We've long heard about 343 Industries' aspirations to make Halo 4 the "biggest" iteration of the series to date - the halo over Halo, if you will. With the scope of the new campaign and serialized Spartan Ops co-op mode, both of which appendage the traditional fragfest of competitive online multiplayer, there's every reason to believe that the newcomer studio will be rolling out some substantial content this November.
If we were measuring on the more literal grounds of storage capacity, however, it looks like 343 has already taken the crown.
An informational page has gone up on Xbox.com (entitled "Optimizing Your Multiplayer and Campaign Mode Experiences in Halo 4") revealing that Halo 4's multiplayer requires an 8GB installation to the Xbox's hard drive or an appropriately-sized USB flash drive - though the former is highly encouraged:
At a minimum, you’ll need at least an 8GB USB Flash Drive or an Xbox 360 Hard Drive to play Multiplayer mode in Halo 4. For an optimal experience playing with an Xbox 360 Hard Drive is highly recommended. For Xbox 360 4GB, Arcade and Core consoles, the Xbox 360 Hard Drive is sold separately.
Unpretentiously, the page goes on to recommend various flash/hard drive purchase options that are available for the Xbox 360, including the gargantuan 320GB hard drive. In the case of USB flash drives, most - if they aren't already specially-configured for the 360 by SanDisk - take mere minutes to be formatted to the console for the portable storage of game saves, media, profiles, data, and more. It's not clear why Microsoft recommends hard over flash, but it's possible that the Xbox 360 is more efficient at running a process (especially one like online multiplayer) through the ingrained pathway of a hard drive.
With the majority of consoles that Microsoft (and Sony) have on the market today - the ones garnering a prominent display in the cases at Best Buy or the first listing in an Amazon search result - featuring hard drive capacities like 120GB, 250GB, and 320GB, an 8GB installation demand will be a moot point for some. Owners of smaller variants will find the demands more imposing, however; the weighty updates from games like Battlefield 3 might find themselves in a precarious position once Halo 4's first 50 Spartan Ops missions begin trickling in.
Ranters, what do think of Halo 4 multiplayer's special spacial demands?
Halo 4 releases on November 6, 2012, exclusively for the Xbox 360.
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