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Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony
Via Opposable Thumbs, an article at GamePro in which Phil Harrison clarifies that Blue-ray on the PS3 is a 'game design' decision. From the article: "Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray Disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent. So games like Resistance which, as a launch title, is up to 20-something gigabytes already. And that's day one -- think about four years, six years from now. We'll be pushing the 50 gigabyte limit with dual-layer Blu-ray very quickly. So we absolutely need it as game designers, and in that regard, the consumer is getting the movie functionality effectively for free." I probably would have had a follow-up question there, but that's where the interview ends. So what do you think? Which came first for Sony: Blue-ray as new movie media, or Blu-ray as answer to design challenges?
Okay, so now they can include gigs of FMV, just so the majority of players (especially kids) can hit a button and skip right over it. Yep, that definitely justifies the extra storage, and the associated costs and delays.
What I want to know is how the extra storage enhances gameplay?
Dan East
Better known as 318230.
Blu-Ray IS a burden... on the consumer. We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
if it really needs 20+ gigs of disc space.
Sony is repeating their past efforts. The PS2 won wide acceptance in part because it was a very cheap (at the time) DVD player. I believe that in Japan, a PS2 was actually priced lower at launch than any other DVD player available in Japan, so thousands of people picked it up simply for DVDs, and the games were an afterthought.
Sony is taking the same strategy this time around. Blu-Ray is Sony's technology and they NEED it to succeed. History is not on their side though - Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD... Sony just can't get their formats off the ground. Their solution? Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money.
Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.
So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.
Games "need" 25GB storage media to deliver? Or is it rather that it's convenient to have it?
My guess is that the "need" for 25Gig media is not really present. More, it's convenient to abstain from compression for those cutscenes, to increase the size and thus (and here is the real benefit for game studios IMO) make it rather impossible to download it from a torrent, given that 25Gigs of traffic would kinda upset any provider.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Just what are they putting on that disc? A 3,000x3,000x3,000 voxel image of the kitchen sink?
If all that space is going to go towards hours of FMV you can count me out. Many, many PS2 games had too much FMV as it was...I can only imagine where this is going to lead.
There's nothing anti-sony about the post. Please, just post a link to playstation.com next time and save us.
Dear Zonk,
Bravo Lima Uniform, hyphen, Romeo, Alpha, Yankee.
Sincerely,
Coward, Anonymous
When I hear about 20GB games, I'm always reminded of what some people can do with just 96KB http://212.202.219.162/kkrieger and I always wonder what those guys could do with a whole megabyte.
My left arm is all scars and I consider that a valid excuse...
So we have one company spending the last several years researching and implimenting new tech to improve the interface between man and game station(Nintendo: wiimote). At the same time, we have another company spending the last several years increasing the length and quality of filler video between the various stages of the game (Sony: Blu-ray).
Which of these two systems is 2x more expensive than the other again?
Seriously, I've read many print edition articles in both Fortune and the Wall Street Journal which basically say that the whole Blu-Ray debacle may drag Sony down and cripple the company.
These are business analysts, and they usually pump new tech, but even they are down on this Bet The Company decision by Sony.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
At least an implied challenge.
... Stupid, quite frankly.
Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?
Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is
So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.
It is now. Bear in mind Murphy's Law of Storage: storage requirements rise to meet storage capacity... plus. The storage capacity became available; thus, now it's "needed". Now pardon me, I have a 1 TB RAID to check up on....
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
I havent seen a worth while argument for getting a blue-ray player YET!
I know some will get it cus they love the newest products and I can see that, but for me I have limted funds to spend on games and systems so I have to make it count.
Just like I can't justify a $800 video card I can't junstify buying a PS# or a blue-ray player at least not at this time.
I gonna give it a year and then look at them again.
$DO || ! $DO ; try(); > try: command not found
I agree with you, but I see this as more intensifying their gamble.
Sony has parlayed two bets that the PS3 will do well and so will Blu-Ray. They feel the two technologies helped each other out. Blu-Ray gives the PS3 more proliferation via a selling point while the PS3 proliferates the standard of Blu-Ray throughout the community prematurely.
