Sam Houser: Xbox 360 storage medium not big enough

It is apparent that Rockstar Games was able to fit everything in a single disc to bring Grand Theft Auto 4 to the Microsoft Xbox 360 (also on Sony PlayStation 3), but head honcho Sam Houser is hoping for more. After calling the 360’s storage medium “a slightly bigger DVD disc,” he also expressed his concern over how the next GTA game will fit. Find details at the full article.

Now that Grand Theft Auto 4 (Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PlayStation 3) has gone gold, Rockstar Games president Sam Houser was able to sit down and talk about the hurdles his company had to overcome. This time, he pointed out the Xbox 360’s storage capacity which isn’t a big leap from previous systems.

“They don’t have a significantly larger storage medium than the previous systems,” Houser told 1UP when talking about the 360. “It’s a slightly bigger DVD disc,” he added.

Meanwhile, having Xbox 360 consoles in the market with no hard drives also came up. Houser explained:

I think that the 360 is going to have to get ’round this issue we’re talking about. I can think of various ways they can do it. Hopefully, they’re going to adopt one of those in the next year or so, because it’s going to become more of an issue.

If we’re filling up the disc right now, where are we going? It’s not like our games are going to get any smaller. I think that issue’s on the table with a bunch of games right now. I’m sure they’ll come through with an intelligent solution.

On a positive note, Houser noted that the “360 is a very, very accessible, familiar, effective environment to work in.” There’s also no need to worry about storage limitations for now, since both versions of Grand Theft Auto 4 “pretty much look identical side by side.”

Houser admitted that developing for the PS3 was “challenging,” but Rockstar North managed to learn what’s necessary to create games for the powerful machine. “I don’t want to say we’ve cracked it, but we’ve got comfortable with it — we know we can make our games.”

Maybe he should take notes from Hideo Kojima who claims he already used the Cell engine to its limit.

Buy: [ GTA IV (PS3) ]
Buy: [ GTA IV (Xbox 360) ]