Borderlands will not require hard drive to run on Xbox 360

Seems like there’s been a misunderstanding somewhere: Gearbox Software‘s new game Borderlands will not be needing a hard drive to run according to its lead programmer Steve Jones. Jones announced the news in the Gearbox message boards, in direct contrast to Gearbox President Randy Pitchford’s statement during Leipzig.

It turns out that Pitchford only assumed Borderlands (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) would require a hard drive without directly confirming it yet. The content generation system featured in Borderlands allows the game to randomly generate everything from weapons to landscape, so that indeed sounds like a tall order for the console to run without the help of a hard drive.

When 1UP contacted Gearbox Software’s president to clarify the discrepancy between his statement and the news in the message boards, Pitchford said:

I was wrong on that quote. It turns out that the hard drive isn’t required by the game. It seems impossible that a game that is doing as much as Borderlands and pushing the limit so much with all the weapons and equipment and character stuff can actually do it all in memory and streaming from the media. It was so impossible to imagine that even I had it wrong and I needed our lead programmer to sort me out.

Microsoft’s previous stand on the HDD required policy allowed for MMORPG games to run on the 360, and it looks like this may be the case after all. As for Borderlands, it’ll run on any 360 unit when it’s released sometime next year.

Seems like there’s been a misunderstanding somewhere: Gearbox Software‘s new game Borderlands will not be needing a hard drive to run according to its lead programmer Steve Jones. Jones announced the news in the Gearbox message boards, in direct contrast to Gearbox President Randy Pitchford’s statement during Leipzig.

It turns out that Pitchford only assumed Borderlands (Xbox 360, PS3, PC) would require a hard drive without directly confirming it yet. The content generation system featured in Borderlands allows the game to randomly generate everything from weapons to landscape, so that indeed sounds like a tall order for the console to run without the help of a hard drive.

When 1UP contacted Gearbox Software’s president to clarify the discrepancy between his statement and the news in the message boards, Pitchford said:

I was wrong on that quote. It turns out that the hard drive isn’t required by the game. It seems impossible that a game that is doing as much as Borderlands and pushing the limit so much with all the weapons and equipment and character stuff can actually do it all in memory and streaming from the media. It was so impossible to imagine that even I had it wrong and I needed our lead programmer to sort me out.

Microsoft’s previous stand on the HDD required policy allowed for MMORPG games to run on the 360, and it looks like this may be the case after all. As for Borderlands, it’ll run on any 360 unit when it’s released sometime next year.