 Do you have an Xbox 360 Core or Arcade model? Did you expect it to be able to do what the higher end Xbox 360s can? You did? Well, guess what? You're wrong. Dead wrong.
If you buy Burnout Paradise, the latest installment in Criterion's critically acclaimed series, you'll be forced to play it offline, unless you pay $100 to Microsoft to buy a hard drive.
"Wait a minute? Are you saying what I think you're saying?! Burnout Paradise on the Xbox 360 REQUIRES a hard drive in order to play online?!" Yes. That is exactly what I said. No typos. You MUST have a hard drive in order to play this game online. "But I thought Microsoft said 'every game will work with every Xbox 360 system'?" Yeah they did, but did you see the part that said, "But just like some games will require you to have a Memory Unit to save games, some games will require you to have a Hard Drive to experience them." OH MY GOD! NO WAY!
What does this mean? It means that if you bought a 360 Core or Arcade, you just got ripped-off big time, but not by Criterion/EA, but by Microsoft.
I know, I'm a Sony fan and tend to gravitate to them, but hear me out. Games these days need a lot of space to run, especially big open-world games like Burnout Paradise. Microsoft should have had the foresight to see that this would become a problem and launched the Core model with a 20GB hard drive and the Premium one with a 40GB or so. By not doing that, they basically limited what the developers can do with the system and make them figure out other ways of caching and quick access.
This isn't the first time that the hard drive has been required on the 360 (think of all the DLC for various games, video downloads, Final Fantasy XI, and Oblivion GOTY), but it is perhaps the most notable since Burnout has huge mainstream and casual gamer popularity, and the people who buy this game might not be the ones that have the Elite Super Deluxe model with all the bells and whistles.
The 360's lack of a standard hard drive is also holding back the game industry because now it's getting to the point where the PS3 versions of games are being effected by Microsoft's boneheaded decision. Rockstar and Capcom have already expressed problems with the lack of a hard drive, and I'm sure more are to follow.
But remember, this is one (admittedly biased) guy's viewpoint. So, readers, I ask you this: what's the solution to this problem? Should devs just leave behind Core and Arcade owners? Or what should happen here?
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This is the first installment in a new series here at RF Generation informing you of the latest downloadable games for Nintendo Wii, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360. I will post these every Sunday or Monday. For the first edition of this article, I'm just going to post North American releases. If you would like to see this expanded, let me know
NINTENDO WII VIRTUAL CONSOLE
  
PLAYSTATION STORE
  
XBOX LIVE ARCADE
 
My pick of the week is Band of Bugs for XBLA. Know why? Simple. Turn based strategy involving bugs. Sounds really fun. It's been well received so far. It scored an 8 out of 10 in the Official Xbox Magazine, and was a finalist in the 2007 Independent Games Festival. I do not have a 360, so I cannot play it.
Until next time, happy downloading!
UPDATE: There was some stuff released for the Playstation Store this week! It's been added to this article.
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