lazy model. They are used to it, because they have gotten away with it for so many years. In spite of consumer outrage. So when someone tells them they have to deliver a stable service, and will have to ensure coding quality to prevent massive patching. They quite literally have no idea as to exactly how they are supposed to do that.
Unless you have actually played one of these titles you have no concept of the barely contained chaos. The majority of massive titles launch bug riddled requiring hundreds of patches, and patches of patches, and patches of those patches as well. None of which is compressed into a single file. They just create a new file to reign in the previous file. All of which invariably screws something up. Which only gets worse if the developer also decides they want to carry the bare minimum or server load. Which means that the player is expected to shoulder more of the game variables on their system. Which means even more patching.
The best analogy is a Chief Engineer in Star Trek after the captain has managed to yet again almost get the ship blown to pieces. The developers run back and forth cross wiring things, gutting things, and dumping in new things to do new things. None of which was properly tested before hand. Meaning a whole new managerie of problems crop up.
The problem isn't the 360 so much as the developers lacking a certain degree of skill when it comes to coding within restrictions. Microsoft wants a game that will require two or three patches a month. They want the game to be stable so the players can continue to play with few problems. Finally they want the developer to not abuse the hardware. Sure dumping another Gig or two onto a hard drive in a PC is not much, but if the game is already using twelve gigs out of the box, and there are only a couple gigs of storage left on the machine then you do have a problem.
Honestly I do not think that is too hard to ask, and that is why I suspect the massive developers bringing their game to the console are deciding to wait. Better to let the PC users beta test the bugs out of their systems for them. Then they will be able to do a proper coding job with the console in mind. They can then meet a certain level of standards.
