Does Forza 3 Split The Haves & The Have Nots?

I know it's a small issue. This has been well documented prior to the game's release, but man it still bothers me that to 'fully enjoy' a game you paid for you will need under two gigs of space on your hard drive.  This may not be a huge concern for most gamers and specifically Xbox 360 Elite owners. But for those who own the 20gb unit, The Forza 3 2nd disc may force you to make a tough decision.

As a Playstation 3 owner, this should provide proper trolling fodder. However, I flashback to the release of Gran Turismo 5 Prologue which was essentially a $40 demo. Albeit a rich, in-depth $40 dollar demo, but something that could have been paired down to demo essentials [man that one track was sweet though, huh? Yeah, right]. Adding insult to my supposed PS3 fanboy-ism would be the news that Gran Turismo 5 will be a 3-disc set. Here's hoping the Polyphony team makes a seamless and fun game to play.

I spent about an hour playing Forza 3 over a friend's house only for him to say, "Yeah, I'm going to have to buy a bigger hard drive (which we know is overpriced) or delete content in order to get all the tracks and cars on the second disc."

For those of you not in the know, Forza 3 comes with 2 discs. The first disc is the game with the bare essentials some cars and some tracks. The second disc comes with extra cars and all the tracks meant for the game.

This can be misconstrued as belly-aching. "A REAL gamer will plan ahead to play the games they want." If you bought a 20gb Xbox 360 [and trust me, there are a lot of them out there], how many of those people have to make the same decision that my friend did?

The problem is, I am not sure who is to blame for this design choice. Turn 10, the developers of Forza 3, have done excellent work with this game, but could not get all that great content on to one disc. Turn 10 is an "in-house" Microsoft studio. Should it have been on Microsoft to put the boot to Turn 10? Or was this flawed decision something you could squarely blame on the acclaimed developer?

It should also be well noted that the hour or so of Forza 3 that I played was pretty amazing. What fits on the first disc is something I could not fathom doing myself and I tip my hat to the designers and programmers for what they have accomplished. Knowing that Gran Turismo 5 will also require multiple discs [and seemingly multiple installations] is Blu-Ray really the answer? Do we need designers to work within a tighter box in order to cater to this current generation of gamers?

*article comes compliments via the letter I and The Start Screen