A suggestion that developers should take into consideration when making games for the XBOX 360.
The XBOX 360 as discussed is a glitchy gaming console known to have an FBI most wanted criminal profile sized list of problems.
Aside from the Red Ring of Death errors, I would say the seemingly most common are "DISC UNREADABLE" "DISC READ ERROR" problems that attack the user like spam mail. These errors like a windows program cause the game to exit out and find yourself on the desktop (or 'Dashboard' in this case). This can be more than an inconvenience for any gamer where you've been playing for a decent amount of time (say about an hour) and suddenly the system goes into shock and you're prompted with a screen that might as well say "Game Over!" or "Microsoft just pwned your game!"
So, I bring this to attention because I was playing LOST ODYSSEY yesterday and got slammed with "Disc Unreadable" . Nothing like spending time and time again repeating the same task. I nearly almost turned the system off just to not have the desire to hope it would RRoD on me so I could call Microsoft's customer service and give them some well deserved hate spam. These errors are no stranger to the XBOX 360 either, so what gives?
So, here's my solution!
The games that seem to error the most seem to be disc intensive. MASS EFFECT and LOST ODYSSEY fall into this genre like they're the mascots for it. If it's a disc intensive error problem, then there three solutions that come to mind!
A.) Microsoft makes a firmware patch for the system to try again, or offer the option to try and read the disc again. Disc intensive games are bound to run into errors just on mistake at some point, but there appears to be zero error correction or attempt to reread it. Also a drive that has read errors at such a high rate, I question if there's something deeper to this than just error correction, or maybe there really is zero software/hardware error correction, in which case it's like a first generation portable CD players. Even motionless music would skip.
B.) Software developers allow saving at all times or add more save points for a higher frequency to run into them. LOST ODYSSEY fails here easily. You can get caught up in a dungeon for a good while before ever seeing another save point. Or the save point before a boss, you defeat the boss, you're forcefully moved on without a chance to save, and bang! The system has a stroke, and you're doing it all over again.
C.) OK, so the system has a problem reading the discs. Hate to suggest this, but about how an "install" option much like those found on some PS3 games. An install option would make so much sense for disc intensive games such as LOST ODYSSEY and MASS EFFECT, eliminating not only the chance for disc read errors, but killing the "loading" screens down to a minimum. The 120gb harddrive on the elite is hardly going to fill up fast enough for me to care, and where the 360 is concerned, I'd rather burn up my harddrive space than be frustrated with hardware that just doesn't function.
Honestly, I'm so frustrated with the system that I will never buy a multiplatform game for the 360, and I will be buying games with much hesitation when I do.
Somebody, either Microsoft of the developers need to pay attention to these problems, because it is going to be a long term kill factor for the 360 now that the PS3 is gaining strong momentum.
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PS3: DMC4, Enchanted Arms, Genji, GR AW2, GT5P, MGS4, Motorstorm, NG Sigma, Oblivion, Sonic, UT3
360: CoD4, Forza 2, GTA IV, Halo 3, KUF, Lost Odyssey, Marvel UA, Mass Effect, Naruto: RoTN
PSP: FF, FF Tactics, FF VII: CC, Wipeout Pure and Pulse
FFXI (Diabolos): Knitemare (75DRG), Gentatsu (75SAM), Kaymin (42RDM)
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