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Blu-Ray Should Have Been Optional on PS3?
Ars Technica has a piece looking at reasons why Sony may have wanted to make the Blu-Ray player optional in their next-gen console. From the article: "By tying what is essentially a gaming device to a new optical disc format, Sony is hoping to kill two birds with one stone, but they're expecting consumers to pay for the stone as if it were a diamond. That is, in hoping that consumers will see the Blu-ray player as a good investment in the future, they're risking the fallout that comes when consumers realize that diamonds aren't investments at all. They're for show. And the way the PS3 is priced right now, bling appears to be the operative word. But bling sells, and when manufacturing costs come down, we can all look forward to this edition of Sony Style... at least so long as we're not satiated by a competing product."
I don't think this article is relevant.
... and possibly compiled differently to take advantage of the quality.
I was under the impression that Sony chose blu-ray because of the amount of data it can pack into a disc. The games are subsequently written and read by blu-ray technology making them capable of storing much more data on a disc. It was my understanding that having games that play in insane resolution (1080p) requires not only high processing but also high storage.
So if they sell "blu-ray disabled" PS3s, how would it play the high quality games? If you have the drive be incapable of playing movie discs, then your cost per console unit production is the same. How on earth would they make blu-ray optional? Just have PS2-technology drives on lower priced ones? You would have to have games for each version
It just doesn't make sense, you would have a great technology on a console yet lack the ability to use it for the device's main purpose--playing fscking video games.
That is what the PS3 is for, right? Playing video games. I don't really care if it can play vinyl records, for Christ's sake, I just want a game console that works and works well. We all remember how well the original PS2s played DVDs, right? Let's hope the blu-ray discs actually work in the first gen PS3 consoles.
My work here is dung.
It may not be the best thing to say, but I find that it will most likely be true when David Reeves, the SCEE CEO said: "We have built up a certain brand equity over time since the launch of PlayStation in 1995 and PS2 in 2000 that the first five million are going to buy it, whatever it is, even it didn't have games".
do.what.promptcmds
...I don't think optional blu-ray is a good idea. Either the games work on Blu-ray and you will take advantage of that or it won't; in which case you shouldn't have it in their. I can quite easily see this price problem cripling sony - time will tell.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
and when manufacturing costs come down, we can all look forward to this edition of Sony Style
...which is obviously the way they're playing it.
Given the huge amount of anti-Sony hate when the price was announced, I did find myself wondering whether the main feeling was resentment from people who knew perfectly well they were going to buy the thing anyway.
There's no way I'd buy a Blu-Ray player if it wasn't in a PS3. In that sense, Sony may yet have made the right call.
I'm not really interested in hidef movies right now (HD-DVD or BluRay), so why should I pay the BluRay tax? I would have preferred if the drive bay was swappable so I could eventually buy a BluRay (or even HD-DVD assuming they win the format war) drive and stick it in there. As for games needing BluRay, take a look at how big existing games are. Most are around 1-2 gigs in size. The only ones that span multiple disks are ones with lots of prerendered graphics which still don't need higher capacity if they take advantage of new codecs like VC-1 and Mpeg4. By requiring BluRay, Sony has priced the PS3 out of my price range.
And the way the PS3 is priced right now, bling appears to be the operative word.
Does this mean that I get a bunch of gold PS3 Emblems embedded in the good version, or does it come with an chain so I can wear it around my neck to impress my "boyz" and "hos"?
I was thinking of getting my PS3 lowered with a new set of shocks, a few flame decals, some neon lighting on the undercarriage, leather grips for the controller, and a new set of subwoofers.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
The only thing that had any sort of success with upgrades is the N64, and that was mostly because it bundled them in with games that were designed for them.
If they're sold separately, it causes a cycle where people won't buy them because there's no games using them and game developers won't design for them because nobody has them. See the 32X for an example.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am sick and tired of the number of articles on Slashdot regarding what screw ups Sony may or may not have made. This is all recycled opinion, and the sheer magnitude of articles that make it onto Slashdot is staggering. This is the same as the Poseidon, we already have 13 movies based on it, just let the freaking ship sink!
Disclaimer: I couldn't be bothered to read TFA; I support Sony, or at least enough that I know to wait until a month or so before launch for some real facts!
Blu-Ray should have been optional for very good reasons. Even the most advanced PC games to date have completely failed to exceed the capacity of a single layer of a DVD, only occasionally touching the second layer. Most games are still coming out on CD's! Even within the next six years this is unlikely to change, (apart from the move to DVD) with changes coming more incrementally and gradually as the technologies behind modern gaming solidify and standardize. There's less year to year revolution in game development these days, and there will be less as we move toward a given level of complexity.
