Does anybody remember Wubi? It was Linux that was installed on Windows just like a regular program. Gave you an option to choose Linux on boot. It didn’t make any partitions, and if you didn’t want it anymore? Then you’d go to Windows and uninstall like any other program. It had a few limitations but was an interesting concept.
Among the other things, needing an internet connection to play offline games can prevent some people from playing. Not everybody has a stable internet connection. When I had crappy rural internet I’d download a bunch of games and play when the internet was down. I wouldn’t be able to play this game in that situation.
It ran on the Xbox which had 64mb of RAM to share between the CPU and GPU, and that was a playable retail game.