Xbox 360 Owners, Don’t Install Grand Theft Auto V’s Play Disc

@clonedzero: It happens all the fucking time during actual gameplay

Wasn't there something similar for Halo 3 when the 360 first allowed disc installs?

Probably a load issue because the game would be loading from two separate installs. Well this just made me buy the PS3 version, but still sucks for people who want to/have to play the 360 version.

@bigjeffrey: Digital Foundry's Update 3 says it can. They're the ones who did the comparison video embedded here, they did another comparison showing what it's like with Install disc on the HDD the Play disc on a USB flash drive.

Doing so appears to eradicate the performance issues found when both discs are installed to the Xbox 360 hard drive.

Worth looking into if your 360 is noisy and / or you don't like wearing headphones.

Remember when the PS4 and Xbox One were announced and there were people saying we didn't need new consoles, that the current ones were good enough and we had barely begun to reach their limits?

As someone who got my game on saturday and has played 30 hours with the disc installed I think I may just keep it that way, used to it now anyway. That said at points when driving at high speed I have been driving on empty road textures, but it's an open world game, I don't care.

damn these old consoles...

Faster storage means more popin? dude great....

Appreciate the heads up though.

i have the ps3 version, no problem by now.
they will correct that problem, rockstars ROCKS so dont worry :D

I've read a few things about it as I had to pick one or the other myself. Apparently they are VERY close. The few differences that do exist are negligible.

I went with the PS3 version as I continue to phase XBox stuff out of my life on the way to the PS4. It runs beautifully.

@gesi1223 said:

it's not a streaming problem for the PS3 because once installed everything else comes of the disk, and yes there is a 8GB install for the PS3 version.

It wouldn't be a issue, the PSN version is just one big install on the drive in one location that it's running from, the Issue with the 360 if you install both discs is two installs with two locations on the drive trying to run at the same time causing a delay and the bad pop-in.

@pixeldemon:

Digital Foundry have, you can see what they have to say on eurogamer.

@jamesjeux007 I agree. It does look like something people should've picked up on.

Thanks for posting Patrick. I was wondering why we were advised against installing, I read about it, but actually seeing it worked a lot better.

Oooo, nice. I'm running a 360s so noise isn't a big problem, but I like the faster loading that a USB/HD install would offer...

I thought about waiting for the PC/next gen versions but I am surprised how well the game runs on PS3. I haven't had any noticeable frame rate loss yet, but granted I am only about 2 hours in.

Hold up, there's a disc labeled play, and one labeled install, and people are still installing the one labeled play?

Okay, maybe it's the Dev's fault to - how about just outright not allowing gamers to install the Play disc in the first place? No? Too easy?

From the little I played last night - the 360 version doesnt seem to do the constant high speed read that is present in say, an uninstalled copy of Black Ops II. I haven't really noticed any real performance or sound problems - but again, this is on a slim.

Normally I would have played on PS3, but in this case I went 360 because friends did.

Do you own a 360?

It's been part of the system for years now that you can install/copy any game disc to the hard drive to speed up load times and allow the console to run quieter by not having to have the disc running constantly. The disc in those cases is nothing more than a check system, the same that PC games have had for decades. Rockstar should have remembered that.

One way to have solved the problem was for the entire game to be installed to the drive. Then the entire game would be pulling data from the same place. I have no sympathy for those who want to play all these high-end console games but can't be bothered to get a hard drive.

Yeah- I really, really want a PC version

Sounds like the PSN version has the same problem. Hopefully this is something that can be fixed.

god dammit i love this game. Perfect? No. Fuckign Rad, yes.

I understand the sentiment, but let me add this.

Making HDDs optional for the X360 is probably the most understated mistake Microsoft made in its design. The original Xbox was legitimately ground-breaking in having ubiquitous HDDs in every console. It was a huge and critical mistake to remove HDDs as a standard feature in the X360 and a fundamentally backwards idea.

It's kind of odd how the PS4 and XOne have much more in common with the original Xbox, what with standardized HDDs in every unit, x86 CPU architecture, their straight-forward and simple black designs, than they do with either of their immediate predecessors.

@bsw: this wasn't an unknown issue. R* released this warning with the release of the game. There is an intentional point to not installing the play disc and they're telling you right off the bat that if you don't just do what they say, you're not only ruining the point, but making it worse.

I'm opting to install it onto my sandisk cruzer USB. It has plenty of space and will suffice, even if it does not have top notch quality speed, I would think that the game would perform better with the play disc installed onto that than playing off of the DVD. Plus, DVD noise...

PS: I also noticed pretty bad pop-in on my Jasper model 360 (Most new white model) after following proper direction from R*. We'll see how it plays after the installation of the play disc onto my USB

I'm sure this game's great, if it would fuckin' work. Froze up in the beginning sequence (before it would save) three times in a row... I don't feel like playing that sequence again tonight. Fuck jank! And loading off of hard drives. What ever happened to the days when games just worked?

360 version, by the way. Beware. And mine's one disc on a USB stick.

Bought a $10 16GB USB 2.0 Kingston stick from Best Buy and it works fine. Plug it in the rear, format for Xbox and the drive will appear during disc install. Install space takes about 7GB and the that will leave you 6GB after formatting.

No issues with pop-in, drive spins down and no performance issues.

Now if Rockstar could get their act together and fix Social Club, then this game will be hassle-free.

Oh I agree, with you. The more variations companies release, the more compromises developers have to make. But there's a line that needs to be drawn that leaves behind those who haven't upgraded after all this time. If you can afford to pay the prices that new games cost then you can afford to buy a storage solution.

Just installed the Play disk to a micro-usb, runs like a charm!

Not sure if it makes a difference at all but I have the new 250 gig version of the 360. I installed both disks and the game runs smooth as butter. I even watched for all the pop-in issue areas the video comparison showed and there was none. I played for a few hours and never had a frame rate drop and no noticeable pop in. However, I did have a problem when I first started the game. My profile kept repeatedly getting logged off when I loaded GTAV. Everything else in my house had perfect connections still so it was not my internet. Then, after I stayed signed in for a bit I went through the first mission. Halfway through my profile signed out again. I finished the mission and saved. and restarted my 360 again. The save wouldn't load so I had to do the beginning mission all over again and when I went to save at the end it said a save already existed? So I just saved over that. After that I never had a problem again.

This is nonsense...

I did NOT install the play disc & still saw these issues.

I installed the play disc to a 32gb Sandisk thumb drive. The xbox gave me a warning that the performance of the thumb drive was slow, but I brushed that off. I'm using the slim 250gb console, btw. The game takes something like 2 or 3 minutes to load from the disc normally. Not sure how many wallpapers fade in and out, but probably 7 or 8. When loading the game from thumb drive, it takes about 20 seconds. It barely makes it to the second wallpaper image by the time it's done. Obviously it is much faster at loading, so that's good. I would recommend getting a thumb drive just to save a couple minutes every time you load the game.