NXE Update Improving Game Experiences

One of the anticipated elements to the New Xbox Experience (NXE) is the ability to install the games to the hard drive. While the disc is still required to be in the 360 while playing, drawing from the hard drive is supposed to put less strain on the hardware as well as decrease loading times as the disc isn’t spinning or being read.

So I thought I would go through and experiment with some of the more recent sports titles to see what if any effect is had by installing the game to the hard drive. The actual installs took about 10 minutes each. I went through a few scenarios with NCAA Football 09, Madden 09, NBA 2K9, and NHL 09. Continue on to see the results.

Size of Install: 6.3 GB
Start-up of game into the menu screen: 1:10 (disc) vs 1:01 (hard drive)
Loading into a play now game: 24 seconds (disc) vs 16 seconds (hard drive)
Loading out of a game into the menu screen: 35 seconds (disc) vs 34 seconds (hard drive)
Total time saved: 18 seconds

Size of Install: 6.7 GB
Start-up of game into the menu screen:  54 seconds (disc) vs 38 seconds (hard drive)
Loading into a play now game: 41 seconds (disc) vs 37 seconds (hard drive)
Loading out of a game into the menu screen:  15 seconds (disc) vs 9 seconds (hard drive)
Total time saved: 26 seconds

Size of Install: 6.7 GB
Start-up of game into the menu screen:  57 seconds (disc) vs 42 seconds (hard drive)
Loading into a play now game:  29 seconds (disc) vs 22 seconds (hard drive)
Loading out of a game into the menu screen:  6 seconds (disc) vs 3 seconds (hard drive)
Total time saved: 25 seconds

Size of Install: 5.7 GB
Start-up of game into the menu screen:  43 seconds (disc) vs 38 seconds (hard drive)
Loading into a play now game:  27 seconds seconds (disc) vs 24 seconds (hard drive)
Loading out of a game into the menu screen:  2 seconds (disc) vs 1 second (hard drive)
Total time saved: 9 seconds

While the times were not reduced drastically there is some improvement seen from loading off the hard drive as opposed to the disc. Just saving a few seconds here and there is a good thing and can really add up.

Browsing through menus I found some cases where moving through them seemed a little more fluid, while other times it seemed the same as before with some occasional lag/stuttering. There have been reports of people believing that the games actually play better when running off the hard drive, though I did not attempt to evaluate that for this article.

The thing I noticed most while doing the comparisons is the noise that the 360 generated. When reading off the hard drive it was very quiet. Basically the same amount of sound the 360 produces when just sitting on the dashboard is what you get when playing the games that are installed to the hard drive.

So this has taken me to the conclusion that I need to upgrade my hard drive to at least the 60GB. There is the immediate benefits being seen of slightly quicker load times, potentially smoother menus and gameplay, and a quieter running 360. It seems well worth the investment now.