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

[ihamoitc2005]

Carmack

"Every generation, someone comes up and says something like “procedural and synthetic textures and geometry are going to be the hot new thing. I’ve heard it for the last three console generations – it’s not been true and it’s never going to be true" - John Carmack

http://www.beyond3d.com/forum/showthread.php?t=27431

In console world many developers are much better than Carmack and have much more "innovation".

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Amazing

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...

This is amazing my friend. What is processor requirement?

 

[bleon]

If we followed the "anti BluRay, pro DVD" arguments to their logical conclusion, then Xbox 1 would have used something similar to GD-ROM tech (1.2Gb). GD-ROM drives were cheap and the capacity was suitable for games of that era.

Imagine Xbox 1 using a GD-ROM instead of DVD. How would a GD-ROM based xbox1 compete against the DVD based PS2? Would MS have the power to force the majority of multiplatform releases to be based on GD-ROM media? One thing is for sure, fewer titles would be ported over from PS2 to Xbox.

Pretty soon, 360 DVD capacity will look as limiting as an Xbox 1 with GD-ROM does today.

 

[inefficient]

In console world many developers are much better than Carmack and have much more "innovation".

Any other developer at his level or higher would say the same thing. Hell, developers with even less talent would say the same thing.

 

[Hardknock]

GTA3 TAKES UP 4.37GB!!!!

Who ever said gta3 only takes up 733mb is spreading FUD. The bloody-bad-for-industry-pirate probably used a hack PC version with ALL THE JUICE of the game taken out.

I put the following PS2 game disc into my computer dvd drive and the got the following:

Grand Theft Auto 3= 4.37GB
Resident Evil 4= 4.25GB
Killzone= 4.32GB
Final Fantasy X= 4.28GB
Devil May Cry= 4.37GB
Ratchet & Clank 3= 4.15GB
Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater= 4.28GB
Smackdown! Here Comes The Pain= 4.21GB
Soul Calibur 2= 4.04GB
Tekken 4= 4.16GB
Onimusha 3= 4.36GB
Jax & Daxter 2= 4.10GB
Jax & Daxter 2= 4.18GB


Devil May Cry 3= 3.60GB
Rumble Rose= 3.56GB
Ratchet & Clank 2= 3.30GB
Ratchet & Clank= 3.92GB
Shadow Hearts= 3.27GB
Gran Turismo 3= 3.43GB
Silent Hill 2= 3.37GB

Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarder= 2.88GB
Onimusha= 2.03GB
Guilty Gear X2 Reloaded= 2.18GB
Metal Gear Solid 2:Substance= 2.19GB
Kingdom Hearts= 2.56GB

Virtua Fighter 4 Evo= 1.72GB
Jax & Daxter= 1.35GB

Virtua Tennis 2, Tekken Tag Tournament and Crash Bandicoot are the PS2 first generation games and are on CDs so we know they're less than 700MB.

(You could check it if you want - Just put your game in the drive)


I lend God of War so couldn't get a reading for it. But I remember there's a dual layer icon on the disc label. I suspect it to be around 5-6GB. DVD9 will probably be sufficient for 1st generation game like CDs were for the PS2. But after that it will not be enough.

You do understand that just "popping a PS2 DVD in your PC drive" does not take into account redundant data?

And incase you didn't get it the first time, the file sizes in the article are of the XBOX VERSIONS which are significantly smaller than the PS2 versions.

 

[rounin]

Are you aware of the fact that the redundant data is required to allow for efficient loading? Xbox was able to get over this due to a HD being standard. Xbox360 does not have this advantage and will have to resort to redundant data as well.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Are you aware of the fact that the redundant data is required to allow for efficient loading? Xbox was able to get over this due to a HD being standard. Xbox360 does not have this advantage and will have to resort to redundant data as well.

You do realise that the BR drive in PS3 will most likely be considerably slower than the X360's DVD drive, or it's own DVD drive for that matter?

360 will still use HDD caching as well, so people without HDD's will get longer load times, that's fine, it's one of the selling points of a HDD anyways.

 

[Hardknock]

Are you aware of the fact that the redundant data is required to allow for efficient loading? Xbox was able to get over this due to a HD being standard. Xbox360 does not have this advantage and will have to resort to redundant data as well.

Uhh, NO. Xbox's HDD didn't have a thing to do with it. More powerful hardware equates to better compression techniques. And just so you know, the majority (90%) of developers didn't even use the Xbox's HDD for anything.

Plus 360 has 12x DVD so streaming should be a lot simpler this time around.

 

[zidane1strife]

Are you aware of the fact that the redundant data is required to allow for efficient loading? Xbox was able to get over this due to a HD being standard. Xbox360 does not have this advantage and will have to resort to redundant data as well.

and smaller media too, no(thanks to the security stuff)?

 

[ps2xboxcube]

HAHA. The orignal article is BS.

