UMD is dead, Blu Ray is next

[quote name='jer7583']Exactly!

I have to say that Microsoft is the smarter one here. Giving 360 buyers a choice to have or not have a largely superfluous $200 HD drive on their system or not is the best. If the 360 had an HD-DVD drive included and it cost $600, i'd have avoided it too.

This is the advantage. Microsoft is backing HD-DVD, but they don't really benefit from HD-DVD sales. It's not in their agenda to push it on people like it is for Sony with Blu Ray.

Blah blah blah sony says blue ray is necessary for games. It's really not, and it won't be for years. 360 games get by fine on DVD and the 360 has just as much if not more texture ram than the PS3. I don't think the increased cost is worth the minor benefit.

Developers already struggle to create enough texture/sound content to fill a DVD, without spending 4 years in development and millions of dollars. Is it really necessary to increase that space, and development cost?[/QUOTE]

Yeah, uhm... Blue Dragon is on 3 DVDs. The 360's been out for a year and we're already seeing multi-disc games. We definitely would've benefitted from a format with more storage.
 
I dunno if anyone mentioned it but, just recently the number of DVD players outnumbered VHS players. It has been a good 7 years or so, and thats how long its taken DVD to surpass VHS. So its going to be a real long time before either format invades the home enough to be even considered the dominant format. Way too early for the death of either format.
 
[quote name='Ikohn4ever']I dunno if anyone mentioned it but, just recently the number of DVD players outnumbered VHS players. It has been a good 7 years or so, and thats how long its taken DVD to surpass VHS. So its going to be a real long time before either format invades the home enough to be even considered the dominant format. Way too early for the death of either format.[/QUOTE]

Someone said earlier(forget where lol) that DVD is in 83% of homes in USA.
 
NEC dual-mode chip can power both Blu-ray, HD DVD at no extra cost

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7948.html
http://techfreep.com/nec-ships-blu-ray-hd-dvd-hybrid-chip.htm

http://www.broadcom.com/press/release.php?id=929044

For those who don't care to read the articles (or google more information) NEC has a chip that can handle BOTH HDDVD and Blu ray -- and the NEC chip costs about the same as their standalone chips. A drive exists that can read both already:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20060709-7217.html"

I personally am not a fan of Blu Ray because of the extra, unneccesary, and potentially invasive DRM (which, FYI, is why Blu ray costs more)...

http://www.drmwatch.com/drmtech/article.php/3526796

...but In a year or two, I personally don't think it will matter what a movie comes on, because the hardware manufacturers that want to make money will make products that play BOTH when the option is availible, as their potential target market would be twice as large.

Combo players aren't in production yet, but is only a matter of time. We'll most likely see combo HDDVD/Bluray players at a cost very similar to that of standalone Blu ray players sooner rather than later... at which point, 'the best format' will be more affected of the price of the movies, and less a function of 'what can my player play?', which will drive down the prices of the movies in both format, which is good for us -- unless the companies price fix the movies...

Edit: updated some of the information.


 
[quote name='BattleChicken'][[/COLOR]I personally am not a fan of Blu Ray because of the extra, unneccesary, and potentially invasive DRM (which, FYI, is why Blu ray costs more)...
[/QUOTE]
I don't think it makes sense to say that extra DRM is the reason Blu-ray costs more. How on earth could extra DRM account for hundreds of dollars more per player? The players cost more because it's a different technology than DVD, while HD-DVD is more of an evolutionary step from DVD. Any new technology costs a lot in the beginning, but soon comes down to more reasonable levels (remember $500 1x CD-ROM drives?).

I do agree about the combo players. My hunch is that unless one format totally fails, that in the future combo players will be the norm. It might even be that both formats will coexist permanently without a definitive winner, and as long as we can play both formats that's not such a bad thing.
 
[quote name='Chacrana']Yeah, uhm... Blue Dragon is on 3 DVDs. The 360's been out for a year and we're already seeing multi-disc games. We definitely would've benefitted from a format with more storage.[/QUOTE]

That's mostly because rather than using the game engine to render cut scenes like the majority of games do they decided to use full-on cinematic cutscenes. Those will take up a shit-ton more space any day of the week.
 
[quote name='icruise']I don't think it makes sense to say that extra DRM is the reason Blu-ray costs more. How on earth could extra DRM account for hundreds of dollars more per player? The players cost more because it's a different technology than DVD, while HD-DVD is more of an evolutionary step from DVD. Any new technology costs a lot in the beginning, but soon comes down to more reasonable levels (remember $500 1x CD-ROM drives?).

