What's up with Xbox 360 games needing so much memory to play?

I can only think of half a dozen games that have a mandatory install on 360, so I don't think it's that common.

Later in that console generation, devs were bringing out bigger/more ambitious games that couldn't fit on 1 disc and where disc swapping wasn't a viable option because the game wasn't linear. GTA V is one example of that, as it's a big open world.

It's also worth bearing in mind that you can optionally install any Xbox 360 game, which will usually lead to faster loading times and improved performance, so it's worth having a reasonable amount of space IMO.

Obviously, if you're stuck with a small amount of space, you can delete installed games to install others and that won't delete your game progress, but if you like to regularly swap between different games, that's kind of a pain.

You can use any brand of USB drive and the size can be up to 2TB, so that's probably your best bet. For example, you can get a decent 64GB stick for around £10, which would be enough to store at least 8 full game installs.

I can only think of half a dozen games that have a mandatory install on 360, so I don't think it's that common.

Later in that console generation, devs were bringing out bigger/more ambitious games that couldn't fit on 1 disc and where disc swapping wasn't a viable option because the game wasn't linear. GTA V is one example of that, as it's a big open world.

It's also worth bearing in mind that you can optionally install any Xbox 360 game, which will usually lead to faster loading times and improved performance, so it's worth having a reasonable amount of space IMO.

Obviously, if you're stuck with a small amount of space, you can delete installed games to install others and that won't delete your game progress, but if you like to regularly swap between different games, that's kind of a pain.

You can use any brand of USB drive and the size can be up to 2TB, so that's probably your best bet. For example, you can get a decent 64GB stick for around £10, which would be enough to store at least 8 full game installs.

Having the game installed also means your console will run quieter as the disc drive won't have to constantly read the disc contents. It makes it a lot more enjoyable to play at night.

The game requires much faster access than can be achieved reading from a disc

Just so you’re aware, all games on all systems after the 360 must be installed, and can run hundreds of gigabytes. This is not optional, nor can it be made so

Games requiring mandatory installs on the Xbox 360 are not common. Around 95% of games can be run straight from the disc with no install required.

With the Xbox One and the Series X|S consoles, times have moved on. Xbox One and Series X installs are mandatory and game installs/downloads can be anything from a few GB's into 100GB or more. The Xbox One and Series X|S version of GTV is over 90GB.

with reference to the latest consoles It's not a cynical ploy. Games have got bigger because graphics have become more impressive. Better graphics mean larger games. It's always been this way since the first ever game consoles were released way back in the late 1970's.

xbox report dat, what hard drive do you have? My boys need more memory and I need to find out what is compatible and then what works best of those that are compatible. How much did it cost you too? I saw somewhere where someone even hooked up their ipod
for additional memory? What are the options?

Thanks so much!