However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also. Sony has tied their fates and if consumers balk on either, Sony goes under. A burden? No. A huge gamble that may or may not pay off. Sony has rolled out five times the number of displays for the PS3 as there were for the PS2. I think they realize the amount they're risking on the table.
My work here is dung.
If Sony had made a deal with the DVD coalition and accepted the HD-DVD standard I think they would be in a much better position right now. They would only take part of the HD-DVD licensing profits, but it would be cash in the bank. Business is about risk, but it's also about taking the easy profits when you can.
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
Um ya... so more storage is necessary for better games... and 'Resistance' will be roughly 312 times as good as anything released on the N64, or DS.
bigger and more complex root kits
It is also not a Red, or Green Ray Player. Also, neither the colors of Orange or Teal apply. It is, however, a Blu-Ray player.
Check out ioquake3.org for a great, free, First-Person Shooter engine!
Since when can you produce 20 gigs of "cinematics" for free? Kindly pass the Kool Aid.
HD-DVD uses blue lasers, too. So they'd still be having the problem. Maybe more, because MS might have included HD-DVD in the XBox 360.
Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker.
And would those savings be passed on to the consumers in the absence of competition?
Well, it's a good thing that Blu-Ray [1] isn't a burden for Sony, because it's going to be a huge burden for the PS3. Blu-Ray certainly doesn't have much momentum right now, and I doubt the PS3 will help matters much. I'm not saying it won't be the new high-def medium, because it might. But I think its success will be pretty much orthogonal to the success of the PS3.
On the other hand, let's see how the Blu-Ray has really hurt the PS3. Assume the PS3 had simply stayed with DVDs, like the xbox 360. They would've certainly released the PS3 much earlier, probably at the same time as the 360. The PS3 would've cost the expected $300 or $400, again remaining competitive.
Now, they've given Microsoft a year head-start. We all know in console time that's incredibly significant - in terms of market share, development time, allowing older title prices to come down. Giving Microsoft a lead will especially hurt Sony in terms of online games, where xbox Live was already moving to its next iteration. Also, I'd bet good money when the PS3 becomes available Microsoft will conveniently announce a $249/$349 price break on the the 360, further making the $600 PS3 sticker more unreasonable. Maybe even a Halo 3 for good measure?
Most big-name titles are going to be multi-platform, and without something truly innovative to set it apart (like the Wii), the PS3 has really positioned itself for failure. And the fault is almost exclusively due to Sony betting the PS3 on Blu-Ray. Honestly, as much as I love my PS2 games, I hope it does fail. The last thing I want video game manufacturers thinking is that they can release crap late and exorbitantly priced and succeed.
[1] By the way, Slashdot, Blu-Ray is the correct spelling; I heard Sony didn't use "Blue" as they couldn't trademark it.
http://www.talknerdy.org
I guess "Next Gen" in Sony HQ means "Start Over From Scratch". Those FMV games sure were fun back then; I'm sure sitting through a 4 minute cutscene and pressing up/down/left/right every minute or so is going to be even more fun in HD.
-BbT
is what they usually had to work with. So 96k was quite a bit more.
But, like everyone else, when they remove the restriction, they get lazy. I think there's one demo that's 5-10 megs, which they mostly fill with things like actual voice recordings for the audio. You can tell they're getting lazy, because they then redo something that looks much the same, only better, and in (again) 64k.
And there is actually someone doing a project -- don't remember what it was called, but the plan is to only design the street layout of major cities, and focus in on focal plot points, but otherwise procedurally generate a galaxy of planets, where each planet has as much detail as our own. The idea is to treat it as randomly generated, but start with the same seed each time, so it's more like a fractal. Such a game might even fit on a CD, would easily fit on a DVD, and would have much more sheer content than any PS3 game.
I'm not opposed to Blu-Ray, but I am opposed to spending more for it, especially when they'll likely be filling it with FMV until they are creating enough real content to fill it.