I do agree about the combo players. My hunch is that unless one format totally fails, that in the future combo players will be the norm. It might even be that both formats will coexist permanently without a definitive winner, and as long as we can play both formats that's not such a bad thing.[/quote]

I should clarify. The per DISK cost is higher because of the DRM -- the Hardware cost is a different cause altogether -- I frankly have no proof or article to link stating WHY blu ray hardware costs more, I think it is simply because the Blu Ray diode is in such short supply/so difficult to make.

Dual format DVD/HDDVD can cost more than blu ray, but the standalone HDDVDs are cheaper and easier to press, as they use the same pressing machinery (with some modifications) as regular DVDs.

Over time, the cost per disk may equalize, but HDDVDs are cheaper NOW because the pressing machinery investment is already there for major manufacturers -- for Blu ray, it means all new machinery, which is a large capitol investment which drives up the price; at least initially.

As far as the peacefully coexisting in the future.. This is exactly what I see happeneing, a perfect example is DVD-R/DVD+R...

http://www.videohelp.com/dvd

... DVD-R is clearly the superior format, (percentage compatibility with most players/recorders), but the DVD+R still exists. the -R format is cheaper per disk (in average retail AND wholesale prices), so I personally just buy those.. but every DVD player and PC DVD recorder drive I have ever purchased plays or records both. I forsee the a similar situation with Blu ray and HDDVD.
 
[quote name='RedvsBlue']That's mostly because rather than using the game engine to render cut scenes like the majority of games do they decided to use full-on cinematic cutscenes. Those will take up a shit-ton more space any day of the week.[/QUOTE]

The extra space is still being used, which is all that matters.
 
[quote name='BattleChicken']I should clarify. The per DISK cost is higher because of the DRM -- the Hardware cost is a different cause altogether -- I frankly have no proof or article to link stating WHY blu ray hardware costs more, I think it is simply because the Blu Ray diode is in such short supply/so difficult to make.
[/quote]
OK, but actually I haven't noticed any difference in prices. This page plots various statistics about HD-DVD and Blu-ray using data from Amazon.com. They show the average price per disc for Blu-ray as $22.00. The average price for HD-DVD is 21.80 -- a difference of $0.20. I would think this is well within the margin of error (i.e. it could swing either way as various discs go up or down in price) so I don't really think the issue of disc price is a valid one. Player price is the problem.

As far as the peacefully coexisting in the future.. This is exactly what I see happeneing, a perfect example is DVD-R/DVD+R...
Click to expand...
Yes, this is actually what I had in mind when I said that. As long as combo players come along that don't cost a lot more than one-format players, I could see both formats surviving.
 
I'm curious to see the first titles to use the extra storage of
Blu​
-ray. Lair, which is supposed to be out in March, uses something in the range of 20-22 gigs. The trailer for the game looks fantastic, but lets see what it can offer with real game play. I see this as the next generation, no offense to 360 owners. Systems have stepped up storage from generation to generation.
Every time​
a new generation in gaming happens we see bigger and better games that are larger in size than previous generation. None of use thought a back in the day they would ever fill a CD, then we thought the same with DVD. I'm not
criticizing​
the 360, but in order to keep up with the PS3 I think we'll be seeing more
multi​
disc games.
 
[quote name='Chacrana']Yeah, uhm... Blue Dragon is on 3 DVDs. The 360's been out for a year and we're already seeing multi-disc games. We definitely would've benefitted from a format with more storage.[/QUOTE]
If I have change discs every 15 hours on one game, I'm all for it when it saves me $200 for something I wouldn't use/need otherwise.
 
As I said above, for a linear role playing game, it's not a big deal. But for any kind of game that has a large game world that that you can explore as you please (think games similar to Oblivion, GTA, etc) or even for something like a shooter, where you go through levels much more quickly, it's not going to be practical to have games spanning multiple discs. This is one area where the PS3 will indeed have an advantage.
 
On the Baldur's Gate pc game the game is 5 discs. It is a pain to take a disc out and put another in. If you choose to go back through the world, you will be changing discs for almost every area you enter.
 
[quote name='icruise']As I said above, for a linear role playing game, it's not a big deal. But for any kind of game that has a large game world that that you can explore as you please (think games similar to Oblivion, GTA, etc) or even for something like a shooter, where you go through levels much more quickly, it's not going to be practical to have games spanning multiple discs. This is one area where the PS3 will indeed have an advantage.[/QUOTE]
But there has been no game besides Blue Dragon that has needed larger storage. Even with Oblivion and Saints Row that have huge worlds to explore, fit on a DVD9 disc.

