Does anyone know how exactly Metal Gear Solid 4 benefits from installations?

A friend of mine is explaining to me that Metal Gear Solid 4 would be better on the 360 because changing discs would be faster than 2-3 minute installations between acts. But isn't the installation there for a reason? I mean, wouldn't the game perform worse without these installations? If I'm not mistaken, installations are there to remove texture pop-in, and provide faster load times amongst other things (for you to tell me about). I just find it hard to believe that you could completely remove the installations and have the same exact game.

id imagine that without the installations, youd just have disc changes and longer load times. it seems pretty even to me. the only difference is that the installations dont involve me getting off my ass.

I believe installations on PS3 are necessary simply to counteract the slower disc reading speed that comes with bluray technology. Without some of the data being installed on the hard drive, if you compared the 360 and PS3 versions of a game, the 360 version would load slightly faster. I may be wrong, but this is how I understand it. You're right though, it does help with pop in and stuff because the game has fast access to some info stored on the hard drive and doesn't have to go looking on the disc for it

Without installations load times would be a lot longer, because of the slow Blu-ray drive as others have said

almost a year after still mgs 4 installs appear once in a while lol mgs 4 forever lol

at the end of the day nobody really can answer your question, and your friend is probably wrong aswell.

i still dont get it. wouldnt it be better if its a full install? like a 15GB install? coz when you're currently on act4, and you load a saved file on act2, or act5, or any other acts, it will install again. whats the point in that?boybrushdred

As I recall, Sony won't permit installs greater than about 5GB. This is meant to keep developers from going crazy and using up all of the hard drive space. (Which for some early adopters is only 20GB)

The Blu-Ray disc has two layers that are read at different speeds. The information on the "bottom" later is installed, so the game can recieve info for environments, building structures, and what not from the HDD while all the real time stuff comes from the "top" layer of the disc. It really has nothing to do with the speed at which the disc is read. A lot of games don't even install anymore. And even installing games on your HDD does not really make much difference at all on your load times depending on the game. Also, MGS4 installs one portion at a time because its almost a full disc worth of info which is 50 gigs. Not everyone has room for that. That would be insane. As far as it being on that other console being better I completely disagree. Load times will be about the same and changing discs will do just as much to break up the fun as an install. At least during the install we can stay on our lazy bums and read all the funny stuff on the install screen. Regardless, it will be a WHOLE lot quieter! lolNephilim83

The best exemple why sometimes installation is better is the case of Star Ocean: The last hope on Xbox 360. I really hope this game comes for the PS3 and the installation process is available. In Star Ocean, you have to swap the disk everytime you leave the end of the game area to go elsewhere. So swapping disk is really annoying and takes about the same time you're waiting at MGS4 install downtime. Having to get up, searching for the case, taking the disk 2 opening the xbox, changing, reputting disk 3 in case, sitting back down, xbox loading the game, takes about 2-3 minutes. But oh wait you forgot to actually go grind levels in the ending area, then again have to stand up blah blah blah. When you have the 20gig HDD like I do on my xbox you can'T install the 3 disks to prevent that. In a whole that takes up to 24 gig++ I don't even know if the game recognize the data on the HDD when it ask you to swap disks. Maybe not which would be pointless.

Sony has to start to make profit of the PS3 or make another less cost effective version that would include a 4X drive in it. In games like SF4, when playing online it creates unnacceptable downtime in between fights. If 1 of the players doesnt installed it, you still have to wait even if U installed it. You're getting punished anyway. PS3 needs to be redesigned to cost less to produce so Sony starts making money out of it and players would be buying it cause right now it seems a lot arent buying it cause it's too expensive. 4X speed drive would be a must in certain case.

PS3 has a 2X speed BR-ROM, which reads at a total of 8MBps, compared to the HDD, which probably has a read speed around 40MBps.havokmaster