Don't hold your breath, though. Ian Carmack is going in completely the opposite direction. His concept is to create absolutely gigantic textures, even derive features of a level (shrubbery, trees, etc) from that texture, basically allowing the artists to be lazier, but the game will be much bigger.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
And the burden is that Sony is including this expensive technology into its console from the get go, forcing the cost up, instead of making it ready to have an add on player when the price is reasonable. This nonsense about it not being a burden applies only to the DEVELOPMENT INVESTMENT, and frankly that effect is gonna be way less.
No gamer plays games for the pretty video trailers at the end of a level or check points.
As far as rendering large levels or detailed game play graphics, developers don't even use up the current generation's 4 gigs.... its the VIDEO clips that use all the space.
Sony bragging that they can have tons of high def video clips in a game is great and all but its just FUD directed as MS. I typically skip out of the clips when I see them. And it sure isn't worth all the extra money to me to have them. And frankly at the slow read/transfer speeds of the first generation b-drive in the PS3... 50 gigs is going to be painful, slow, not worth it.
Sony is graspong at straws.
So, I'm just curious... Do Sony pay you by the hour, or by the post for your astroturfing? Are you in-house or are you a freelance consultant astroturfer?
They should have just called it Blue-Ray ("Blue Ray") instead of Blu-Ray ("Blew Ray") because it seems to be messing some people up. I saw a comment yesterday where someone was talking about Blu laser diodes....
Yeah, that free online play on the PS2 sure does kick ass now.
And would those savings be passed on to the consumers in the absence of competition?
There would still be competition among game consoles - I think the PS3 would be much more competitive at a lower price. HD movie prices would probably drop as well, since roughly twice as many HD-DVDs could be sold.
However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also.
This makes no sense, at least in one direction.
Lets say Blu-Ray does not take hold as a movie format, despite having the backing of more major studios and the two major computer vendors (Apple and Dell).
Fine then, how does the PS3 owner suffer?
They still have games that make use of the extra space. Because of the volume of manufacturing games, there's not really any great cost to the media the games are on (as if media cost has ever been a factor in game pricing). Simply put, it has no effect on the PS3 as a gaming system.
It can be argued that if the pS3 does not do well Blu-Ray will have trouble, and I agree more on that front as it is the spread of PS3's that will really bost Blu-Ray to be a dominant format. However all that poor PS3 sales would do would be simply to put Blu-Ray and HD-DVD on an equal footing, and drag out the format war for an extended period of time.
Sony has indeed tied these two things together each to help the other, but does not really suffer if one falters.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You discount that textures all need to be increased in resolution to look OK at higher resolutions. If you have a lot of textures that is potentially a lot more data,
You are also discounting the use of HDR, the greater dynmic range of image data increases the bit depth of textures as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It's not a matter of Blu-ray the Sony format and HD-DVD the standard format. HD-DVD has the support of Microsoft and Intel, as well as Tochiba, NEC, Sanyo, HP, and Universal, but Blu-Ray has the support of Panasonic, Apple, Fox, and MGM, while numerous companies including Samsung and Pioneer, as well as Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, etc. releasing movies on both mediums.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
It means the VRAM image sent to the rasterizer is 6.75 times as large. It does not follow that the size of the raw content on disc (textures, geometrical data, etc.) will also be 6.75 times as large.
No, the textures are actually larger - not only do you have to store textures at a higher resolution so they will still look OK at 1080p, all the consoles are moving to support HDR now which requires textures with a greater bit depth.
The geometrical data will be larger due to the need for greater poly counts, again to look good at a higher res, but it's hard to say how much. Some developers are talking about a ten-fold increase...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just about the only advantage of the HD-DVD standard is easier retooling of existing manufacturing lines. The cost of the discs probably won't be too different in the long run and is irrelevant anyway (with $60 games and $40 movies who cares whether the disc costs a penny or two?). The reason Toshiba's HD-DVD drive is so cheap is that they aren't stupid. They saw the price of the PS3 did some quick calculations and decided on the same razorblade model Sony's using, while BD manufactures use the usual approach (for consumer electronics) of first milking the super-rich and then slowly lower the price.
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man.