Few games come close to a single layer of a DVD, and there's yet to be a serious challenger for dual-layer DVD capacity yet, certainly no notable games have shipped on multiple DVD's (A few might have, but I'm a big spending gamer, and I've yet to see one). Unless that's likely to change, Blu-Ray will not be of any tangible use to gamers, it's all about the movies. Xbox 360 has gained a signifigant cost economy by restraining itself to what is needed to provide the best gaming experience, and not trying to position itself in another market. Games might grow to fill that extra blu-ray space, but the only concievable way I can see that happening is by packing it full of cinematic tripe (So maybe Final Fantasy, since those games are always CGI-heavy). An awful lot of Xbox and PS2 games were actually capable of being shipped on CD media, instead of DVD. 1080p isnt even the reason behind it either, since due to various limitations it's been widely demonstrated that you can expect most games to run in 720p on both the 360 and PS3, 1080p is nice for small puzzle games, but it's not going to be the native mode of anything or even considered for the next three years, especially since single-digit percentages of the market can take advantage of it.
Blu-Ray is about controlling the next generation, and Sony only put it into the next generation machine on the basis that it will bolster the market position of a format that Sony gets royalties on. If you want to buy into that, then the price is worth it, because otherwise you've got a console that isnt substantially faster than Xbox 360, and any technical advantages will only be shown in the last stages of the console life cycles, where games will really push the hardware to the limits.
Sony isnt selling a console, and it isn't even pretending to this time. Removing Blu-Ray now would simply show that the Chinese factories were right, and that the jump to HD-DVD is all that's needed for the forseeable future. Japanese companies are keen on Blu-Ray since it's technical intricacies mean only they can produce it while the cloning companies struggle to catch up, skimming the market for a year or two.
Regards,
-Steve Gray
-Cobalt Software
Okay - lets pick a game which did come on DVD - say UT2k4 Special Edition. Right now on my hard disk with a few extra mods, the UT2k4 install is soaking up:
and then with the user files and extra levels:So thats 22Gb of data for an older game, albeit with extra mods and levels.
UT2k4 has some fancy shaders but it does not have bump mapping or gloss maps. The models have lower polygon counts than, say, Quake 4. The next gen engines will all be packing larger textures, more polygons and more shaders. That all requires more data space. In the lifetime of the PS3 (lets say five years) using 25-50Gb of disk space looks like it will be business as usual. Right now it's probably overkill - a 9Gb disk would hold pretty much anything but I suspect that within 18 months of the PS3 launch that there will be games packing 25Gb of data.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
In my mind at least, DVD::VHS is not the same as HDDVD/BluRay::DVD. DVD brought many (great) additional features to the table when compared to its predecessor VHS. And while the higher capacity HDDVD/BluRay media is going to provide similar improvements in term of higher rez video and enhanced audio, it will not be providing some of the other features that made the switch from VHS to DVD so desirable. A couple of the "other" benefits that come to mind include: the smaller size of the media for more convenient storage, the introduction of chapters and bookmarks that allows fast navigation between different places on the disk, the end of rewinding VHS tapes, less wear and tear (tape stretching/dirty heads etc) on the media etc. The move from VHS to DVD was also great for early adopters who wanted to show off... ("Here's you with audio cassette -like VHS tapes, while I am watching my CD-like DVD movies") This disparity won't be as pronounced for the next gen DVD machines.
The problem is some people are under the impression that using blu-ray is going to somehow enhance their gaming. I guess if you want your game full of HD FMV then sure, but that's not really a good thing.
Developers have managed the same resolutions on the PC for a while now using DVD technology. Extra storage space gained from blu-ray discs is not really an issue.
Don't kid yourselves. Sony is making you buy the Blu-Ray simply because they think they can have a repeat of the PS2/DVD success. It isn't going to happen. They could of made a great video game system for a reasonable price. They chose not to, and we can just as easily choose not to buy it.
~50 gig vs. ~10 gig. Blu-ray is the obvious choice.
Remeber...no one NEEDS a game console. Don't like the price, don't buy it
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas was crammed pretty tightly onto a dual-layer DVD if I recall correctly, so I could see the next iteration of that francise needing more space.
People keep yammering about Sony FORCING YOU TO BUY THIS MOVIE PLAYER. Well, no, they're not. They're forcing you to buy a disc drive, because the video game system won't work without it. Video game systems need disc drives. You don't have to use it as a movie player. I'm certainly not going to, even if I get a PS3 someday I still won't have an HDTV.
