X360 Game Installs: The Hard Numbers

I think we're all in agreement around here that underneath the cutesy avatars and Media Center-like interface, the game-to-hard-drive install option is actually the most exciting thing about the New Xbox Experience. But how much will it really help? A while back, a Microsoft Germany rep warned us not to get too excited, since most games have already been optimized for faster loading from the DVD.

Luckily for everyone, Eurogamer ignored that advice and put together a rigorous comparison of the loading times in several high-profile 360 games--Gears of War 2, The Orange Box, Fable II, Viva Pinata: TIP, GTA IV, and others--as run from both hard drive and DVD.

The guide goes into pretty low-level detail, describing the specific loading situations tested in each game. Most scenarios showed at least some degree of improvement, and some of the margins are pretty whopping. Here are a few highlights.

• Loading a Half-Life 2 save game went from 47 seconds to a minuscule 15 seconds.
• Heading to the Dessert Desert in Viva Pinata shaved a cool two seconds off, from seven to five.
• Mass Effect's initial game load is a full five seconds faster.
• BioShock's level loads are anywhere from three to eight seconds faster, overall.
• Fable II's otherwise jerky, awkward menus get noticeably more responsive on the hard drive.

I'll let you click over to Eurogamer for all the full results. Little curious that Halo 3 could actually take longer to load than from the original DVD, but with all the weird loading optimizations and duplication of data some developers do to cut down overall loading times, that's bound to happen in a few cases. Heck, I was sold on a quieter Xbox; these improvements are just icing on the cake.