But still vastly less than what I can have on a BD. What do I care about the number of gigs for the PS3 I want a replacement for my DVD-R (or +R or whatever) drive and Blu-Ray is superior (also, unlike HD-DVD, it's been developed with burning discs in mind. I think every BD drive for PC you can buy atm is a BD-R while afaik there isn't even an HD-DVD-R announced).
Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD.
Not important. IIRC someone developed a combined head for reading BD and HD-DVD anyway. I think within a few years most drives will support both and the cost overhead shouldn't be so bad (and if a drive then costs $18 instead of $15, so what?). This is not Betamax vs. VHS.
Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having.
Because they wouldn't have to manufacture 405nm diodes for Blu-Ray and 405nm diodes for HD-DVD but could focus on only one waveleng... oh wait.
Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker.
Manufacturing costs for discs are in no way connected to the price you pay when you buy one. The companies will charge what the market's willing to pay and a bit more regardless of what it costs to produce them. And apart from the diode shortage the biggest cost for players seems to be the hardware to decode the video which is almost identical for both anyway (as they support the same codecs and I don't think BD's Java is much worse than the thing for HDDVD MS came up with - forgot the name sorry). MS wants $199 for its add-on which probably won't lose them too much money and the lower-end PS3 which has about the same stuff as MS's higher end 360 is $100 more (but I could see Sony losing more on the lower-end model, because that's the point of the lower-end PS3: Get people to buy the more expensive one). So about $150 per drive for both at this stage. Doesn't seem too bad and I'd think the diode shortage is a bigger headache for both.
The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Is it too much to ask that for once the better format wins? It's not like there's much difference between them. Both license freely to 3rd parties; DRM is crappy and identical; costs aren't that different.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition.
Well they weren't alone; there's Philips of course and Apple Dell HP Hitachi LG Mitsubishi Electric Panasonic Pioneer Philips Samsung Sharp Sony Sun Microsystems TDK Thomson Twentieth Century Fox Walt Disney Warner Bros on the board of directors alone. See here
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
The PS3 "Cell" CPU is already an order and a half of magnitude faster than the PS2 CPU. It consists of one traditional PowerPC CPU core and seven digital signal processors, two of which are reportedly dedicated to running the PS3's operating system. So just dedicate one of the five remaining DSPs to decompressing or procedurally synthesizing textures, and you'll have plenty of time for the rest of the game.
First off, the number of PS2 and XBox games that filled up a dual layered DVD could be counted on one hand.
Of course. If you are a game designer a huge priority is going to be to make a game fit within a single DVD, because the cost of a dual layered disc (or heaven forbid, a second disc!) is a cost that detracts from every sale you make.
It's a lot cheaper to reduce the number of textures used or the size of levels than it is to pay a per disc cost for every game ever sold. That's why most games fit on a single DVD - because it's financial madness not to do so.
Game designers long for more space, there was sharp critisim of Microsoft by game designers at the GDC last year for not adopting a format for the 360 that had more space when that console was made. Now that it makes ecenomical sense to fill more space, game designers will have no problems doing so. They have already been working with highly detailed models, they can just fit a lot more textures and higher resolution artwork in the same game now.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
FMV's were added in the PSX era because the computer graphics looked good, and the in-game graphics were primitive. That is no longer the case.
I didn't consider increased bit depth, but I'd have to know what a typical bit depth is for a current console game to guess at whether it would need to be increased.
Most game textures I believe today are 8-bit because they do not need a lot of tonal range.
HDR content uses 32 bits, which means much smoother transitions in color and tone than you could get sticking with 8-bit textures.
I'm sure the reality is more complex than that on both ends, but thee's the core of it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Buy a Wii.
No, Mr. Green. Communism is just a red herring.
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
Scenario A : Sony licence and buys HD DVD drives
1- Price is dictated by supplier
2- Price includes profit from third party
3- price include licencign of tech
Scenario B: Sony creates their own drives
1- Price dictated by production cosst
2- Profit is all Sony's
3- Must pay R&D.