The thing is, the blu-ray drive is needed for games. Games are outgrowing DVDs already and the HD generation hasn't even started yet. A lot of people on message boards and slashdot are pretending that 640k is all anyone will ever need and DVDs are enough, but they are just sticking their heads in the sand because they hate the idea Sony could be right about anything. If there is one inescapable trend about video game systems, it's that space needs never stop exploding.
And the other thing is, if you make the blu-ray drive optional then you might as well not have it exist in the first place. If you make the blu-ray drive a peripheral, then it becomes nothing but a movie player. Bluray can't be used to hold games if not everyone with a PS3 has a bluray drive; if you get the choice of whether or not to buy the bluray drive, then I lose the ability to use that bluray drive for anything except movies. People say "yeah well at least the XBox 360 gives me the choice of whether to buy an HD disc movie player" but they gloss over the fact that the XBox 360 doesn't give you the option of buying an HD disc game player.
Nintendo of course doesn't need high density disc media, both because of the "less is more" philosophy that permeates the Wii and because Nintendo decided to go without HDTV support. But Microsoft is going to have a really big problem in about two or three years once the games that fill up a whole bluray disc start first appearing.
Meanwhile in the minds of Slashdotters... it's quite funny, really. Everyone "knows" that one of the big the reasons why the N64 failed was because Nintendo stuck with cartridges while everyone else moved on to CDs. And Everyone "knows" that one of the big reasons the PS3 is going to "fail" is because the PS3 moved on to high density dvds while everyone else stuck with DVDs.
The thing we keep hearing is that the PS3 is too expensive. Beyond that point, we've heard no criticism of the device itself. Everything you hear about the hardware is good. Yes it's pricier, but does it mean they won't sell millions of them? That's the big question.
I have little doubt that Sony would like to trim $100 off the price of the PS3 but I suspect they realize that for that extra $100 the won't sell enough consoles to make up for their losses. So yeah it'll initially cost more, but so long as Sony sells enough of them, they'll be in really good shape because it will lock in Blu-ray as the standard for high-def video.
If Blu-ray becomes the standard, Sony is in a very good position. Right now, a DVD player costs what, $50? Manufacturers aren't making much money on those, but if you're the company with the royalties, you don't have to fight for the crumbs, you get a cut of everybody's profits off the top. Furthermore, the existence of a HD video player has been a big hinderance to adoption of HDTV. Sony sells HDTV's, so if this pushes sales of those, it's yet another benefit especially if they can use some proprietary interface that makes Sony HDTV's more attractive to PS3 owners.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
As someone who had a PS1, and now has a PS2, I'm not motivated to sink a bazillion dollars into a PS3. Nor am I likely to every buy one at this point.
I don't have an HDTV. I don't want Blu Ray. I'm a casual gamer and not willing to pay that much for a console.
My next purchase will probably be a current gen Nintendo, and just buy from their freaking huge library of availabel games.
Sony, IMO, has totally missed the boat with the price point/forced bundling with an as-yet unproved/unadopted standard -- especially if I was to buy an HDTV I'd be saddled with more Sony DRM crap.
Clearly, I don't speak for everyone. And a lot of people probably will buy PS3s, but they've completely lost the market segment that I fall into. Their expected price point is way outside of what I'd willing to pay for a toy.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I thought it was obvious I was saying that games would be on DVD format as I don't believe games need higher capacity (for 99% of the time).
The reason I ask is because I have never, ever, seen a computer game that even approaches that size (though I'm made to understand EQ2 does). For example World of Warcraft is only 3 CDs. Quake 4, F.E.A.R, etc all fit on a DVD with space to spare.
Are 360 games truly packing in that much more content, or is there a technical reason why computers are capable of getting away with less storage?
If there is going to be a need for Blu-Ray, it has to be standard. Addon hardware can't be relied on by game developers so, it is often ignored. I agree that Blu-Ray likely won't be fully utilized at launch, but it won't be long before we see games that won't fit on a DVD. As installed lots of the games I am playing, will not fit on a single layer of a DVD. We may not be filling Blu-Ray discs anytime soon, but the need for higher capacity comes when exceed the capacity of the DVD. An earlier reply to this story, says some Xbox360 titles are already hitting that limit.
I don't like the price of the PS3, but I am wondering if the hardware is the reason for the higher price. With the release of the Xbox360, we saw that the market was willing to pay a large premium for the hardware, due to limited supplies. I actually think the PS3 pricing is to keep demand more in line with supply and reap the extra revenue that MS missed out to the E-Bay sellers.
The writer uses more mixed metaphors than Thomas Friedman -- first he tells us the PS3 is a stone that Sony's trying to pass off as a diamond so folks will buy it.