You are giving the PS3 an advantage for something that hasn't even been proven to be worthwhile.
 
[quote name='dpatel']The extra space is still being used, which is all that matters.[/quote]
[FONT=&quot]Using space and wasting space are totally different things.

Doing something in an inefficient way in order to fill up a disk does *not* justify the larger format.

If I stuffed my car so full of packing peanuts that I couldn't sit in it, Would that mean I need a bigger car?

I see a glut of prerendered videos in this generation like packing peanuts.. they could script using the in game engine, and it could look amazing (like in Gears of War)... doing it all as prerendered really balloons the space 'need'... but it's not a good way to USE the space.

Look at Resident Evil 4: A lot of the scenes in the game are very cinematic, and could have very well been prerendered... but the knife fights.. and dodging were all scripted, so I wasn't watching, I was still playing.. waiting for the 'A' button to pop up, if i missed the 'A' button, I'd get stabbed or chainsawed -- It was cinematic but also kept the player immersed in the game -- If it was a prerendered cinematic, it would have been less interesting and exciting.

When a developer uses the space to have exceedingly complex AI, and textures, and character models... *then* I can see a use for the space, but for the time being, realistically, the 'need' for Blu ray or HDDVD for games is manufactured.

Someone WILL eventually make a game that truly *uses* the space on a Blu ray disk, but.. to be honest... DVD9s are cheap, and since multiple disks don't add ANYTHING to the price to the consumer, I couldn't care less about changing a disk every 20 hours of gameplay -- but that's my opinion.

edit: I might be wrong about RE4, It's been ages since I've played it, and I don't recall if there's a ton of FMV in it -- Gears is still a really good example of using the in-game engine.
[/FONT]
 
How excited would you be if you had to change discs every time you went to a particular city in an Oblivion-style RPG, or every time you wanted to play a certain map on a shooter. Of course this won't happen -- developers will instead scale back their games to fit on one disc. On the Xbox 360, developers know that they are working with 9GB of space, so for the most part they make their games accordingly. With the PS3, this kind of limitation won't be necessary.
 
[quote name='icruise']How excited would you be if you had to change discs every time you went to a particular city in an Oblivion-style RPG, or every time you wanted to play a certain map on a shooter. Of course this won't happen -- developers will instead scale back their games to fit on one disc. On the Xbox 360, developers know that they are working with 9GB of space, so for the most part they make their games accordingly. With the PS3, this kind of limitation won't be necessary.[/quote]

I see what you are saying, and can see the logic in it, but I have to disagree with you on a practical level.

Time has shown that developers have learned how to span multiple disks, and NOT require constant disk swapping -- I can't think of a single multi disk console game that required swapping in the last ... 10 years? I know the first really big multi disk game I played was Final Fantasy 7, and I never had to back-swap disks (unless I'm forgetting about it... but I don't think I am). I don't think that the developers will have trouble applying the lessons from the CD generation to the DVD generation.

On a conceptual level, I agree. When a development house creates a game so huge that it NEEDS a single disk to store all of the information, because if they didn't, it would again require constant back swapping, (IE, not a ton of video), I am ALL FOR a next gen format -- but with current GAME programming still falling within DVD9 size... I don't see that game in this generation.

And for the record, I am very much enjoying this thread, it's making my work day go by much faster.
 
Of course developers aren't going to make multi-disc games that require constant swapping -- that would be terribly annoying. Instead, they only use multiple discs for linear games that don't really require going back to previously explored areas. The point is that the PS3 will, in essence, allow developers to use the extra space afforded by extra discs for ALL types of games instead of just a limited subset of games. I don't see how anyone can argue that more space is unnecessary. Sure, it's not like it's *required* to make a good game. But it will certainly help.
 
The way they "got around" swapping disks for FFVII was copying the whole world onto every disk. :lol:

[quote name='BattleChicken']I see what you are saying, and can see the logic in it, but I have to disagree with you on a practical level.

Time has shown that developers have learned how to span multiple disks, and NOT require constant disk swapping -- I can't think of a single multi disk console game that required swapping in the last ... 10 years? I know the first really big multi disk game I played was Final Fantasy 7, and I never had to back-swap disks (unless I'm forgetting about it... but I don't think I am). I don't think that the developers will have trouble applying the lessons from the CD generation to the DVD generation.

On a conceptual level, I agree. When a development house creates a game so huge that it NEEDS a single disk to store all of the information, because if they didn't, it would again require constant back swapping, (IE, not a ton of video), I am ALL FOR a next gen format -- but with current GAME programming still falling within DVD9 size... I don't see that game in this generation.

