Good news for 360 owners (with a HD)

[moycon]

Not sure how folks without a HD drive will feel about it. (I sure wish MS had just released the one version of 360 and been done with it) but I thought this was good news...

 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, classic PSone platform adventure game that it is, is headed to Xbox Live Arcade. However, with Microsoft's much-touted 50 megabyte limit on Arcade game sizes, gamers were wondering how so much content would be compressed into such a small size.

 

Wonder no longer. Microsoft's group manager for Xbox Live Arcade, Greg Canessa recently explained that "By keeping the file size small for Xbox Live Arcade games, gamers can put one or more games on a memory unit and easily bring those games to a friend's house to share and play."

 

He went on to say that there are going to be obvious exceptions to the rule. "If any games do exceed 50 MB, it's for a very specific reason that would ensure that the gameplay experience is the best it can be, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the most popular games of all time, and you can [bet] that you'll see similar high-quality games come to Xbox Live Arcade in the future."

 

This bodes well for more complex titles on Microsoft's Arcade, and hopefully more nifty PSone era titles to boot.

[Shannon]

I never put much thought into it. But if they don't support it already microsoft oughta just let you copy stuff to USB mem sticks. They are so cheap these days it'd make for a great backup device.

[Dusk2600]

how did they get the rights to this?

[PuddWakkr]

It's Konami's game. They can port it to any system they would like I'd imagine.

[Foxy Cleopatra]

Not sure how folks without a HD drive will feel about it. (I sure wish MS had just released the one version of 360 and been done with it) but I thought this was good news...

 

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, classic PSone platform adventure game that it is, is headed to Xbox Live Arcade. However, with Microsoft's much-touted 50 megabyte limit on Arcade game sizes, gamers were wondering how so much content would be compressed into such a small size.

 

Wonder no longer. Microsoft's group manager for Xbox Live Arcade, Greg Canessa recently explained that "By keeping the file size small for Xbox Live Arcade games, gamers can put one or more games on a memory unit and easily bring those games to a friend's house to share and play."

 

He went on to say that there are going to be obvious exceptions to the rule. "If any games do exceed 50 MB, it's for a very specific reason that would ensure that the gameplay experience is the best it can be, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is one of the most popular games of all time, and you can [bet] that you'll see similar high-quality games come to Xbox Live Arcade in the future."

 

This bodes well for more complex titles on Microsoft's Arcade, and hopefully more nifty PSone era titles to boot.

 

Two minutes ago I was pissed because I was up so early and I didn't get any sleep last night. Now I am so glad I'm up, I'm going to go wake up the 2 men just to tell them this awesome news. Definite download!

[MCHufnagel]

I probably will download this game, even though I already have it. It will be in 16:9 widescreen HD won't it?

[Flojomojo]

This is good news, but I just can't get excited about Castlevania anymore. I should play through the GBA games and my Playstation version of SotN first, I guess ...

[Hyper_Eye]

The fact that SoTN is coming to 360 is really old news. I have been waiting for it for months. The fact that it is going to be over 50mb is the news I suppose. I would have figured they could get that compressed to below 50mb without compromising the title. Compression is advancing all the time. Anyway, this is a definite download.

[spacecadet]

Compression is advancing all the time.

 

Compressing 2D graphics is totally different than compressing 3D textures. It basically can't really be done in any sort of lossy way; it has to be done losslessly and that has absolute limits.

[moycon]

The fact that SoTN is coming to 360 is really old news. I have been waiting for it for months. The fact that it is going to be over 50mb is the news I suppose.

 

Yep, The cap burst was the news there. Thanks for clarifying.

[Hyper_Eye]

Compression is advancing all the time.

 

Compressing 2D graphics is totally different than compressing 3D textures. It basically can't really be done in any sort of lossy way; it has to be done losslessly and that has absolute limits.

 

I assumed that much of the space consumed by this game was it's soundtrack. That can definitely be compressed a great deal and with a lossless codec at that.

[Clint Thompson]

They'll be offering 256MB memory cards (Official MS ones) here shortly... so I can imagine they'll be loosening up the 50MB limit to something like 120 or something.