Bethesda On 360 Development With and Without HDD

"A look at how the game developer's products will play on the Xbox 360's two different configurations

Ever since Microsoft made the announcement that the Xbox 360 would ship in two different configurations, there's been much speculation on what effect this decision would have on developers'use of the hard drive; after all, if a certain percentage of the 360 user base does not have a hard drive, don't all games for the console need to be made with the notion that there is no HDD present?

Taking advantage of the HDD...
Bethesda's Todd Howard, the executive producer on the 360 RPG Oblivion, recently told Game Informer magazine "...Oblivion will still work on every 360. That being said, Oblivion takes full advantage of the hard drive and uses it extensively, so we'd certainly recommend that everyone gets one."

But just what does "extensively" mean? What, besides improved load times, will make the game experience better enough to warrant the extra $100 expenditure? In speaking to website GamesFirst.com, Peter Hines, V.P. of Marketing and Public Relations at Bethesda added to Howard's comments on what the HDD would mean for gamers.

"We definitely plan to take full advantage of the hard drive for Oblivion and you will see the results in the game's performance, faster load times, etc... How much of a difference? We don't know yet," admitted Hines.

He continued, "Does the difference in performance justify buying a hard drive? Well if you were only doing it for Oblivion, it might not be worth $100 just for one game. But, considering that there will certainly be other games that will take advantage of the hard drive as well, not to mention other functionality the hard drive allows for, I don't think there's any question in our minds that the hard drive is well worth it. That's the version we plan to buy."" [more]