And for the record, I am very much enjoying this thread, it's making my work day go by much faster.[/quote]
 
[quote name='Kayden']The way they "got around" swapping disks for FFVII was copying the whole world onto every disk. :lol:[/quote]

It worked right?

In FF7, 8, and 9, the game engine and world didn't take up 70% of the disk, though -- the FMV did*.

I can see the problem, though; when the world itself is BIGGER than the media, you'll have to cut the world into pieces and swap disks every ten seconds. I'm looking forward to a game that has such a big engine and world that overfills a DVD9 -- If a dev house can deliver that much actual content, I hope they sell a billion copies of their game.

The current gen reality, in my opinion, is that no *game* will get that big. I personally don't see it happening this generation, but would be thrilled to be proven wrong, because that game would be hardcore awesomesause.

*statistic pulled fully out of the air, I couldn't find the actual percentage of game-to-FMV, and I can't rip my copy of FF7, 8, or 9 to find out right now.
 
I would be shocked to find a game with a world big enough to justify constantly switching disks. My concern would be the disk size affective quality of graphics.

For example, if a game were to eventually look like advent children in HD, which presumably should not be that far out of next gen reach, how much actual gameplay could fit on a single dvd. I have no idea what the answer to this question is, I just know a 2 hour movie not in hd takes up a good portion of a dvd. (I also know graphics can be compressed, but that means loss of quality)

I also don't think graphics are everything, which is why I do not want a majority of disk space beings devoted to them
 
[quote name='BattleChicken']It worked right?

In FF7, 8, and 9, the game engine and world didn't take up 70% of the disk, though -- the FMV did*.

I can see the problem, though; when the world itself is BIGGER than the media, you'll have to cut the world into pieces and swap disks every ten seconds. I'm looking forward to a game that has such a big engine and world that overfills a DVD9 -- If a dev house can deliver that much actual content, I hope they sell a billion copies of their game.

The current gen reality, in my opinion, is that no *game* will get that big. I personally don't see it happening this generation, but would be thrilled to be proven wrong, because that game would be hardcore awesomesause.

*statistic pulled fully out of the air, I couldn't find the actual percentage of game-to-FMV, and I can't rip my copy of FF7, 8, or 9 to find out right now.[/QUOTE]

I completely agree with you and your last few posts; I cannot see a game engine and world itself spanning multiple DVDs. Oh, and taking the FMV percentage from FF7 on the PC, about 450-500mb of each disc was FMV; only about 100-150mb was the game world and engine.
 
I think chicken has addressed my thoughts quite thoroughly but I would still like to venture forth and ask i how much of those DVD's on "Blue Dragon" take up the world itself and not FMV's. In other words, does it have a shitload of FMV's?
I seem to remember From Software bitching that the DVD disc size for "eNCHANT arM" was too small so we shall see if they really do anything with the extra size afforded them by them putting it on Blu-Ray. If it's filled with FMV's then they're full of shit.
Personally I don't think you're going to see anything special with the extra space on most games because they'll be multiplatform. In other words, the best build you'll get graphicswise will be 360 quality except for stuff like DMC4 and MGS4. Honestly I'm wondering how VF5 would look if they would soup it up for the PS3 since I doubt the Lindberg can touch the processing power of the PS3 as well as the disc space.
Personally I'd be curious to see a dev. make a game PS3 exclusive with no concern for space, see BD-200 or is the PS3 limited by the movie play standard? In other words, is it limited to play at most dual layer disc.
Also as for exclusives I wouldn't mind seeing EnixSquare ditch the FMV idea entirely for FFXIII and create a game engine that uses extremely high quality textures and so forth, if the six layer 200 gb. or even four layer 100 gig. is their limit. Then I think it would be a waste to load it up with FMV's.
edit: I would also like to add seeing both HD-DVD and Blu-Ray coexisting as nothing but a bad thing. Why? This bit with both coming to a standstill leads to neither really pushing the winner into the home for HD and even if they both win and try to get a combo consumer player into people's homes it might be too confusing for some. Also I worry with all this fighting and neither end up winning too much time may pass at which juncture HD on demand or download content wins instead which I don't want. Me? I want a solid medium that I can't lose by accidentally deleting the product. We've seen similar problems with peoples iPod hard drives going out and Apple saying "fuck you, buy it again.".
 
[quote name='Sarang01']I think chicken has addressed my thoughts quite thoroughly but I would still like to venture forth and ask i how much of those DVD's on "Blue Dragon" take up the world itself and not FMV's. In other words, does it have a shitload of FMV's?
[/quote]
I have Blue Dragon, but it's hard to answer that question because the in-game graphics blend in seamlessly with the cinematics. I really can't tell what is pre-rendered and what is done with the game engine in most cases. Is there a way to tell by putting the disc into a PC, perhaps?

