Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*

[MrFox]

I don't expect games to take up 50GB. Because the only way that happens now is putting on 20 languages of raw sound.

So are we in agreement that "IF" a game would require 50GB for next gen, flash is not an option? (that will help moving on the the meat of the subject)

GTA, Everquest Next, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, Uncharted, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid, God of War. These are AAA system sellers and will require much more than 16GB. At least some of these must be in the launch window.
LA Noire on PS3 is about 40GB downloadable with the DLC, and it could use some higher resolution textures and models.

 

[-tkf-]

I don't expect many games to take up 50GB. Because the only way that happens now is putting on 20 languages of raw sound.

The replicators do like 30MB/s per port, the ones I linked have 60 ports and you could fit 3 of them on a normal desk. Do you think that 60 is some sort of hard limit on the amount they could do? Even it if was you could easily fit 1000 of them in a factory and suddenly you have the same capacity as your BR plant. As for needing people to feed them, robots could easily handle switching the USB keys. Could probably run a plant like that with 5 ppl.

My example was based on 25GB and i am gonna get back to you on that 50GB comment in a few years

I don't see any problem buying the required number of Replicators the only price i could find was what i think was a 16 port and that was only 1800 dollars so it's doable since that 1.000.000 for replication.

At least we are getting some numbers on the desk on cost on producing these things. Since we started the discussion i have asked for them countless times.

The Blu-Ray is half a dollar pressed for 25GB.

For flash: it's $0.6 pr GB, 25GB would be $15
Then get a price on putting it in plastic and guesstimate how much it will cost to produce them on our 300-500 Replicators.

 

[AlphaWolf]

So are we in agreement that "IF" a game would require 50GB for next gen, flash is not an option? (that will help moving on the the meat of the subject)

Why wouldn't it be an option? You can already get flash in capacities larger than that, the price needs to come down, and I don't see them using a 256GB flash cart in 2013.

GTA, Everquest Next, Gran Turismo, Final Fantasy, Uncharted, Killzone, Metal Gear Solid, God of War. These are AAA system sellers and will require much more than 16GB. At least some of these must be in the launch window.
LA Noire on PS3 is about 40GB downloadable with the DLC, and it could use some higher resolution textures and models.

There's quite a bit of room between 16 and 50GB. 32GB would be easily doable, albeit probably a bit pricy on launch day, by the end of next gen not so much. Also remember that discs often fill with redundant data to make up for seek times, flash seek times are roughly 100 times better, so not a problem.

And why the hell would flash need to have the DLC on it?

 

[-tkf-]

Why wouldn't it be an option? You can already get flash in capacities larger than that, the price needs to come down, and I don't see them using a 256GB flash cart in 2013.



There's quite a bit of room between 16 and 50GB. 32GB would be easily doable, albeit probably a bit pricy on launch day, by the end of next gen not so much. Also remember that discs often fill with redundant data to make up for seek times, flash seek times are roughly 100 times better, so not a problem.

And why the hell would flash need to have the DLC on it?

Size matters, there is no way around it.. i found this neat little graph:

The hard limit on 360 sizes makes it even easier. Most games are 6GB since they just can't be any bigger.

If we just go by these numbers then launch games should be at least 18GB, which doesn't sound crazy at all, imho it's a tad bit small considering that the 360 is a bad example because of the hard limit.

About the DLC, where will you store it? On a harddrive or a flash drive?
Should you choose Flash Drive you have to pick a size big enough to handle DLC, Movies and DD games.
Should you choose a Hard Drive you throw the flash speed advantage out of the window since the limiting factor would be the harddrive.

Ohh and i still need a real reason for going with flash apart from quicker loading and or installs.
The only games that could take advantage of flash speeds would be exclusive to the platform, just like the PS3 exclusives do with Blu-Ray. Any 3rd party games would have to aim for lowest common denominator, just like they do now with the 360 size.

 

[aaronspink]

18MB/s WRITE speed. That's equivalent to a 4x blu-ray burner. How fast do you think a next gen console blu-ray drive will write data? Not in my lifetime would be my guess.

All depends on how many channels you have. After all, even MLC isn't much faster, but there are plenty of devices using MLC that achieve real world write speeds of up to 1 GB/s.

 

[Squilliam]

What actually needs to grow next generation? Audio won't get any bigger and FMV is always optional, especially with in engine rendering getting better. That pretty much leaves textures and models and we've seen some quite good looking games get away with 3GB textures.

 

[hoho]

Audio won't get any bigger

More dialog is always nice to have.

FMV is always optional, especially with in engine rendering getting better.

Starcraft2 has had the best in-game engine cinematics of any game I've seen so far but it still paled in comparison to the FMV's in that same game. Now make those videos 1080p (or 4k to be future-proof?) in different languages and surround sound.

That pretty much leaves textures and models and we've seen some quite good looking games get away with 3GB textures.

Good looking at sub-720p consoles with repeating textures and tiny worlds? I personally like the variety in Rage compared to e.g Fallout3 or Skyrim but even at 20GB+ of texture data is far too limiting and quality suffers greatly.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

What actually needs to grow next generation?

