It's been well over a year since Microsoft let Xbox Live Arcade games stretch their legs to a 250 megabyte max, but it appears that the company is giving it even more room to grow. David Edery, portfolio planner for XBLA, tells GamesIndustry.biz that the official limit is now 350 MB, calling the change "steady progress."
Edery says the fattening up of XBLA titles is due to "listening to our partners, listening to our customers to try and get a feel for what's right" adding that "it's good for the ecosystem" to have some sort of limit to encourage pick up and play games. Hopefully, with that extra room, Namco Bandai can go back and add a bit more graphical oomph to Soul Calibur for XBLA, get the visuals back to my rose-tinted glasses memories of the Dreamcast version.
I think there is a danger that with the move to bigger sizes XBLA will move away from small, reasonably priced indie games to expensive bloatware from EA.
Megaman wrote:I think there is a danger that with the move to bigger sizes XBLA will move away from small, reasonably priced indie games to expensive bloatware from EA.
Using that logic, why havent we seen that happen with the PSN content?
What gives me the shits is that it is fine to release multiple gig demos and Xbox classic stuff, but to then cap full games at 350megs! I would love to have the option of being able to download retail games directly should the urge strike me. I would be interested to see how many people purchased Warhawk online vs going to a bricks and mortar store. I know quite a few of my friends impulse purchased it online when they might not have even thought about getting it at retail.