Criterion Addresses Burnout Online 360 HDD Issues
A few days ago it was noted that the Online portion of Burnout Paradise was unaccessible to Xbox 360 owners who did not have a hard drive. Apparently those users were not happy when they found out the game they purchased did not include all of the features of their HDD brethren. Criterion felt the need to address their audience with a statement on the official site for the game.
It's important for us that all online players could show off new content when they go online and unfortunately it wasn't going to be possible to do this by supporting the lowest common storage denominator, the 64Mb Memory Unit, either in size or data read speeds. Crucially we also didn't want to split the playing community between those that have updated data and those that don't. We saw this as vital in maintaining simplicity to all online users; different players having different content packages wouldn't be able to play online with each other.
Criterion attempted to solve this issue with Microsoft, but saw no other solution than to require the HDD for full online play. Core and Arcade users can post their scores to the leaderboards and compete in the Road Rule races to post their best showtime scores amongst their friends.
Most of the flack they received is the placement of the HDD required sticker, which should have been prominently displayed on the front of the box. Gamers should know exactly what is required of the game from the front of the box, before plunking down their dollars for the latest slice of hot gaming pie. This reaction will hopefully teach future developers that they need to be up front about system requirements to alleviate confusion and disappointment before it becomes an issue.
Toots
Posted to Video Games on 4 February 2008
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: arcade, burnout paradise, core, criterion, hdd, xbox 360
The point is that if you own a 360 and don't have the hard drive, there's something wrong with you and you need to get the HDD.
Actually, the real interview had a comparison between those people without 360 HDD's and Peter Sutcliff, citing psychological similarities and why Burnout doesn't want to be asociated with that kind of person..