Also, people are saying "it's just FMVs filling up the space" like it means nothing to have cinematics. I think they add a lot to a game, and even if the game world by itself doesn't need all of the Blu-ray disc's capacity, the ability to have lots of cinematics in HD is a good thing IMHO.

We've seen similar problems with peoples iPod hard drives going out and Apple saying "fuck you, buy it again.".
Click to expand...
Two points. One is that normally having your iPod's hard disk wouldn't make you lose your music, since the main music library is on your PC/Mac. Secondly, even in the case of a hard disk crash, I've heard many reports of Apple letting people download their music again. It's not official policy, but I think they do make exceptions in cases like that. They should really just let you download it as many times as you want, though.
 
[quote name='icruise']How excited would you be if you had to change discs every time you went to a particular city in an Oblivion-style RPG, or every time you wanted to play a certain map on a shooter. Of course this won't happen -- developers will instead scale back their games to fit on one disc. On the Xbox 360, developers know that they are working with 9GB of space, so for the most part they make their games accordingly. With the PS3, this kind of limitation won't be necessary.[/quote]Indeed, they'll have plenty of space to fill up games with non-interactive cut scenes! Yay! :D
 
[quote name='Pylis']IOh, and taking the FMV percentage from FF7 on the PC, about 450-500mb of each disc was FMV; only about 100-150mb was the game world and engine.[/quote]Bingo!
 
[quote name='icruise']I have Blue Dragon, but it's hard to answer that question because the in-game graphics blend in seamlessly with the cinematics. I really can't tell what is pre-rendered and what is done with the game engine in most cases. Is there a way to tell by putting the disc into a PC, perhaps?

Also, people are saying "it's just FMVs filling up the space" like it means nothing to have cinematics. I think they add a lot to a game, and even if the game world by itself doesn't need all of the Blu-ray disc's capacity, the ability to have lots of cinematics in HD is a good thing IMHO.[/QUOTE]

Sure, but I have a quick question: if you can't tell what is FMV and what is not, what's the advantage of using video to render cutscenes rather than the ingame engine? From everything I've read on Blue Dragon, there's a ton of FMV on it, maybe hours worth. It sounds like, similarly to the Playstation FF games, the entire game world is on each DVD and that the discs need to be swapped out so that the storyline can utilize the prerendered video. Granted, I do not own the game, so I can't speak on this for sure.

One other point is that, just because game developers can offer larger, more expansive environments using the extra space on Blu-Ray, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will. If you want to make a game twice or three times the size of Oblivion, awesome, but the extra development costs and extra time to market are almost assuredly not going to be made up for by extra sales.
 
I think Blue Dragon is well done -- I've always found the cut scenes in RPGs to be kind of jarring because they are usually so much better quality than the actual game. But in Blue Dragon, both the game and cut scenes are very high quality. I assume that the cut scenes have things that can't easily be done in the game engine -- like facial expressions and the like, and that's why they were done that way. There are of course some that have impressive special effects and cinematic angles, etc, that couldn't easily be done any other way. But anyway, the point is that it's all integrated very well, but for the most part the cut scenes are very short. They come up often, but they're often just 10-15 seconds long, so you don't get the feeling that you're "watching the game."

One other point is that, just because game developers can offer larger, more expansive environments using the extra space on Blu-Ray, it doesn't necessarily mean that they will. If you want to make a game twice or three times the size of Oblivion, awesome, but the extra development costs and extra time to market are almost assuredly not going to be made up for by extra sales.
Click to expand...
Of course not every game will take full advantage -- especially not the cross-platform games. But can anyone seriously argue that having the option for more storage is a bad thing?

Since computers began, people have been saying how one storage device or other was more than enough for the average user or application, and they've always been wrong. Hell, people had very similar arguments back when it was the Playstation 1 against the Nintendo 64. People said that you didn't need a whole CD, but I think we know what happened there. When given a certain amount of storage, developers will find ways to use it.
 
[quote name='happy']I would be shocked to find a game with a world big enough to justify constantly switching disks. My concern would be the disk size affective quality of graphics.

