Final Fantasy 13 multi-disc interview

[Dr. Nick]

While they may end up selling less copies of their MMO they get paid monthly fees for the game. Their normal big JRPGs are a buy once pay once sort of a deal so if less people buy it at full price, their second in house HD retail game of the generation that has been in development since before the release of the PS3, they likely won't get as much money as they hoped for.

I don't know maybe SE is different but I have a good feeling that Arcade owners are going to be able to play this as well without having to purchase a HDD. I don't believe that it will be because Microsoft force them to, just that the more people who can buy it the better. It's an assumption for sure but unlike many of the assumptions made in this thread I have precedence to site.

 

[PSman]

More proof that FF13 is being held back by DVD limitations

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/01/13/ffxiii_deleted_content/

Final Fantasy XIII Had Lots of Deleted Content
Art director says enough content removed to make another game.

Final Fantasy XIII is a big game with a massive world to explore (cough -- once you get past all those linear paths -- cough). But it apparently could have been much bigger.

Square Enix specialty site FF Reunion has a short summary of a new interview with FFXIII art director Isamu Kamikokuryou. In the interview, Kamikokuryou discusses some of the content that was deleted from the game.

Apparently, the FFXIII design team created a number of areas that ended up not going into the final product. How much? Enough to create an additional game, according to Kamikokuryou.

Kamikokuryou shared a few locations with the magazine. Apparently, the design team created a full area surrounding Lightning's home. This area resembled a park. There was also a secret base for resistance group Nora inside a shop somewhere. Nautiuls Park, an amusement facility, at one point also included a zoo.

The content was already running on actual PS3 hardware, it seems, but was left out due to considerations for game volume and overall game balanace.
The FF Reunion site is itself not sure of the source of this interview, but I imagine it would be Famitsu, as the magazine has been running a series of interviews with FFXIII's designers since the game's release. Perhaps we can look forward to even more insights in coming issues.

 

[Carl B]

I don't view "game volume and overall game balance" as referring to storage limitations.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

More proof that FF13 is being held back by DVD limitations

http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2010/01/13/ffxiii_deleted_content/

OMG, not another one of those.

Saying something so silly ignore 2 inconvenient truths.

1. There's been many multi-disk RPG's released for X360.
2. There's been many multi-disk RPG's released under the Final Fantasy brand.

It's pretty silly to assume FFXIII is somehow special in that respect. The dev's themselves cut things down for...

The content was already running on actual PS3 hardware, it seems, but was left out due to considerations for game volume and overall game balanace.

Emphasis mine. But there is absolutely NOTHING in the history of either Final Fantasy releases or X360 releases that would indicate multi-DVD RPG would be difficult or unwanted.

Regards,
SB

 

[Neb]

In contrast to this it will be interesting to see the DF framerate article regarding this game.

 

[AlNom]

Sounds to me like they didn't want to wait until the end of the generation to release the bloody game. How many years already

Heh, at least this way they'll have some DLC options in the future to try and recoup costs.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

More proof that FF13 is being held back by DVD limitations

I think you'll find 'Game Volume' means 'too much game'. If there's already hundreds of hours of gameplay and exploration, you don't need more. Can save it for another game. I thinkit mistaken to infer that it's due to storage capacities.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Sounds to me like they didn't want to wait until the end of the generation to release the bloody game. How many years already

Heh, at least this way they'll have some DLC options in the future to try and recoup costs.

By the sound of things about the game it seems like this may have been the case. It seems like the game has been "streamlined" considerably. I think many people who haven't been big on JRPGs will like it while some RPG veterans will dislike it but the same could have been said about FFXII. Once it comes out though there will still be a big question mark over what the game would have been like if it remained exclusive and I don't think there is any other way around it.

Edit:When I say "streamlined" I'm talking about some of the complaints about the game being extremely linear not what is said in the article.

 

[Cornsnake]

I think people shouldn't read too much into something that most likely has gotten things lost in translation. Not to mention that such articles aren't there for factual accuracy, but rather to increase the number of hits to their site.

 

[SG79]

In contrast to this it will be interesting to see the DF framerate article regarding this game.

Likely parity achieved there or perhaps a 2-4Hz advantage on average that will get one side riled up

I thought that the differences would be clear after all this time. The "big" ones will be limited to the CGI encoding, resolution and bitrate and the audio compression/codecs used. Stuff that 90% of people won't even care about.

 

[GuestLV]

1. There's been many multi-disk RPG's released for X360.

The game already on 3DVD or I missed something ?Maybe Microsoft covers the cost of 3 dvds only ,similar story with ID RAGe?

 

[PARANOiA]

Has the number of discs been confirmed yet out of interest?

 

[Dr. Nick]

The orginal source of this info is NSFW but it does contain a picture do the breakdown of the files on the Blu-ray disk. It seems like the game contains only 8 Gigs of game data while the rest of the 38 gigs is made up of media files. CG and I'm guessing uncompressed audio. I saw this a few weeks ago but was waiting for a more tasteful source to post the breakdown.

Edit: Someone found a tasteful source for the info.
http://pocketnews.cocolog-nifty.com/pkns/2009/12/final-fantasy-x.html

 

[DrJay24]

So if it lost 15GB, it would still be four disc, correct?

 

[Dr. Nick]

So if it lost 15GB, it would still be four disc, correct?

I would ignore that. The only reason I posted the articles name is because I couldn't link directly to it.