Everything! If games are to get better, with more variety and more complexity, then everything - texture resolution, model resolution, number of assets, video quality (if you're used to low-res Bink video), range of vocies and variety of dialogue options - needs to increase. Otherwise we'll just have this gen with better lighting and IQ.

 

[Platon]

Why would it have to be either or. Start the generation with BR but have a USB 3.0 there and then as the generation goes on, if new ways or better ways or cheaper ways of making flash drives come to pass and it becomes feasible to launch games on them switch then.

The same goes for DD. No need to start of the generation with it and no need for it being the only solution but could be offered as one of the ways of getting a game to your system for those it is appropriate. As we have seen this generation having different SKUs does not matter too much, so maybe during the next generation we might get DD only consoles and what not...

 

[-tkf-]

What actually needs to grow next generation?

Everything...

 

[AlphaWolf]

About the DLC, where will you store it? On a harddrive or a flash drive?
Should you choose Flash Drive you have to pick a size big enough to handle DLC, Movies and DD games.
Should you choose a Hard Drive you throw the flash speed advantage out of the window since the limiting factor would be the harddrive.

Onboard flash drive.

And developers have been known to offer a somewhat lesser experience on one product.or another. But if you're right it's possible you'll get the worst of both, At least in terms of game perf, one would be smaller and quieter at least.

 

[MrFox]

Found an interesting IEEE conference about the future of optical storage, it's only the slides, but very insightful.
http://www.slideshare.net/rgzech/the-future-of-optical-storage-x-rg-zech-slide-share

 

[-tkf-]

Onboard flash drive.

At what size and cost?
This would be have to be a solution like a SSD that sustain a consoles lifetime, currently we are at 7 years. And the size would at least have to cover for DLC for .. 10 games?

And developers have been known to offer a somewhat lesser experience on one product.or another. But if you're right it's possible you'll get the worst of both, At least in terms of game perf, one would be smaller and quieter at least.

So you are pushing Flash based on size and sound? Nothing that relates to games?

 

[Arwin]

Found an interesting IEEE conference about the future of optical storage, it's only the slides, but very insightful.
http://www.slideshare.net/rgzech/the-future-of-optical-storage-x-rg-zech-slide-share

I wonder if it will ever be possible to have variable pit depth or something similar to return an 8bit or more value 'per pit'

 

[itsmydamnation]

for all those ( i only see 1 ) making a big deal about writing the flash.... oh how ever did Nintendo survive!!!!

    1 Super Mario Bros. 	NES 	1985 	40.24m 	
		2 Super Mario World 	SNES 	1990 	20.60m 	
		3 Super Mario Land 	GB 	1987 	18.06m 	
		4 Super Mario Bros. 3 	NES 	1988 	17.28m 	
		5 Super Mario 64 	N64 	1996 	11.62m 	
		6 Super Mario Land 2 	GB 	1989 	11.09m 	
		7 Super Mario Bros. 2  	NES 	1987 	7.46m

1987 	NES 	Legend of Zelda 	6.5
1988 	NES 	Zelda II: Adventure of Link 	4.38
1992 	SNES 	The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past 	4.61
1993 	GB 	The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening 	3.38
1998 	N64 	The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 	7.60

    Donkey Kong Country (9 million)[66]
    Super Mario Kart (8 million)[67]
    Street Fighter II: The World Warrior (6.3 million)[68]
    Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest (4.37 million approximately: 2.21 million in Japan,[60] 2.16 million in US)[24]
    Street Fighter II Turbo (4.1 million)[68]
    Star Fox (4 million)[69]
    Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (4 million)[65]

or better yet

Total Nintendo Entertainment System games sold as of December 31, 2009: 500.01 million
Total Super Nintendo Entertainment System games sold as of December 31, 2009: 379.06 million
Total Nintendo 64 games sold as of December 31, 2009: 224.97 million

1 billion games sold based on transistor based storage. How ever did Nintendo survive the ages with all the draconian writes!!!

 

[hoho]

Yeah, optical discs basically not existing had absolutely nothing to do with it surely.

Also, how were the game prices on N64 vs PS1?

 

[itsmydamnation]

Yeah, optical discs basically not existing had absolutely nothing to do with it surely.

Also, how were the game prices on N64 vs PS1?

exactly the same from what i remember ( i owned both) but i lived in OZ and we get ripped off all the time .

edit: i remember in 92/93 you could buy music cds cheap and its not like sega didn't give it a half assed attempt in 92/93

 

[Shifty Geezer]

exactly the same from what i remember

Which, factoring in inflation, is considerably more than you pay nowadays, for far, far less game. And it's not a question of whether it's doable (I can't believe people are actually talking about desktop writers here!), but what it costs. The fact Nintendo and Sony are printing cards for their handhelds proves it's doable. That doesn't prove that using flash is economically sound if optical is a valid, workable alternative.

 

[itsmydamnation]

Which, factoring in inflation, is considerably more than you pay nowadays, for far, far less game. .

now that's very subjective!

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I don't think so! 3 hours of the same five block graphics with little variation. The technical limits meant they only had to put tiddly amounts of data on (which was a lot in those days). And it cost more too IIRC. 1 megabit, 2 megabit, and 4 megabit carts for the Master System cost more when there was more in them. It's odd how that's changed, and people tend to expect to pay the same amount for a game no matter how much data it has.