1up.com is reporting that Xbox Live Arcade games will now be limited to 250mb, that's 5 times larger than before! In addition, developers will be able to use 450mb with special permission from Microsoft. The upcoming release of the classic PS1 and Saturn game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night is likely to be the first game to go over 50mb.

The 50mb limit was put in place to allow owners of the core 360 bundle, which lacks a Hard Drive, to store at least one game on their 64mb memory unit. While I would sympathise with owners of the core system, I still can't think of a valid reason why you'd buy one over a premium pack because of the amount of extra stuff you get. Even if you simply cannot afford the premium, it would make much more sense to save up until you could rather than throwing your money away due to impatience. Maybe if Microsoft had given the separate HDD a reasonable price they wouldn't have created this problem for themselves...

Anyway, now that developers don't have to worry so much about compression and faffing about algorithm textures, maybe they'll be able to concentrate more on game play. I trust at least that games won't have to be split in two a la Lumines Live! any more, and each part subsequently given an extortionate price.

maybe due to the 'cheap' console price