Bigger Games for Xbox Live Arcade
And there are more capacious memories cards on which to store them.
Xbox 360 owners can expect their bite-size gaming to take up more than a mouthful now that Microsoft has confirmed it has raised the maximum size of games on the Xbox Live Arcade service.
Instead of the 50 MB that developers have had to squeeze under over the last year or so, Xbox Live Arcade games will now be able to balloon up to 150 MB in size. One of the first games widely speculated to tread into this new ground is Konami's Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.
The original idea behind the size cap was to ensure that owners of the Core pack, which lacks a hard drive, would still be able to store an Xbox Live Arcade game on a memory card. Coincident with the announcement of bigger games, Microsoft also said it is planning to put out new 512 MB memory cards in early April.
Microsoft also said it would be showing off some of its new Xbox Live Arcade games at this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Among the games are EA's rhythm-fireworks game Boom Boom Rocket, Rare's Jetpac Refuelled, and a revamped version of PC game Eets: Chowdown.
Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo