DVDs are big enough for Next-Gen + File sizes for X360 launch games

[NavNucST3]

listen..... you want DVD-only games in you console 5 years from now?

i dont know about you guys, but 6 years ago i was happy with GD-rom from dreamcast and in denial about DVD in ps2.
6 years later, thank god im not a f.anboy anymore.

The bigger the better.
i dont know the needs required 5 years from now, and neither do you.
But the sure thing to say, is that a drive with 50gb is the safest Bet whether you like it or not.

excuses are just that
No way im gonna pay 400 bucks for something to last 5 years that doesn't have a proper future-safe format. Procedural texture my ass! thats what!

hell, just any format would do... bluray or not, space is space.
Never in my life i saw ppl defending a lesser format just "because"
your not gonna pay the new format in full! its a damn bargain good for you now, and 5 years from now too!

5 years from now, the board will be lit up again about people proclaiming how their console of choice is better than your console of choice and it won't be 360 vs PS3. I imagine four years from the coming E3, the console section will be getting "reprimanded" again "disappear" and a plethora of other changes.

 

[McFly]

Yep... and procedurally generating textures even more. A lot more, compared to simply fetching pre-saved textures...

Not to say it's a bad thing (procedurally generating textures) - but it's not something is going to make up for a 3 to 5 times storage disadvantage unless you want to have an overly simplified game because all performance was spent on generating textures...

And it's much harder to create nice looking procedural textures ... especially as a coder normaly is a bad designer and a designer normaly a bad coder, not a real problam with normal textures, but a huge problem with procedural textures.

Fredi

 

[Sis]

Hard data on Xbox/Xbox 360 DVD usage

Nice article, shamelessly stolen from GAF. I primarily wanted people to see some of the data, since it's interesting. We can discuss the conclusion, which I have a bit of disagreement with:

http://www.gamesfirst.com/?id=1132

Far Cry is not the only title to see this sort of limited growth. In fact, as programmers optimize code, it's not uncommon for programs to shrink. The original MechAssualt was 3.42 gigabytes, but MechAssualt 2 was only 2.29, a nearly 33% reduction in size. Yet MechAssualt II is considered a better looking game. Grand Theft Auto III is a paltry 733 megabytes, compared to Grand Theft Auto Vice City's still paltry 1.2 gigs. Silent Hill 2 clocked in at 4.88 gigs. It's sequel, Silent Hill 4, is only 3.16 gigabytes.

Condemned: 3.9 GB
Madden 06 NFL: 3.3 GB
Dead or Alive 4: 5 GB
NBA 06: 4.5 GB

The Size Growth of the Xbox:
Average for 2001: 1.81 gigs (21% of disc)
Average for 2002: 2.17 gigs (25% of disc)
Average for 2003: 2.47 gigs (29% of disc)
Average for 2005: 3.20 gigs (37% of disc)

And their conclusion:

Over the course of its life, the size of the average Xbox title increased by 56%. If the Xbox 360 size increases at the same rate, and the four 360 titles are representative of the whole, we can expect the average Xbox 360 title in 4 or 5 years to be around 6.39 gigs, and to occupy about 75% of the disc's capacity.

The biggest issue I have with the conclusion is that we see the greatest jump in capacity usage towards the end of the life of the console. It's fairly well agreed that Xbox's life is a year or 2 short of typical. Therefore, I think the conclusion really should be: it'll be fine for a few years, but we'll see a lot more two disc games towards the end of Xbox 360's life.

.Sis

 

[Shifty Geezer]

That 97 kb demo is all very well, but it's worth pointing out that it takes time to calculate the models and textures. Load time is about a minute on my PC (Athlon 2500). Also procedural synthesis isn't going to create this...

or this : http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/747/747891/img_2903027.html
or this : http://media.xbox360.ign.com/media/747/747891/img_2903028.html
or this : http://ps3media.ign.com/ps3/image/article/614/614784/the-getaway-ps3-20060117010107623.jpg

or any number of real-game situations. If it could, people like Laa-Yosh would be unemployed in the graphics industry!

Procedural Synthesis (this term needs a shorter, cooler moniker!) may alleviate a lot of data requirement by taking a standard model and adding variety. eg. a single goblin model could have various changes made between clones, producing a fat goblin and tall goblin and big-eared goblin all from the same 1 model. I imagine it'd be a lot of work to code such variation processes though and mihgt not be doable in a lot of situations. Content like PGR 3's buildings and cars are limited to being hard assets, with and ProSynth activities confined to more usual dirt and damage effects.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27597

 

[Sis]

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27597

My apologies--didn't see the other thread. Mods, please delete.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

i've heard of a certain ps3 launch game,with the developper having some trouble fitting into the Blue ray disc....

Yeah, my best friend's bartender is married to this woman who is a secretary for a sales rep that supplies copiers to a Sony PS3 developer... and the news is that there is a game in development that will require one user to master 7 controllers all at once, use dual displays to see all the action, has CGI textures and models stored on three BR discs, and requires the game engine to be installed onto the PS3 HDD from a separate (4th) disc.

 

[expletive]

Some fuzzy logic in this post. Just saying this gen, most large games have been rubbish, doesn't change the fact that with more space there's the definite possibility of using it to the games advantage, if nothing else to add more variety. eg. A 1GB level on DVD that spans 40 screens-worth of scenery by tiling the earlier graphics at the end fo the level, could be upped to 4 Gb on BRD and provide more variation in the graphics without repeating the earlier tiles etc.

I agree with a lot of what you've said here but i think its worth noting that the 4GB level wil also take 4x the amount of manpower (i.e. $$$) to create.

Point being that there are other forces pushing back in the other direction (less disc space used over time) to counteract the ones pushing for more space.

I think we'd all prefer more at the end of the day 'just in case' but the real question is if we'll actually need it.

Does it cost more or less money to do in in-engine cinematic compared to a pregenerated CGI movie?

 

[Alpha_Spartan]

Well, you also have to think that there many new techniques around the corner that could make huge impact on how you make games like procedural synthesis. Look at the screens below and tell with a straight face that that does not look impressive when you consider they come from a game that uses less space than 96kB...

http://kk.kema.at/files/gfx/full5.jpg

Let me reiterate, folks. This game uses Procedural Synthesis and could fit on a floppy disc...14 times!

I just had to point that out again. Some of the "Blu Ray or bust" folks on here need to think outside of their narrow frame of thought. Wouldn't it be something if Halo 3 used PS and came in at less than a gig?

 

[rounin]

Doesn't mean the game takes up all that space. Oh, and they are not rips, they are dumps.

There is a reason why that games need to be that big. Namely dummy data/redundancy/data placing that helps with loading. Rips are definitely not a standard of measuring game size when it comes to a system that doesn't come with a harddrive as default. It seems to me like they purposely chose dumps that were small

For the guy who asked me to get more specific file sizes, I'll do so when I'm home. I doubt U of T lets me access torrent site

 

[function]

Everyone knows that the amount of fun you have with a game is directly proportional to the amount of disk space it takes up. Simply by using uncompressed audio a game becomes up to 8 times as fun.

And we all know that more memory gives developers more possibilities. The Saturn had more memory than the PS1, which is why its games looked better, where more innovative and ultimately played better.

Take a game like Resident Evil - about 10 hours finish and took up a CD. Zelda on the N64 only took up 32MB and consequently provided less than 30 minutes of very average looking game. Likewise, Morrowwind looks worse and provides less gameplay and fun than two "Make My Video" FMV segment connecting games on the M-CD.

The art of making a good looking game is a bit like the art of making a good painting. The bigger the canvas is, and the more paint you can put on it, the more beautiful and meaningful it will be.

[/exaggerated but typical kind of nonsense]

"Comedy" postings aside, having more storage is nice but doesn't have a fraction of the importance that some are trying to attribute to it. DVDs aren't being filled yet, compression and procedural synthesis haven't been propperly investigated or implemented yet and even if you want to slap in large amounts of hi-def video putting a game on 2 or more DVDs isn't going to be a problem. The 360 isn't going to become a broken format 2 years down the line.

There are always constraints in making games: DVD storage isn't one I'm worried about.

 

[seismologist]

The place where size will matter the most will be in bonus features. I'm sure publishers will try to include extras to make the game seem worth the $60 price tag.

Add in a full scale Unreal Engine 3 level editor? Sure Why not? How about some extra maps for multiplayer?

 

[Nesh]

I don't think that you read the atcile since they mention what you just said. Some of the top games are also some of the smallest, for example DoomIII and halflife 2 around 2-3 gigas while the Terminator: rise of the machines is closer to 6 gigas. Would you say that Terminaotr was better than the other two. Or the example between Azuric and Far Cry, where Far Cry is head and shoulders above Azurik in almost everything it is only 500MB bigger in file size. Also you maybe misted the point that many games are also getting smaller, there are several examples of games where the second iteration has had a smaller filesize...

Impressed.Didnt expect HL2 to be that small.I scanned the article actually.Didnt read it in detail to tell the truth.Thats good news for the 360
I d like to see more examples though.A list of more games would be more informable.

 

[Titanio]

Procedural stuff is not a cure-all. For most types of art for most types of game, you won't be able to use it.

You also need to consider the potentially large CPU expense involved in that.

On a more general note, looking at trends over the current generation, and drawing conclusions for the following 5 years, saying "this is how it'll be going forward", seems a little misguided to me. I'm sure if you looked at PSone games, you might not have seen a need for DVDs..yet here we are. I think games tend to be like gas - they'll expand to fill the space given to them. Games have never restricted themselves to the capacity of the lowest common denominator before (e.g. GC discs this gen).

 

[expletive]

Haven't read the article. I'm responding to the OP's quoted figures...
Historically, how did PS2 and XB games grow (or not) from launch size to later games? IIRC from talks on this forum, a lot of PS2 game launched on CD. So the real question is what are future games going to consume? DOA 4 is already over half-way the space of the disc. I don't see that it's safe to say games won't be going over 8.5GB. Well, it is safe to say that as developers will limit themselves to that much! They're not likely to produce an 11 GB game if they can avoid it. But looking at Nintendo GC, their games were mostly on 1.5 GB discs, so does that mean XB and PS2's extra capacity went unused?

This is one of those questions that can't really be answered until a couple of years down the line, where the benefits or lack thereof of BRD can be compared to DVD.

Wisely plucked from the article by Sis in another thread:

The Size Growth of the Xbox:
Average for 2001: 1.81 gigs (21% of disc)
Average for 2002: 2.17 gigs (25% of disc)
Average for 2003: 2.47 gigs (29% of disc)
Average for 2005: 3.20 gigs (37% of disc)

 

[fulcizombie]

Let's wait and see all these epic Ps3 games that will use the blue ray format.

 

[Titanio]

edit - nm

 

[JarrodKing]

From-

http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/08/30/news_6132218.html


From Software producer Masanori Takeuchi, who's been working on Enchant Arm, a role-playing game slated to be an Xbox 360 launch title, said developers will also be running into issues of storage space in the next generation. While the Xbox 360 is a next-generation console, Microsoft decided to equip it with a normal DVD reader rather than give it HD-DVD or Blu-ray reading capabilities.

"The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim."

Who do you trust? An actual developer for a 360 game or a rather POV article that couldn't even get their math right? They have since added this to the top of their article-

Editor's Note: This article was originally published with the claim that Xbox titles grew in filesize by 56% between 2001 and 2005. This was a simple miscalculation on our part. The actual growth was 77%. We apologize for the mistake, and offer thanks to our readers that were kind enough to point out our error. The data the percentage was based on is still accurate.


All games might not run into space issues, but it seems some of them are and will.

 

[Sethamin]

Another interesting angle on this question that I hadn't thought of before: last gen (or current gen, if you will), developers had way more space than they needed. Initial games were under a gig, but the potential capacity was almost 9 gigs (not quite). And yet here we are at the end of this generation, and still almost nobody uses the full capacity of DVD-9. So even though it was there and available, nobody really took full advantage. Which begs the question: does size really matter? (pun intended ) Perhaps HDTV changes the equation, but this seems to suggest that capacity matters far less than we are giving it credit for.

 

[Sis]

Who do you trust? An actual developer for a 360 game or a rather POV article that couldn't even get their math right? They have since added this to the top of their article-

eM released in Japan on a single disc, right?

I agree with others that argue that a larger disc format is not necessary but is nice to have. I think that the debate typically is around whether it's a limiting factor on the Xbox 360, which it more than likely won't be. I don't see a problem if a handful of games come on two discs.