It seems utilizing Blu-Ray instead of someone else format might help them in the long run. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD are functionally the same but HD-DVD is someone else IP, someone else has control on it, and someone else grabs a portion of yrou profits. so it benifits sony to go with Blu-Ray.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
Last I checked, the albatross was good luck until some sailor killed it. Yes, I read a poem.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
In September of 1999, I got a computer with a DVD drive. I didn't own a standalone DVD player for a few more years after that, but I was able to buy quite a few DVDs around the $20 (US) mark. I could go to Hollywood Video or Blockbuster and they had a fairly decent DVD library to choose from. I also rented DVDs from my local public library for $1. DVDs were readily available. They were convenient. The PS2 came into a market where DVDs were already popular, and was able to capitalize on that. I doubt that the PS2 did all that much for the success of the DVD format, because DVD was the direction things were going anyway.
Prices aside, all of the other reasons I originally mentioned still stand. There is a competing format, with a less expensive player. There is no compelling reason to start migrating your entire library of movies to either of the new formats, when they offer very little additional functionality, features, or convenience (many would say they're less convenient than DVD), other than HD resolution. Most people either don't have the equipment to take advantage of HD, or the ability to notice a huge enough difference from DVD to justify the cost... so far.
When DVD came out, it solved problems, like how to access parts of a movie you want to, how to provide alternate audio tracks, or provide optional, multi-lingual subtitles. How to provide extra content without having to scan around on the tape to find it. How to overcome the signal quality issues of analog tapes. How to have a smaller medium, with no moving parts. Blu-Ray only solves the problem of fitting HD content onto the disc. It's not revolutionary. It's evolutionary at best, but it may be too early for people to even care about that yet, when there's so much investment in DVD.
If people are going to buy the PS3 for the games, for the latest, greatest, biggest, loudest, highest resolution gaming experience they can get, then that's great. They can pony up the dough and do it. All I'm saying is that the PS3 is not going to be able to take advantage of Blu-Ray movies the same way the PS2 was able to take advantage of DVD movies. I think there will be a slight advantage because of Blu-Ray movies, but that depends very heavily on pricing issues, availability of content, and the public opinion on the need for hi-def movie content, coupled with public opinion about the format war.
Even if HD-DVD never existed, you'd still have to convince a lot of people about the need for Blu-Ray movies. It really isn't the same situation as the DVD transition, because the DVD format is not as mature as the VHS format was back in 1999/2000, and because there's not a drastic enough difference between DVD and Blu-Ray/HD-DVD to inspire people to go out and spend all that money (again).
If Sony really cared about revolutionizing the home media experience, they would provide a hard drive based media server, with tons of (upgradable) hard drive space, downloadable games, downloadable movies, PVR functionality, etc. Games could still be sold on BR discs in addition to downloads, but BR wouldn't have to be their bread and butter. Think of the original concept of the Phantom console, added to a Windows Media Center PC or a Kaleidescape server. Instead of finding an innovative new way to deliver content, special features, convenience and functionality, they chose their familiar losing battle of developing a disc format that runs the risk of being left in the dust. MiniDisc/ATRAC didn't work out in North America because by the time we realized we could find something more convenient than CDs, mp3 and the like had arrived. Blu-Ray might save the PS3, and the PS3 might save Blu-Ray, but it's a circular logic, so it will be a battle to get it started in the right way for them. I'm not saying it won't be succesful, I'm just saying they can't count on the same success they've had in the past to carry them though.
Wish I had some points today.
Instead of the PS2, containing functionality I was sure I would use, at a price I could justify to myself, I could buy a really expensive game system with expensive games that contains one of two competing formats for a technology I don't either need or want. At best, I'm buying a better version of the PS2 at three times the cost with more expensive games - at worst, I'm buying a really expensive game system with no other use. Considering Sony's opinion that people will buy the PS3 whatever the cost, Blu-Ray isn't Sony's burden to bear, but that of their customers.
I don't care so much about Sony's rootkit evils (though they are evil) - it seems like they're trying to avoid another Betamax by attaching a proprietary technology to another popular item, and hoping that it will drive sales of their format. They either don't realize or don't care that the (relatively low) price is part of what made the PS2 popular, and by adding so much expensive functionality to the PS3 they are negating that advantage. I can't see spending $600 (or even $500) on a game system, and much of their game market would seem to be in the same boat - though they would also be in that boat if the PS3 used HD-DVD as its format, people might be able to justify the cost by the presence of an added next-gen DVD player, while now they just have an expensive bet on the HD-DVD/Blu-Ray war.