For example, if a game were to eventually look like advent children in HD, which presumably should not be that far out of next gen reach, how much actual gameplay could fit on a single dvd. I have no idea what the answer to this question is, I just know a 2 hour movie not in hd takes up a good portion of a dvd. (I also know graphics can be compressed, but that means loss of quality)

I also don't think graphics are everything, which is why I do not want a majority of disk space beings devoted to them[/quote]

You do realize each charicter for final fantasy spirits within (not sure about AC), had around 1 gig of textures per a charicter. even blue ray wont help that. Hell the gen after then gen couldent even render a gig of texture memory per a charicter. I know games can have shortcuts for optimization, but we are talking about fmv's and they arent quite optomized in terms of size are they? So if a game is optomized, it shouldent need more then 1 dvd. Basicly blue ray would let devs be sloppy or add lots of fmvs. Blue dragon, if it does have fmvs is a example what not to do. If fmvs are used, it better be worth it.

[quote name='icruise']I have Blue Dragon, but it's hard to answer that question because the in-game graphics blend in seamlessly with the cinematics. I really can't tell what is pre-rendered and what is done with the game engine in most cases. Is there a way to tell by putting the disc into a PC, perhaps?[/quote]
So did it need the cinematics pre renders if they look just like the ingame graphics? mostlikely, no. Re is a good example of how to do ingame cinimatics. It was fully animated with full range, not just half assed stuff you see alot were they dident add any new animations to the in game cinimatics.
 
So i went and downloaded some in game video and some cinimatics and thier is a big diffrence between them. Most people should beable to see the diffrence in lighting quality... ect. So was it worth it for blue dragon to have those cinimatics? not sure, but some of the particles effects of buildings comeing down would not have been possible with in game rendering.
 
[quote name='icruise']Also, people are saying "it's just FMVs filling up the space" like it means nothing to have cinematics. I think they add a lot to a game, and even if the game world by itself doesn't need all of the Blu-ray disc's capacity, the ability to have lots of cinematics in HD is a good thing IMHO.
[/quote]

I think that in the case of most past games, there was a clear value added to the game, but In my opinion, FMV should become a thing of the past..

Using Metal Gear Solid 1, 2, and 3 as an example... In all three games, there was a very cinematic feel throughout. MGS1 cutscenes were basically a movie using the in game engine.. you watched it. MGS2 gave you some control over the camera during those scenes, you could zoom in, move the camera around in certain parts. MGS3 let you have more control and ability to zoom, and in some cases, it allowed you to find some extra bits of detail in the background.. you could hit a button, and see through snake's eyes, see some small detail, you may miss if you just sat and watched.

There was a progression, from movie to interactive scene; if Kojima just used a ton of FMV, half the game would have been less interesting (because at least half of all MGS games 'is' cutscenes).

I think the original design and idea behind FMV was doing things that weren't possible in the game otherwise; the PS1 wasn't capable of producing the waltz from FF8, or firing the cannon at the weapon in FF7.. But in this generation, the hardware is starting to catch up. Using the in game models, it's possible to make some really good cutscenes that include lighting and effects, an artistic view of the action, and convey the information to the player -- while looking similar, and ultimatly more in place than a prerendered movie.

I think that a well produced FMV sequence adds less value than a well produced in-game-engine cut scene, and that *because* the quality is so similar now, a glut of space consuming FMV < in game scenes.
 
[quote name='icruise']Of course not every game will take full advantage -- especially not the cross-platform games. But can anyone seriously argue that having the option for more storage is a bad thing?[/QUOTE]

Well, actually, I'm thinking pretty much nobody would take advantage. Of course, nobody is going to argue that greater capacity is a bad thing, but with the exception of cramming a ton of HD FMV onto a DVD disc, there's nearly no way anybody will create a game engine and world that simply will not fit on a single DVD disc.

Allow me to bring back up my Oblivion example. If Oblivion were two or three times longer and larger than it was, would sales have improved? Of course, this is debatable, but I would argue that they would not, or at the very least, not anywhere near enough to recoup the extra development time and costs. Making a game bigger and better is never a bad thing, but eventually you hit the point of diminishing marginal returns on your investment.
 
It's not just a matter of making the game 2 or 3 times larger in terms of its length or the size of its game world. Having more space allows you to have higher quality graphics and sounds (at least in some cases), it allows you to not use compression, which can speed load times, and so on and so on.

If games were only using a fraction of a normal DVD right now, you might have a point, but a lot of games are using most of a DVD's storage right now, even for last-gen games. Grandia III for the PS2 came on two discs, for example. Yeah, a lot of that was the cut scenes, but it just seems very shortsighted to claim that extra storage is useless.
 
[quote name='icruise']It's not just a matter of making the game 2 or 3 times larger in terms of its length or the size of its game world. Having more space allows you to have higher quality graphics and sounds (at least in some cases), it allows you to not use compression, which can speed load times, and so on and so on.

