same deal with Skyrim, same with Crackdown, same with dozens of other games. oblivion is like 3gb on the 360, yet its world is MASSIVE. what needs huge file sizes are games with lots of audio and cutscenes. Open world games dont NEED huge file sizes. the 360 couldnt have launched then and had blu-ray. Blu-rays specifications and hardware were simply not finalised in late 2005/early 2006 when the 360 launched. microsoft HAD to launch first or they would be out of the console war. this, if you didnt know, would mean the 360 wouldve been destroyed sales wise before the generation was even a year old.
it would have had to have been delayed until the same time as the PS3 launched.
The 360 could NOT have used blu-ray if it wanted to still release when it did. Lol another blu-ray thread, another load of BS spewed from the uninformed PS3 fanboys mouths. The complaints are being addressed with a new console.
It's pointless to criticize DVD now when both it and Xbox 360 are on their way out. It is only now when larger, more ambitious titles are being developed that DVD is becoming an issue, and that's usually with open world, free-roam games or games with expansive multiplayer modes like Halo or Battlefield. About midway through we read from interviews that the DVD was beginning to restrict their development, but because publishers were more than satisfied with cutting content and selling it back to us as DLC, the need for Blu Ray was once again delayed. Sony Santa Monica and a whole mess of other Sony studios took advantage of Blu Ray for uncompressed audio and higher quality cutscenes, but most developers didn't really take advantage of it at the beginning of the generation. Blu-Ray wasn't useless, it just wasn't used by the majority of developers out there. That's the same as saying it was overkill.