hard drives on modern consoles

[danny_galaga]

why are they so large? is the whole game loaded onto it to make load times smaller or summink? just curious...

[pointdablame]

Nope, none are used to completely load a game to the drive, AFAIK.  They're used for a number of things though that require a good amount of space.

Take the Xbox 360 (though the PS3 is almost identical).  The 360 hard drive can house game saves, but it can also load game data for increased load times, better caching etc.  It can also download arcade games to the hard drive, as well as TV and movies.  You can also download game demos from Xbox live.

Factor in demos that can be 1gig or more, HD video, a bunch of arcade games, etc etc... and you'll see why the drive is necessary.  Personally, the 20gig drive on my 360 is already looking a bit small.  I wish the 120gig upgrade wasn't $180 though....

[SirPoonga]

To expand on what point said...
On the 360 you can download/rent HD movies, TV shows, trailers, lots of media.  There's also arcade games, demos, game saves, expansions, map packs, and other new content for games.  You can also rip a CD to the 360's hd and use that as background music in games.

That's one advantage the ps3 has, you can use any hdd so it isn't expensive.

I would like the 120gig hdd also.  I've been renting HD movies.  It's still cheaper than buying a player and the disc.  A typical movie can take up to 4gigs of space.

Consoles aren't just for gaming these days, they are multimedia centers.

[shardian]

I thought they were just trying to appeal to the pirating community...    

[tommy]

why are they so large? is the whole game loaded onto it to make load times smaller or summink? just curious...

For the same reasons you need a large HD on your PC.

[ahofle]

For the same reasons you need a large HD on your PC.

Pr0n?

[danny_galaga]

For the same reasons you need a large HD on your PC.

Pr0n?