From time to time, it is important that we pass along a friendly Public Service Announcement regarding something that should be obvious. Today, the PSA is a reminder that the 4GB Xbox 360 is probably not the best console to utilize for any "install from the disk" features found on many of today’s games.
The latest issue of this comes from the folks at GamesRadar when they tried to put the optional Battlefield 3 HD Texture install on a 4GB 360 and were hit with some sobering news. The install screen states that it requires an Xbox 360 Hard Drive with 1.5 GB of free space to install. Unfortunately, the internal memory in the 4GB 360 is just flash and not a hard drive, so the install will not take.
At this point it is unclear as to why DICE/EA (or possibly some Microsoft restriction) requires the install to go only on a hard drive. It possibly could be an oversight within the code or just a business decision on one of the companies parts. The irony in all of this (as our Editor-in-Chief Chuck pointed out) is that the flash memory has faster read/write I/O than the hard drive. It will be interesting to see if EA/DICE or Microsoft comment on this, but in the meantime, if you have a 4GB 360 and want the better graphics, you will probably need to get yourself an external drive.