Then he says the reason people won't buy the PS3 because it's actually a diamond, it's just for show and it's not really an investment. But wait -- they'll change their minds later and buy the diamond because they like bling!
Can someone tell me why 1) this was published if it doesn't make any sense at all, and 2) why Zonk would post it to Slashdot?
But now Sony is supposed to make the blu-ray optional. Right. Damned if they do and damned if they don't right? If sony had made the blu-ray drive optional this same fucking website would have claimed they were splitting up their marketshare and forcing game developers to adopt to the lowest common denomator and whatever other crap has been spouted about consoles.
Stop trying to second guess Sony. When you run a billion dollar enterprise and are a household name for electronics worldwide THEN you can second guess them. Maybe they are wrong. People point out the beta max failure. Completly forgetting that the pro video market is very profitable for sony. They point out the mini disc failure despite that fact that are still in wide use as an alternative to DAT.
Somehow Sony seems to make a lot of money out things people consider failures.
The PS3 is an expensive console. For it you get something that is pushing a lot of limits. It truly is a next generation system and not just an upgrade like the 360 is.
Will the gamble pay off? I don't know but as far as the discussion about blue-ray is concerned I seem to remember similar discussions about the previous generation and the inclusion of DVD-movie playback capacity.
Can we just fucking fast forward to the future and see what the sales results are so we can end the useless second guessing.
The PS3 specs and price are known take it or leave it. Don't keep bitching about the fucking price because all that shows is that you want the PS3 but are too poor to afford one. If you can't spend 700-800 dollars on electronics then you need to get a better job.
This is a tech site, we all are overpayed pro's. If this was a site for factory workers and cleaners I could understand but not software engineers and other techies. This ain't a place for minimum wage workers.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
When Microsoft makes HD-DVD optional - it's a mistake.
When Sony includes it - it's a mistake.
This goes into the column - damned when do - damned when don't.
Blu-Ray Should Have Been Optional on PS3?
Should the title been worded as a question, rather than a statement?
The problem is sitting here and now (May 31, 2006) no one knows. It is clear that Sony is taking a gamble on doing the PS3 like this and like many gambles there is a possibility they will make out like bandits or like beggers. It is simply too early now to tell reguardless of what any analyst thinks.
I personally think Sony's way of marketing the Blu-ray is hopelessly flawed. Let's review this scenario
..
1. User buys a PS3 because user wants to play games
2. User has to pay well over 200 bucks extra because the blu-ray drive is in the PS3
3. Sony will not use blu-ray for any of the games (they've already come out and stated this)
4. Blu-ray dies a horrible death (ie, betamax, UMD, etc)
5. User who spent that money now has to deal with being forced into buying a blu-ray drive that isn't really usable anymore.
This is what Sony is thinking right now
1. Our brand is so kick ass that every customer(who we think are sheep) in the world will blindly buy anything that has PS in frot of it (almost. cough PSP)
2. Hey, why don't we put the blu-ray drive into PS3. If we do that everyone will buy it right? Which means we can beat out HD-DVD!!
3. Profit
4. Blu-ray wins the race
If Sony actually thinks that people will accept a $600 price tag for a game system they are pretty crazy.. Yes all PS3's will be sold out on launch day, but what will happen one year after? Or 2 years?
I dunno, I really want to force myself into buying a PS3.. But even for me, 600 for a system is almost a complete waste. Unless Sony can prove on launch day their system IS infact better than the 360, I may entertain it then.. But until that day, I'm happily playing my PS2/Xbox360
stupid format wars..
MrJynxx
...It's less than the size of a dvd and contains half-life 1, half-life 2, counterstrike, cs:s, dod, dod:s, garry's mod, and quite a few other things. That's a lot of gaming in the space of one dvd.
Go here for teh [sic] funny.
Per this ArsTechinca article http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/hardware/PS 3-gamble.ars original X360 games are only using 3.2GB. What game exactly are you working on that takes 8 gigs? Even Oblivion fits on a single DVD.
DVDs are the correct thing to compare to, as they are the format the other video game systems are using.
HD-DVD is not interesting or important at all in this context, because it is just a movie format. No one is using HD-DVDs to play console games on.
Somehow Sony seems to make a lot of money out things people consider failures.
Universal Media Disc?
Doesn't seem likely, does it?
Hrm, going to have to disagree with you there.
Despite what the previous poster has said, do a bit of research. Games are roughly reaching the limits of single layer disks at the moments for the most parts. San Andreas (for example) is an unusually massive game in terms of content, and yet only totals 4.8gb, or roughly a single layer of a DVD. 3.28gb of that was audio data, so that leaves room for increasing quality of other elements by a factor of 5, which isn't likely.
