Castlevania to break Live Arcade size limit

[Spartan_X]

Castlevania to break Live Arcade size limit

Konami says its Symphony of the Night won't fit in 50MB; Microsoft's Greg Canessa addresses implications for future XBLA games.

The upcoming release of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night as a downloadable Xbox 360 game is noteworthy for a few reasons. Beyond adding the highly regarded game to the system's catalog, it breaks the mold of an Xbox Live Arcade game in several ways.

Symphony of the Night is not a "small-scale" game in any sense of the phrase. It's based on an existing home-console game, a distinction on Live Arcade only shared by the upcoming Alien Hominid HD. Konami has confirmed to GameSpot that the final size of the Symphony of the Night download will surpass Microsoft's 50MB size limit for Live Arcade games.

Microsoft's group manager for Xbox Live Arcade, Greg Canessa, told GameSpot why the company instituted a 50MB limit in the first place.

"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," Canessa said. "Small file sizes also mean fast download times, making it possible to download and begin playing any Xbox Live Arcade game within one or two minutes."

Even though Symphony of the Night will exceed the size limit, Canessa indicated that there is still a 50MB cap on Live Arcade games, although Microsoft is willing to make 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," Canessa said.

Microsoft is willing to look the other way on Symphony of the Night, and according to Canessa, it won't be the last of its kind on Live Arcade.

"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," Canessa said.

However, there is at least one Live Arcade rule that not even Symphony of the Night will be breaking. Canessa said that a free demo of the game would be made available to all Live Arcade users, and that it would be small enough to fit on a memory unit.

[uPDATE] After the publication of this story, a Microsoft representative contacted GameSpot to clarify one of Canessa's comments. While Symphony of the Night will have a free demo version, it will not fit on the system's 64MB memory unit.

By Brendan Sinclair -- GameSpot

Posted Jan 11, 2007 1:36 pm CT

Story from GameSpot: http://www.gamespot.com/news/6164077.html

Copyright ?2006 CNET Networks, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

[slyph]

so how big is it? hehe

[goji]

To much for us wii folk to handle :p

[Spartan_X]

To much wii folk for us to handle :p

fixed... :shiftyninja:

[maash]

dont most people buy 256 mb cards

[P!P]

Wouldn't Konami be the one breaking the rule???

[AlphaPrime]

They should do this to all games. 50MB is a bit too restrictive, and I don't think anyone cares if they go over. It would be great if they could get some classic Dreamcast games on XBLA, such as Jet Grind Radio, which is around 400MB.

[John Veteran]

I always felt Microsoft's biggest mistake with the 360 was not including a hard drive with both versions of the console...

[Brandon Live Veteran]

I always felt Microsoft's biggest mistake with the 360 was not including a hard drive with both versions of the console...

But still better than cutting the RAM. And if they can really price down the Core system in the future it could be worth it (at least from a marketshare perspective).

[John Veteran]

But still better than cutting the RAM. And if they can really price down the Core system in the future it could be worth it (at least from a marketshare perspective).

Good point on the RAM. But in a year or so when the core system is cheap, that minority will prevent every game from taking advantage of the hard drive, meaning we all suffer in a way.

Yes, I realize we're not exactly suffering, but that's beside the point :p Sometimes I just like to whine :D

[AlphaPrime]

And if they can really price down the Core system in the future it could be worth it (at least from a marketshare perspective).

The Core system isn't bad, the problems are with the memory cards. Why is Microsoft using 64MB memory cards when for the price people are paying they could put in 2GB of flash memory and still make a profit? As it stands now with the current sized memory cards, downloadable content is pretty much out of the question, along with the ability to download and keep more than one or two arcade games. It would be worth it in the long run as more Core owners would download/pay for extra maps/arcade games/etc. Keeping the memory card storage small cripples XBL too much.

[Brandon Live Veteran]

The Core system isn't bad, the problems are with the memory cards. Why is Microsoft using 64MB memory cards when for the price people are paying they could put in 2GB of flash memory and still make a profit? As it stands now with the current sized memory cards, downloadable content is pretty much out of the question, along with the ability to download and keep more than one or two arcade games. It would be worth it in the long run as more Core owners would download/pay for extra maps/arcade games/etc. Keeping the memory card storage small cripples XBL too much.

A fair question. Can't really give you much of an answer beyond "stay tuned."

[Danrarbc]

A fair question. Can't really give you much of an answer beyond "stay tuned."

How about just supporting USB card readers. PS3 does for instance, and Wii takes SD cards. 360 is the only system that supports only proprietary storage.

Yeah I'm not going to argue with Flux, he deserves to be ignored. One that breaks everything down into sides and factions such as 'MS people' is impossible to reason with.

[AlphaPrime]

A fair question. Can't really give you much of an answer beyond "stay tuned."

What I think would be good is that if Microsoft included a memory card slot SD reader with every Core system. It would only cost a couple of dollars to include and would allow people to choose the amount of memory they want. Therefore people would be able to buy a 4GB SD card and use it to saves games and download content from XBL.

Either way, 64MB or 256MB is just too small these days.

[Kupo-Cheer]

I, for one, see only good things to come of this. If games are going to require more than the pathetic 50mb size, surely some exceptions can be made to deliver quality games like SOTN. This may also definitely help the upcoming Worms live game as well. So you have to buy a pretty much essential hard drive for the system, or wait for them to eventually release larger capacity memory cards. The other option, if you are lacking the money, is to not play the game.

[Nocstar]

Its a good thing they make exceptions for certain quality games like this.. how is this in anyway a bad thing?

[DirtyLarry Veteran]

Threads Merged

DL

Thread Cleaned as well.

For the record ladies and gentlemen, if you feel someone is trolling, the last thing you should do is respond to them and add fuel to the fire. Just report the post in question, leave it to the moderators to make a decision, and let it be. If you choose to participate in a bashing of said person, your intentions are technically just as bad, if not more so since you should know better, than the said persons in question were.

Yes I sound harsh, but just had to delete 3 pages of useless posts, all a result of the famous saying it takes two to tango.

In this case it was about 5-10 people who were tangoing, again all of whom were in the wrong for doing so. Fighting fire with fire does not cut it.

Stay on topic, or thread will be closed.

<snipped>

:| Exactly that type of unnecessary comments that I was addressing above.

Thread Closed.

Multiple Warnings pending further investigation.