360 Burnout Paradise online needs hard drive

Xbox 360 Core or Arcade users are left playing the offline versions of Criterion's excellent racer.

Burnout Paradise has impressed gamers since its release last week, but the Xbox 360 version isn't the same for everyone. Reports from gamers suggested that the game needs a hard drive for online play, meaning owners of Core and Arcade Xbox 360s can't play the game online.

Having been totally unaware of this, we hunted down our retail 360 copy of the game to look at what was said on the case. After close inspection we finally saw the text.

"Online multiplayer 2-8/hard drive required" read the orange text on the second line of the game information on the rear of the case.

A user on Maxconsole.net contacted EA support and received the following reply via email:

"The hard drive is needed to store temporary data when playing online as the data transferred from one console to another requires storage space greater than what the memory card can contain."

We're waiting for an official response from EA on the matter, but let us know what you think about the need for a hard drive in the comments below.