DVD isn't fully used now, apart from movies. For gaming it's more than ample, and this is not likely to change soon. No developer to date has extolled the need for more space on machines, it's not even a point of discussion outside of Sony's PR statements, instead developers are talking more in depth about matters such as performance and processing capabilities. Sony aren't doing this high price to skim the market, it's damn expensive technology and not likely to change for a few years. Blu-Ray is a burdonsome format that does nothing for gaming besides play hell with the bottom line.
Graphics cards weren't standard when GL-Quake came around, but the need for that technology became apparent because it was a revolution in graphical processing. This market was opened by PC gaming, which should have been the rightful proving ground of Blu-Ray, but Graphics Cards are potentially a bad comparison since those offered a near-revolution in the presentation of gaming. The optical media revolution *preceded* this, and with each increase in capacity we are seeing diminishing returns from that capacity in terms of gameplay. Compare the best floppy games to the best CD games, then those to the best offerings available on DVD's and you'll see the point.
The jump from floppy to CD introduced music and voice properly to games, and enabled FMV. Excessive FMV is now considered bad practice in games these days, so the space goes for game resources instead these days. If most games can be distributed on CD's, and other games rarely exceed a single layer of a DVD, how can you seriously claim that the increase in quality visually will mean we'll double that? PC's are capable of pushing out some HDTV resolutions, and indeed resolutions higher than 99% of televisions in homes. The extra space isnt needed for higher quality graphics, since PC games are already making use of those resolutions without massively increasing space requirements.
The best games already cost millions upon millions to create, and the odds of anyone even being able to fill that space with content from a financial position alone is doubtful, but the idea that anyone will want to do it, or even likely have the need to do it for any reason is at present, laughable, and not likely to change. Look at Splinter Cell: Double Agent, Halo 3, Gears of War and tell me that anything there is being hindered because the 360 doesnt have Blu-Ray or HD-DVD! Likewise, nothing Sony has shown yet is likely to even fill a DVD either.
Modern gaming needs a lot of things, but space isnt one of them. Gaming needed realism, graphics delivered, gaming needed space, DVD's delivered. Gaming doesnt need space for spaces sake, nor does it need Cell for Cell's sake.
-Steve Gray
-Cobalt Software
You have to admit that given 25 gigs of space to play with, someone will use it. With all the free-roaming sandbox type games out there nowadays, someone will probably make a huge world that can't fit into 9 gigabytes, and can't be released multi-disc. After all, there's no technical reason against it, the only thing stopping it happening is the cost of the artists.
I'm not saying it's cost effective, sensible, or something I intend to buy. Just that if it's there it will get used, even if only by 1 game in 100, so if Sony's aim was to produce the best console and to hell with the costs then it fits in.
So the question is, will the "HD Future" come in time to save the PS3 (2007-2008). Or will it arrive just in time for the "Next-Next Generation" (2009-2010)?
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
Even the most advanced PC games to date have completely failed to exceed the capacity of a single layer of a DVD, only occasionally touching the second layer. Most games are still coming out on CD's!
Aren't you forgetting the issue of CPU heavy install time decompression of content on PC games?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
If you can't spend 700-800 dollars on electronics then you need to get a better job.
This is a tech site, we all are overpayed pro's. If this was a site for factory workers and cleaners I could understand but not software engineers and other techies. This ain't a place for minimum wage workers.
Are you serious? I won't be getting a PS3 because I can't afford one, I would just have to save up for it. I won't be getting one because the competition is much cheaper and I can get much more bang for my buck.
That isn't even my big problem with your statement. Slashdot isn't all about overpaid engineers, many of us are not at that stage of our careers and/or are in different lines of work. One can be a geek and only make 30-40k a year. To most people 700-800 bucks is alot of money. To most slashdotters 700-800 bucks is alot of money.
Some of us are poor college CS students, some of us are people struggling to find a job out of college, some of us are at help desk jobs looking for better opportunities, and some of us are high school math teachers who enjoy what we do but aren't paid all that well. Not to mention having a good job but saving for college funds every month because you have 2 little rugrats who are going to need an education someday.
In a way I'm kinda glad Sony has gone the way they have. A year ago I thought I might end up buying 2 systems at near the same time. Now I can just be excited about spending $300 at the end of the year for a game system instead of still wondering what I am going to buy and how much it will end up costing.
Doublethink is the same person holding two contradictory opinions.
When two or more people hold contradictory opinions, that's just disagreement.
Insane? I've been playing similar resolution games on my PC for quite some time now and we've managed to get by on DVD-ROM and CD-ROM discs.
Is it not possible that the reason so many games fit on a single DVD is that all we have on PC's are DVD drives?