If games were only using a fraction of a normal DVD right now, you might have a point, but a lot of games are using most of a DVD's storage right now, even for last-gen games. Grandia III for the PS2 came on two discs, for example. Yeah, a lot of that was the cut scenes, but it just seems very shortsighted to claim that extra storage is useless.[/quote]

That's exactly right, it's not just about how large the game world is.

With that much storage, there is no longer a need to compress textures, compress sound, etc.
It allows the space to for multiple resolutions.

And there is an example of a game that uses the BD the way it should.

Resistance is the only game, to use 7.1 channels of compressed PCM sound.
And that is simply not possible on a DVD9 disc.

BD and HD-DVD games and movies are the only storage mediums to have space for uncompressed, true high definition sound.
Resistance is 16GB, look for Lair next.
 
[quote name='icruise']It's not just a matter of making the game 2 or 3 times larger in terms of its length or the size of its game world. Having more space allows you to have higher quality graphics and sounds (at least in some cases), it allows you to not use compression, which can speed load times, and so on and so on.

If games were only using a fraction of a normal DVD right now, you might have a point, but a lot of games are using most of a DVD's storage right now, even for last-gen games. Grandia III for the PS2 came on two discs, for example. Yeah, a lot of that was the cut scenes, but it just seems very shortsighted to claim that extra storage is useless.[/QUOTE]

Jesus Christ, nobody made the claim that extra storage is useless; quit harpooning me with that argument because I, and I don't think anybody on this board, has said that extra storage is useless. My point is that in nearly all (but not all) cases the extra space is not necessary. It'd be foolish to say that it could not be filled up, that it cannot be used, because we all know that it can. My point is that, with the capabilities of the current consoles, it's unlikely it will add much, if anything, to the game experience.
 
[quote name='dallow']That's exactly right, it's not just about how large the game world is.

With that much storage, there is no longer a need to compress textures, compress sound, etc.
It allows the space to for multiple resolutions.

And there is an example of a game that uses the BD the way it should.

Resistance is the only game, to use 7.1 channels of compressed PCM sound.
And that is simply not possible on a DVD9 disc.

BD and HD-DVD games and movies are the only storage mediums to have space for uncompressed, true high definition sound.
Resistance is 16GB, look for Lair next.[/quote]

It would be really nice if you were correct about the compression and textures, but unfortunatly there are other bottlenecks in the PS3 and XBOX 360 that are far more important than storage. Even if you could store a terrabyte of information on a disk, you will be bottlenecked by a lot of other things BEFORE you run out of storage -- in fact, the textures and other data even on a Blu ray game are still compressed for bandwidth reasons.

The #1 bottleneck? RAM. Frankly, you can have 8 gigs of textures, but if the machine can only load a maximum of 256 megs of textures at once, you can't REALLY use the textures in the way you envision.

The next generation of consoles (PS4? Xbox 720? Wii HD?) will most certainly have the capability to really make use of the space, but as far as textures and actual GAME go, the low RAM limitation prevents a truly impressive use of the space.
 
[quote name='dallow']
With that much storage, there is no longer a need to compress textures, compress sound, etc.
[/quote]

Ah but thier is. In fact compression releaves stress on texture memory. Having uncompressed textures would be a bad thing. do you know how that would clog up the rendering of the game? Well lets assume we do away with compression and go with uncompressed tiffs. Thiers No way the game would run at acceptible frame rates.

I have a uncompressed dmap on a dragon im working on. Its a 4000x4000 in a map file thats about 500 megs. becuse of that it takes about 5 minits to render a single frame of the dragon. Its times like that i wish i could have compressed the texture if i was given the option.

with video too, The video is still compressed, usaly with h264 witch is a awsome codec that looks amazing, but its still compressed video. Most computers cant run uncompressed video without chokeing. Its the codec that makes it run nice and smooth. Perhaps you ment lossless? theirs a big diffrence between compressed textures and video and lossless compression on textures and video.

*edit*

I see battle chicken as already made the point about compression=good, texture memory larger then ram=bad. oops.
 
I'll concede the point on textures for PS3, as there are physical RAM limitations. And from what I've seen so far, 360 sharper textures for now.

I was talking in general about storage space, not just PS3. I just don't like when people bash a superior format.

Still, can't argue with the sound quality right?
 