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 miscalculation on our part, as 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. We admit that this weakens the premise of the article , but it is also only part of the author's reasoning. Please read the article and draw your own conclusions.

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

 

[mckmas8808]

Yeah again everyday forum posters know the truth. Boy oh boy.

 

[Serenity Painted Death]

It won't be a problem unless FPS/similar games start ending up on multiple discs... that could be all kinds of bad.

Though, it should be interesting to see what developer's do with all the extra space on the blu-ray discs (once they start using them for a majority of games). Extra HD content? Will not having to worry about compression free them up for other things? Oh well, time will tell. Nobody really cares about swapping a disc for a RPG or lengthy action game where you get hours and hours on disc... but I can't imagine the inconvenience of having to switch discs for new maps for multiplayer or something... egads.

 

[gokickrocks]

GTA3 TAKES UP 4.37GB!!!!

Who ever said gta3 only takes up 733mb is spreading FUD. The bloody-bad-for-industry-pirate probably used a hack PC version with ALL THE JUICE of the game taken out.

i believe they are referring to gta3 on the xbox not the ps2, the xbox uses compression to bring it down to 733mb...same goes for gta:sa, xbox is about 1.3gb and ps2 is over 4gb

 

[StefanS]

It won't be a problem unless FPS/similar games start ending up on multiple discs... that could be all kinds of bad.

Though, it should be interesting to see what developer's do with all the extra space on the blu-ray discs (once they start using them for a majority of games). Extra HD content? Will not having to worry about compression free them up for other things? Oh well, time will tell. Nobody really cares about swapping a disc for a RPG or lengthy action game where you get hours and hours on disc... but I can't imagine the inconvenience of having to switch discs for new maps for multiplayer or something... egads.

Actually, I feel the other way around about this: Swapping discs is more of a hassle in RPGs, in my opinion. Enter the city, swap disc. Forgot to do sg, leave city, swap disc. Coming back swap disc. It just bothers me.
With FPS etc. - let's call them level-based games- the game play is more linear: You enter a level, get through it, enter the next level and so on until you'll have to swap discs. You never have to go back on a finished level. You're not interrupted during the actual gameplay.

 

[aaronspink]

Oblivion is not a real RPG?

By RPG, he obviously means so-so CGI pretending to be an actual game.

 

[Fafalada]

It seems that 4.37 is the maximum a single layer disc could fill

4.37GB is the capacity of single layer disc.
If you were ever told different, blame the marketting departments for trying to cheat by using the wrong metric system.

 

[aaronspink]

I
Err, yes they do. Cut-scenes are the bread and butter of an RPG. EM having crap ones is a great disappointment. But its nothing to do with disc space.

Cut scenes are the bread and buffer of a crappy CGI house trying to create an RPG game. If I want cutscenes, I'll either go see or rent a pixar film. If I want an RPG, I'll buy an RPG, that has character development and not 3000 hours of time spent rendering subpar CGI that doesn't look like the rest of the game.

Aaron Spink

 

[Shifty Geezer]

In other words, is 8.5 GB really the limitation on the 'possiblities' this gen? Or will it be something else.

I woudn't have thought so.

It's easy for developers to fill a disc with some poor programming

You mean developing. Programming doesn't fill up game discs. Code is relatively small. IT's assets, textures and models and soundtracks, that fill up the space.

I say maybe. Maybe..but I doubt it. DVD just has tons of space left and the limiting factor is not disc space, I think it will only start to become insufficient in 4-5 years near the end of it's lifetime.

I don't see that DVD does have tons of space left though. Looking at the argument of estimating a game's size from the improvement over this generation, how much higher detailed textures and models can you get over XB games? If an XB game takes up 3 Gb, and an XB360 game has many times the model and texture quality at many times the size, how are they going to fit that on a DVD? If you've twice as much space available for a, XB360 game as an XB game, doesn't that imply you're limited to twice the data size? So models and textures can only have twice as many vertices and pixels as XB games before you run out of space? Unless they use compression above and beyond that which the XB used, which i'm not sure exists, it just seems a forgone conclusion that you're going to be storage medium limited.

Also aren't seek times going to be terrible without duplicate data blocks if you don't have an HDD for caching? It'll be interesting to compare later larger games between Core and full systems and see how much impact that has.

 

[jimpo]

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.

Boy, did they "programmers optimize code" indeed! What of bunch of ignorant bullcrap that article is.

 

[inefficient]

Cut scenes are the bread and buffer of a crappy CGI house trying to create an RPG game. If I want cutscenes, I'll either go see or rent a pixar film. If I want an RPG, I'll buy an RPG, that has character development and not 3000 hours of time spent rendering subpar CGI that doesn't look like the rest of the game.

Aaron Spink

What about Blizzards games?

A lot of people appreciate their cut scenes as well as their in game assets.