What you are not seeing is the work that goes into compressing textures so they all fit on that roomy DVD. If you don't nee dto compress as much you get better looking textures and possibly better load times.
Only recently am I starting to see titles that span more than one DVD.
So if you were designing a console that was supposed to last for the next ten years without major updates, and you are starting to see multi DVD games now, why is a larger storage format not an incredibly wise design decision?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
a dual layer blu ray disc can hold 50gb. Suppose for games we can store multimedia content (graphics / audio) a factor ten to 1 then one each disc we can ship (if we assume the game engine itself is 1gb (a fairly high upper limit in my opinion) 490 gigabytes of art. I mean thats an insane amount, and I think the limitations are not in how much data a disc can hold but can you imagine how many artists are needed to produce a game that has 490 gb of art? With the ever increasing costs of developing games and the low risk of succes this is just not feasible. Would be nice to have some figures on how much creating 1gb of art costs.
...what matters is what you like, not what you are like...
Consider this - by including a Blu-Ray drive with the PS3, most (if not all) PS3 games will be pressed on Blu-Ray discs.
That means tens of millions of Blu-Ray discs pressed. Think then of how that lowers cost of said discs, even over a short period of time as factories quickly recoup sunk costs...
Now wander over to HD-DVD and the 360. 360 games are pressed on normal DVD's, so there is no need to ramp up HD-DVD factories as quickly. HD-DVD players may be bought by a few hundred thousand (which is wildly optimistic given the movies that are out and will be out anytime soon), but that is still an order of magnitude smaller in number than Blu-Ray will enjoy just pressing games, never mind movies.
Cheaper Blu-Ray disc costs and economy of scale are going to kill HD-DVD even if nothing else does. Sony was thinking long term when including Blu-Ray in the PS3, just as the Japanese are noted for. What about Microsoft's strategy looks wise in five years time? The only part I can think of is where they are able to ship a Blu-Ray drive for the 360, but if that happens SOny has won the Blu-Ray war if not the console battle as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He talks about the $399 XBox as being w/o an HD. That isn't true, though.
You hit the most important point here in this whole Blu-ray argument.
When the PS2 came out as an inexpensive DVD player (comparitively to most at the time), DVD's had been out for years, and people were really wanting to start using them for all of their advantages.
Now with the new format, Sony is starting from scratch, much like with the UMD. They're selling the system to create the market for Blu-Ray movies, they're not taking advantage of what's already there. A large percentage of consumers wanted DVD's when the PS2 came out, and they used it as one (though most who did found that their systems would die easier). Not that large of a percentage (in fact, I think most of them who would want HD-DVD's right now are those of us here, and other audio/videophiles) want them yet,or care, or even know anything about them.
Besides, soon enough a dual-player will come out for way cheaper than you can justify a PS3 as a movie player.
Though I wonder, will the PS3 have the same amount of Failure from playing movies as the PS2's had? I have a friend who's burned through like 3 PS2's due to the DVD drive failing. I think a lot of people are gonna be screaming at Sony if the same failure rate turns up in a $500-$600 system.
By doing this, Sony is gambling that people will like the PS3 and games enough to buy them. The XBox was priced at $400 at launch (you could get one with fewer features for $300) and it was hard to get one for months. I don't think Sony will have a problem, I would seriously consider getting one just to watch movies in HD. I've seen a lot of negative comments on here, but a LOT of people are buying HD televisions. I've actually started watching live television again with commercials and all because my Tivo doesn't record HD and the picture is so much better.
Sony also invented Blu-ray, so they are betting on it beating out HD-DVD in the upcoming war. If they get a lot of people to get a Blu-ray drive in their PS3s, that will make studios want to release movies for them, which will make it difficult for HD-DVD to get into the market since it will have to compete for shelf space. If Blu-ray beats out HD-DVD for the next generation home movie format, Sony will get licensing fees from every manufacturer that makes a Blu-ray player. Does anyone remember how expensive DVD players were when they first came out? I remember spending about $400 for one when they were starting to become popular. Adding on another $200 for a game system as well doesn't seem like much of a stretch to me. Currently HD-DVD players retail for $700, but can be had for $500. Sony's Blu-ray player costs $1,000, I imagine that will be coming down, or going away when the PS3 is released.
