18th August 2005, 8:12 PM
I see the way you interpretted MS's command is that they should actually pretend it doesn't exist at all.
What if they just mean "give them a way to save without a hard drive and remember that if you have anything that exclusively uses the HD, you are reducing your user base"? If that's the case, MS just wants the designers to make the save files small enough to fit on cards and set the game up to allow directly saving to the cards. I don't think they are outright forbidden from designing support in the game for directly saving to the hard disk drive.
Now then, here's why I don't think that. Final Fantasy XI. That game HAS to be installed ENTIRELY to the hard disk, like ALL MMORPGs, because of the issue of updating the game. We aren't talking small patches here. MMORPGs routinely go through massive content updates, as well as major revisions to core parts of the game's code. Due to that, especially the latter, EVERYTHING has to be on the hard drive. They have announced that the 360 version WILL be using the same servers as the PC and PS2 versions (the PS2's hard drive is basically FOR FFXI :D), so they HAVE to use the HD.
So I think MS just means "keep in mind not everyone, possibly most users in fact, won't have the hard drive", so they can still design support for it, but only a few users will be able to use that support. The hard drive can't just be for XB1 games, and again, I come to that conclusion based entirely off the absolute need that FFXI has for a hard drive.
What if they just mean "give them a way to save without a hard drive and remember that if you have anything that exclusively uses the HD, you are reducing your user base"? If that's the case, MS just wants the designers to make the save files small enough to fit on cards and set the game up to allow directly saving to the cards. I don't think they are outright forbidden from designing support in the game for directly saving to the hard disk drive.
Now then, here's why I don't think that. Final Fantasy XI. That game HAS to be installed ENTIRELY to the hard disk, like ALL MMORPGs, because of the issue of updating the game. We aren't talking small patches here. MMORPGs routinely go through massive content updates, as well as major revisions to core parts of the game's code. Due to that, especially the latter, EVERYTHING has to be on the hard drive. They have announced that the 360 version WILL be using the same servers as the PC and PS2 versions (the PS2's hard drive is basically FOR FFXI :D), so they HAVE to use the HD.
So I think MS just means "keep in mind not everyone, possibly most users in fact, won't have the hard drive", so they can still design support for it, but only a few users will be able to use that support. The hard drive can't just be for XB1 games, and again, I come to that conclusion based entirely off the absolute need that FFXI has for a hard drive.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)