Rockstar advises against installing 'Play' disc of Grand Theft Auto 5 on Xbox 360

It looks like all isn’t well with Rockstar’s sprawling open world. The company’s latest open-world game, Grand Theft Auto 5, seems to have some issues on the Xbox 360 when the “Play” disc is installed on to the console’s HDD. Because of this, Rockstar is recommending that people don’t install the disc for optimal performance.

Eurogamer did an experiment where it ran two instances of GTA5: one without the “Play” disc installed, and one with it. The result is a side-by-side video comparison of both the instances, and we can see that when the “Play” disc is installed on to the HDD, there is a noticeable amount of texture and object pop-in.

Grand Theft Auto 5 has a mandatory installation required on both systems. The installation eats up a hefty 8GB of HDD space on the consoles, but is undoubtedly needed because of the large world of Los Santos. Xbox 360 users who don’t have an HDD can install the game on to a flash drive.

GTA 5 hit stores today, and it marks a big step forward for Rockstar because the game moves away from the franchise’s original roots of just having one protagonist. In the game, players will be in control of one out of three protagonists—Franklin, Michael and Trevor—who they will be able to switch between at any time when not on a mission. When on a mission, players can switch between characters at specific points in order to get a different perspective or slice of gameplay.

Check out our first impressions of the game and stay tuned for our review.