While I'm ranting, why do people think that 1080i is better than 720p? 1080i is really only 540p, where every other frame are the interlaced lines, it's 30 full 1080 line frames being shown as pairs of 540 line frames. 720p is 60 frames per second of 720 lines resolution. It's higher quality than 1080i, yet people talk of it as if the picture is downgraded to 720p. That is not the case. If you're watching 1080i on a 720p television, the picture is actually upsampled from 540 lines resolution to 720 You're not losing anything. If you watch a 720p show on a TV that only supports 1080i, the picture must be downsampled to 540 lines of resolution because that is all the TV will show. The horizontal resolution is higher (and therefore the pixel count, but barely), but then again you are really only getting 30 frames per second instead of 60. 720p is better for fast action.
Ok, lets take GTA:SA 4.8GB minus 3.28GB (You sure on that number? That's 55 hours of audio) leaves roughly 1.5GB. I will assume at least 1GB of that is texture data. PS2 targets roughly 640x480. In your first comment, you state to expect most games to run 720p, which is 1280x720. Now lets assume they double the texture resolution. Since a double of the texture resolution equals a quadrupling of the texture data, that moves us from 1GB of texture data to 4GB. 4GB + .5GB of code and 3.28GB audio puts us at 8.78GB roughly, which is starting to butt up against the dual layer disc capacity. With the possibilty of games targetting 1080p, I can easily see texture data pushing the us over DVD capacity (As I mentioned one commenter said some Xbox360 titles already are.) This is totally ignoring the increases in polygon counts and increased world sizes that are possible with the new hardware. Current PC titles come in between 3-6GB. The new Unreal engine is supposed to allow for huge increases in model and terrain complexity, so it is no real stretch to assume that we will see content exceed the capacity of a DVD in next generation games.
Even with all that being said, I don't believe that Blu-Ray is the reason behind the large difference in price between the Xbox360 and the PS3. I am pretty sure that Sony wants to match demand to supply, something MS didn't do.
If they waited a year, all that Blu-Ray technology will go down in price, and be more reliable. They'd also have been able to have slightly more powerful graphics chips and CPUs for the same price, and market penetration of HDTV would have been higher, making a high def console more of a must-have.
Presumably they have reasons for the timing they chose. We'll have to see if they were good reasons.
It probably will -- for PCs. Consoles aren't PCs.
I'll probably buy a Blu-Ray player when Sony decides to start selling anime in hi-def in Region 1. It's already in Japan, so why not elsewhere?
DVD was already standardized though. Blu-ray has not been assured a place succeeding DVD's. They are hoping that PS3 will push Blu-Ray, and Blu-Ray will at the same time push PS3...not quite the same scenario as DVD's.
Also, as mentioned earlier. Even high-res PC games don't fully utilize the capacity of DVD's. While Half Life 2 or Doom3 could fit on a single burnable disk, the dual-layer variety carries twice the storage capacity. And PC games need to make allowances for varying hardware (duplicate textures of different resolutions, etc). So really, there's no need for Blu-ray storage as there was for DVD-over-CD back in the day.
Sony is just hoping that their name will once again push them onward...
I guess you mean "blame competition". Since when is it your competitors' fault if they produce a new product and you decide to change your development schedule as a result?
The first DVD player was available in the U.S. in early 1997. It came with virtually no competing technologies (a la HD-DVD).
Do you forget so easily? DVD defeated Divx in only 2 years, well before the release of the Playstation 2...that is how STRONG the DVD format was by the year 2000.
You are quite correct though, DVD sold the PS2. People justified the high pricetag because it was also a DVD player, and I really don't expect that to happen this time around.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
No you care. That is good. Oh you won't be getting it at 600 but plenty of others will. Then when the early adopters paid the premium the price will go down and the next group can get it. And so on.
It is nothing unusual. Do you want a super fast CPU? Offcourse you do, you are afterall not still on the 33mhz 386 are you? So intel gives you a choice. The most spanking CPU at a premium, a cpu that spanked last year at a good price and one that spanked the year before that at a bargain.
Hell the same is true with games. Want it right now? Buy it a top price, wait a year or two and you can get it for a fraction of the price.
But my point remains, all those kids bitching about the price want the PS3. They just can't have it. Sony loves this. They can't supply everyone with PS3's when they launch, this way they can deal with the limitted supplies by giving those who have to wait a better price.
Yes they may have gone to far but I doubt it. The more people bitch, the more I think Sony has gotten it right.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So what if it cooled down. Who would have thought people would pay 20bucks to play a movie that they could have just ripped legally from the DVD they already own and play easily on their machine?
If you mean the PSP as a gaming handheld yeah that ain't doing to well. At least compared to the DS but then that is a real runaway. If the PSP was judged on its own it would be doing far better.
Sony is now suffering the same fate as Nintendo. Nintendo's gamecube was no failure but when judged next to the PS2 sales it just looked like one.
I think the PSP is the same. No it ain't keeping up with the DS but in business second place can be profitable.