We're talking about a different kind of compression here. Nobody is talking about using completely uncompressed video or graphics. That would be silly and as you say, it wouldn't be practical. What we ARE talking about is the kind of compression that is used to save space on disc. For example, when you install a PC game onto your hard disk, it will usually take up more space on the hard disk than on the disc. Why? Because the data was compressed. It's now possible to install console games to a hard disk, and if that is done this wouldn't be an issue, but if you run the game from the disc, you have to decompress the data on the fly, which can lead to longer loading times. Blue Dragon, for example, reportedly had to use compression technology even to fit itself onto 3 DVDs. With Blu-ray, not only would the game fit on one disc, but the compression would be unnecessary.
 
From the article:

Sakaguchi also shares that Blue Dragon will ship on three DVDs, and that they even had to use compression technology just to make the game fit into three disks. Seems like Blue Dragon is really turning out to be the biggest 360 game ever, even in the literal sense because in its uncompressed form, the game takes up over 30GB of space.
Click to expand...

30, hmm.
 
[quote name='gizmogc']To be honest with you, the ONLY game that I have any interest in is DMC4. I never cared for the Metal gear series, nor the 3D FF's. Hate GTA. So not a whole lot for me sadly.[/quote]
Then why you even hear?

If you always hated Playstation titles. Then why the helll would you be arguing against the PS3?

God. You people just want attention .
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']Then why you even hear?

If you always hated Playstation titles. Then why the helll would you be arguing against the PS3?

God. You people just want attention .[/quote]

Lets play nice huh? People aren't posting against the PS3 to piss you off, they're refering to specific things ABOUT the PS3 that *can* be viewed as pseudo features depending on how you look at it. If you can't put up an intelligent argument supporting your point of view, you should just keep quiet and let the big boys and girls talk.
 
[quote name='BattleChicken']Lets play nice huh? People aren't posting against the PS3 to piss you off, they're refering to specific things ABOUT the PS3 that *can* be viewed as pseudo features depending on how you look at it. If you can't put up an intelligent argument supporting your point of view, you should just keep quiet and let the big boys and girls talk.[/quote]
I do not see any intelligent conversation going on in this thread. I tend to not act fanboyish and irrate on most forums I am a member to. But in Cheap Ass Gamer, I don't care. Because it seems like everyone is just mindless bashing and ranting about topics. Mainly when focused in on something having to do with PS3.

Why spend the time to write an "intelligent" post when all I need to do is two lines of fanboyish hate/banter and that gets my point across quite clearly.

I think most people here are turd sandwiches. And are 100% blinded by their utter corporation bias. Most people bash on consoles (mainly PS3) not even knowing what they are saying, or how it relates to the consoles they are in part defending.

When their arguements towards the PS3 can be used on any other console its just silly to even point it out.

Once these console wars diminished into less then a fanboyish rant, I will not try to put the effort into my posts. And most of the people I see that put time and effort to post a reasonable and just post are often overlooked or are just picked at by bringing out ideals that are arguable instead of arguing with the statement being put across itself.

So why try? I mimick the posts around me.
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']I do not see any intelligent conversation going on in this thread.[/QUOTE]
Exactly.

I think its time someone puts the bullet in this thread and ends it. Its getting really ridiculous.
 
[quote name='DarkNessBear']I do not see any intelligent conversation going on in this thread.[/QUOTE]
What are you talking about? With a few exceptions (the original post, for example) I see people rationally trying to defend their own opinions. The only fanboy bashing I've seen recently has come from YOUR posts.
 
[quote name='icruise']What are you talking about? With a few exceptions (the original post, for example) I see people rationally trying to defend their own opinions. The only fanboy bashing I've seen recently has come from YOUR posts.[/quote]

THATS BECAUSE YOUR A BUTTFACE!

Heh.heh. I don't see this thread going anywhere.
 
This has been posted in other threads but since you guys are talking about loading stuff...the PS3's slow Blu-ray drive causes problems for developers. The 360's DVD drive is about twice as fast IIRC.
 
[quote name='icruise']If that is true, then why have none of the PS3 games that I've tried had longer loading times than my Xbox 360 games?[/QUOTE]

That's hard to say, because the DVD drive of the 360 is faster than the Blu-Ray drive on the PS3. I recall many PS3 game reviews complaining about long load times on the PS3 games. However, most of those were reviews for games that were ported from the 360, so load times were undoubtedly not optimized for the PS3. I don't think either system is going to have any real advantage or disadvantage with load times, really.
 
I heard that Blu Ray discs are made of the tears of children. Sony hates children!!!!1111 Microsoft discs on the other hand, are made from the tears of terrorists. Microsoft is fighting for America!

Wii discs..... are made of pee pee! tee hee.

Ok, can't wait to see this thread get locked at this point.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top