If BluRay fails to become the standard, then the damage to the PS3 will be the fact that it's priced $200 higher than the competition because of a feature people don't want.
No, even if Blu-Ray movies don't take off you are paying $100 more (base PS3 is $500 and has every feature of the premium 360 plus a little more) for a game system that can have games that have 50GB of textures, instead of 5GB.
You are still getting some value for the money spent.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The drive gets data off the disk no faster than the 360.
It doesn't matter how much you have on disk if you can't get it into the machine fast enough.
A 72Mbps transfer rate. (a guess)
and then
Lose 90 minutes of your life while it loads, just on the data transfer.
As a game developer the problem I've seen with this sort of storage is that designers (like the one in the article) and artists take it as free ticket to make hugh assets that will take far to long to load. They need to realy consider the type of data they will be filling it with. Movies and fine, they can stream and we are not doing anthing else with the bandwidth while we play it.
But when they decide that they need every texture in a level to be 4096x4096 there is going to be a problem. A real chalange facing developers for this platform is going to be keeping the load times down and trying to make the in game graphics look good at 1080i.
My guess would be to expect to wait often and for a long time between levels on most of the next-gen stuff. At least until texture synthesis and other procedural techniques make thier way into the art piplines.
No compression in games puts more pressure on the console to effectively stream all of the data. If the console can't keep up, expect long load times. Despite being "next gen" some games are still forced to use loading screens. Blue Dragon is a prime example of how this problem still continues today.
When you're a kid and you wanna go Wii, but you don't have drugs yet...
#include <disclaimer.h>
#include <beer.h>
I just checked my PS2 copy of the game. It's 4.2GB (technically 4,499,169,280 bytes). 2.8GB of this is the audio. The Xbox and PC versions should actually be smaller due to the fact that they use compressed audio files instead of streaming XA.
I remember having a discussion many years ago about this and how it would be technically possible to have the (~3GB PS2) GTA3 on the Gamecube despite the 1.5GB discs by just compressing the audio. Low and behold the Xbox and PC versions come out under a gig.
Hell, World of Warcraft is less than 6 gigs... small enough to easily fit on one dual layer DVD. If you have more content than can fit on a single DVD (DL) than use the hard drive and use multiple discs...
So will someone at Sony please tell me why BluRay is a necessity for this generation.
I think everyone "gets" what the issue is. No is technically being "forced to buy" a PS3, since obviously they can choose to just not buy it, or get a 360 or Wii instead. But many gamers feel like they are "forced to buy" a PS3, since it's the only way to play several games that are PS3-exclusive.
... is rather subjective, and quite cloudy. I doubt anyone here can truly know if the PS3 could have been developed without Blu-ray, unless they happened to work in Sony. There's certainly SOME doubt, since there are comparable next-gen consoles that appear to do just fine without requiring a high-def DVD drive for games. But then again, the PS3 hasn't shipped yet, and who knows, maybe we'll all be clamoring for Blu-ray and HD-DVD games next year (although that does seem rather doubtful).
...
"Forced to buy" arguably isn't the right term to use, but it is often used that way in the vernacular. So the grammar police should cut these folks some slack.
And finally, the argument that Blu-ray is an essential part of the system, and that it's pointless to argue about "being forced to buy this feature"
So in the end, it seems like if you favor Sony, you're going to take one side of the argument. If you favor MS, or at the very least are anti-Sony, then you'll take the other. So, agree to disagree, and let's move onto something else
-- jchenx
Have you noticed how low res the textures are in GT:SA? I for one would love to see GTA with higher 'resolution' models and textures.
Textures in World of Warcraft don't see too low-res for me. And there's plenty of them, too.
-_- Sorry, but I'm a little bitter at them right now.
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They are, very.
It's just less noticeable because the artists worked it into the visual style.