Just ask Apple.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The question I have is: where is the proof? Sony has never sold their consoles at a loss. I think that the cost Sony is eating here is more likely the R&D money that they spent to develop all the new stuff going into the machine (Cell, Bluray, other chips).
But if we look at the tech, we see that it's not something that will only be used in the PS3. Bluray will be used in standalone players. Cell will probably make it into other devices. The cost is spread out among several products, as well as spread over the next 5-20 years, depending on how long (for example) Bluray lasts.
Retolling is still some expense, and if Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs cost the same to manufacture then Blu-Ray with more storage would still be preferable...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It was my understanding that having games that play in insane resolution (1080p) requires not only high processing but also high storage.
O RLY? Go look up .kkrieger, a PC first-person shooter in 0.0001 GB.
You can't assume that doubling the texture's size will quadruple the space it takes, unless you're talking about raw bitmap data. If the original data was uncompressed, then the simple thing to do would be to compress it. If it was compressed, then increasing its resolution does not correspond to a constant increase in size - it depends on how much information is in the higher-resolution image compared to the lower-resolution one.
ust because Sony is releasing a new console doesn't mean there will no support (or new games) for the older revision.
When was the last time a new PS1 game came out in North America? Subtract September 9, 1995, from that and give us the result.
"certainly no notable games have shipped on multiple DVD's (A few might have, but I'm a big spending gamer, and I've yet to see one)."
Two relevant console titles that come to mind for me are Xenosaga II and Star Ocean 3. Both ship on two DVDs. Both primarily used the in-game engine for cinematics, so you can't really level the FMV criticism at them. They're reasonably high-profile games, especially to a Japanese audience, and that's quite likely the core audience that Sony are aiming at when it comes to this higher capacity anyway.
I suspect though that the reason these games were split over two discs is because a lot of PS2s have terrible trouble with Dual Layer DVDs - I know Star Ocean 3 had issues here - so they've been split onto two DVD-5s for better compatibility.
A PC game can use compression that would add too much to load time on the disk to use in play
A console has multiple CPU cores that can handle data decompression during "now loading".
OTOH, in the console environment, you usually want a single-disk distribution that is playable from the disk
But you also want small data sizes so that the player doesn't sit around all day waiting for an optical drive I/O-bound "now loading" screen to finish.
Those "extra" textures aren't actually "extra": you have them around anyway to do mipmapping
Textures for mipmapping can be stored at the highest resolution on disc and downsampled (blur + decimation) when loading a map. The "extra" textures are a patch for machines whose video cards have more VRAM than the developer anticipated.
Laserdisc doesn't even have digital video
Laserdisc video is just as digital as SACD audio. They both use what is effectively pulse-width modulation, which is run through a 1-bit DAC and low-pass filter and sent straight out the RCA jacks. And VCD, even though it was never popular in the United States, is just as digital as DVD.
Well, except for Video CD and later, Super Video CD.
Why didn't I see any VCD or SVCD titles in any retailer in Fort Wayne, Indiana? The advantage of VHS over VCD and SVCD was that VHS 1. could fit a feature on one disc instead of two or three and more importantly 2. didn't have to be imported. DVD was the first CD-size digital video format to become popular in North America.
Still, that's a far cry from the 8.5GB available on a DLDVD.
I've read that replicating 100,000 copies of a dual layer PS2 disc is more expensive than with a single layer disc, and dual layer increases the chance of a Disc Read Error.
consumers can't be forced.
O rly?
My next purchase will probably be a current gen Nintendo, and just buy from their freaking huge library of availabel games.
You have choices:
Do you find Game Boy games or Virtual Console games to be worth the money?
you need to get a better job.
Are you hiring? And even if so, with all the swearing in your post, do you expect any qualified candidates to apply?
for some reason North America and Japan are considered to be the same region with the BluRay format.
I thought 17 USC 602 and other countries' parallel-import legislation banned importing discs without the copyright owner's consent.
1. Bluray only has 3 region codes, and region 1 is US/Japan.
2. All games have no region lock. You can play US/Japanese games on either console.
At IGN Boards http://boards.ign.com/ps3_lobby/b8269/118795924/p1 /?6 got some developers opinion on Bluray and DVD.
For example:
The infamous Team Ninja (one of the few backers of both Xbox platform in Japan) front man has a thing or two to say about Microsoft's decision to assign standard DVD format to the Xbox 360. Limiting his development team to a measly 9GB does not sit well with Itagaki, especially when Team Ninja is looking to include any number of (MS-coveted) HD cut scenes. It's ironic that Microsoft has been the most outspoken about the "HD era", but is the least prepared for HD.