I think the person who wrote the acticle based on his past comments is thinking that the 360 dvd uses the entire DVD 9 but we know better. The guy who wrote the article has no idea how much would need to be compressed for the 360 version but did link to the breakdown of the Blu-ray disc which I end-up finding another link for anyway.

I'll remove the name of the article in order to avoid confusion.
If the CG video in the PS3 version is 1080p with uncompressed audio then I could imagine there will be some saving if the CG ended up being 720p or slightly under with compressed audio on the 360 but I have now idea about how much space it would save.

 

[AlNom]

Nice find!

Hm... well, as far as I can tell from google/youtube, the introduction movie to FF13 is roughly 3 minutes. I'm just going to take a wild stab at the first movie file being the intro there. And if it is indeed that frickin huge, it better be 1080p and uncompressed audio.

edit: oh wait, could be those 4xMSAA scenes, that are just pre-rendered in-engine material, mixed in there for the first area or whatever.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I think the person who wrote the acticle based on his past comments is thinking that the 360 dvd uses the entire DVD 9 but we know better. The guy who wrote the article has no idea how much would need to be compressed for the 360 version but did link to the breakdown of the Blu-ray disc which I end-up finding another link for anyway.

I would hope Square-Enix were smart enough to ultilize DXTC texture compression on the X360 as it would afford greater compression with near lossless quality. Although since PS3 doesn't support it, they may not have used it since it was developed for PS3 first.

I don't think it's that difficult to support so hopefully they made use of it. And if they did it makes it that much more difficult to try to work out how much space/DVD's it would need on X360 by looking at how much space it takes on a BRD.

Regards,
SB

 

[tha_con]

OMG, not another one of those.

Saying something so silly ignore 2 inconvenient truths.

1. There's been many multi-disk RPG's released for X360.
2. There's been many multi-disk RPG's released under the Final Fantasy brand.

It's pretty silly to assume FFXIII is somehow special in that respect. The dev's themselves cut things down for...



Emphasis mine. But there is absolutely NOTHING in the history of either Final Fantasy releases or X360 releases that would indicate multi-DVD RPG would be difficult or unwanted.

Regards,
SB

Likewise, there is no way to know if the game could have been better from a design perspective if the content was all available on one disc. Just saying.

I think you'll find 'Game Volume' means 'too much game'. If there's already hundreds of hours of gameplay and exploration, you don't need more. Can save it for another game. I thinkit mistaken to infer that it's due to storage capacities.

And how exactly do we measure how much game is "enough game"? I'm certain a lot of people wouldn't be upset if they got more game for their money, wouldn't you agree?

Also, there is absolutely no way for us to know if there was or was not too much content on the discs, especially with such vague comments. In addition to that, we really can't determine if these comments are even legit, as there is no source (sources is "assumed"). So really, this whole discussion is just opinions and "what ifs".

Tally:

32.6GB movies
3.75GB Zone
3.13GB Sys1&2
262MB PS3 update

*1000MB = 1,000,000 KB, so I didn't do the 1024 division, otherwise the PS3 update would be "256MB"

Based on this info, there are two possible things going on.

1) The 360 version will have content that is more compressed (specifically, movies and audio) or it will have a lot of discs (5 I think?).

2) PS3 has a some padding there to help with load times, and those 3GB file sizes for zone and sys1&2 will be considerably smaller on 360.

Either way, it still ends up being around 4 or 5 discs on 360, which means it's more likely that the content (video and audio) will be compressed more. I'm not sure how this will affect the final product (if at all) but it'll be interesting to see the differences in that specific content (FMV cutscenes).

 

[AlNom]

Tally:

where 1GB = 1000MB = 1,000,000 KB,

32.6GB movies
3.75GB Zone
3.13GB Sys1&2
262MB PS3 update

or where 1GB = 1,048,576 MB = 1,073,741,824 KB

31.09GB Movies
3.58GB Zone
2.98GB Sys 1&2
256MB PS3 Update

Zone + Sys1&2 ought to fit onto a dual layer 6.8GiB DVD quite comfortably... But what are Sys 1 and Sys 2

 

[Shifty Geezer]

And how exactly do we measure how much game is "enough game"? I'm certain a lot of people wouldn't be upset if they got more game for their money, wouldn't you agree?

I played ~70 hours of Rogue Squadron and...>100 hours of FFX? that was enough for me and i wouldn't have wanted more (although I could have with FF). There's no point puitting in 1000 hours of game content in a game when you no next to no-one is going to play it all. Heck, AFAIK most people never finish any of even their shorter games!

Also, there is absolutely no way for us to know if there was or was not too much content on the discs, especially with such vague comments.

It's not for us to decide. It's for them to decide. If SE look at their content and decide they can spin off half of it into a DLC pack and sell it for $15 and make even more money, it's their call. Consumer may prefer it they just released it all, but consumers would also prefer if developers worked for free, and gave them unlimited bespoke content. Consumers can't expect business to always work in their best favour!

In addition to that, we really can't determine if these comments are even legit, as there is no source (sources is "assumed").

True enough.

So really, this whole discussion is just opinions and "what ifs".

Like most B3D discussions...

Either way, it still ends up being around 4 or 5 discs on 360, which means it's more likely that the content (video and audio) will be compressed more. I'm not sure how this will affect the final product (if at all).

Considering lots of HD users can't even tell the difference between HD and SD content, I can't see a visual degrade severly impacting presentation. something like uncompressed audio will be a nigh pointless addition to BRD.