Blue Dragon will ship on 3 DVDs.

[Johnny Awesome]

95% of games will work fine with 1 DVD disc this generation. 4% will require multiple discs and this will work fine (ie. Blue Dragon) and 1% won't work within the DVD limitations (possibly a handful of late generation big budget PS3 titles) IMO.

The main reason is that most game budgets can't really support much more content than 1 DVD disc can provide. That's what MS was counting on this generation: That by the time PS3 devs are needing to use the full 25+ GB of Blu Ray, the next Xbox will be just around the corner. The key word is "needing". Gears of War could have had 15 GB of FMV, but it didn't need it. Very few games will require the space. Too few to make a difference in the console wars IMO.

 

[one]

The main reason is that most game budgets can't really support much more content than 1 DVD disc can provide. That's what MS was counting on this generation: That by the time PS3 devs are needing to use the full 25+ GB of Blu Ray, the next Xbox will be just around the corner. The key word is "needing". Gears of War could have had 15 GB of FMV, but it didn't need it. Very few games will require the space. Too few to make a difference in the console wars IMO.

What about Gears of War 2? You think you want 4-hours game next time instead of 5-hours?

Oh, and IIRC, the budget of Gears of War was not that big, that was what Marc Rein said.

 

[theteamaqua]

95% of games will work fine with 1 DVD disc this generation. 4% will require multiple discs and this will work fine (ie. Blue Dragon) and 1% won't work within the DVD limitations (possibly a handful of late generation big budget PS3 titles) IMO.

The main reason is that most game budgets can't really support much more content than 1 DVD disc can provide. That's what MS was counting on this generation: That by the time PS3 devs are needing to use the full 25+ GB of Blu Ray, the next Xbox will be just around the corner. The key word is "needing". Gears of War could have had 15 GB of FMV, but it didn't need it. Very few games will require the space. Too few to make a difference in the console wars IMO.

qft

M$ saved a lot of money by staying with DVD, but their compression is going to take some CPU resource

 

[ERP]

qft

M$ saved a lot of money by staying with DVD, but their compression is going to take some CPU resource

Let's be realistic here, there is no way that MS could have launched when they did with anything but standard DVD, Sony is having enough problems right now trying to get blue laser diodes a year later.

 

[Tap In]

What about Gears of War 2? You think you want 4-hours game next time instead of 5-hours?

5 hours?

try 10-20 + thousands for online multiplayer

 

[Powderkeg]

What about Gears of War 2? You think you want 4-hours game next time instead of 5-hours?

I would love to see you try to beat Gears in 5 hours. Even on Casual I doubt you could do it without playing through the game a few times to learn where everything is.

And FYI, Gears only takes up a bit over 6 GB.

Oh, and IIRC, the budget of Gears of War was not that big, that was what Marc Rein said.

Gears cost roughly $10 million to produce, but that doesn't include game engine development. That's $10 million in content alone.

 

[one]

5 hours?

try 10-20 + thousands for online multiplayer

We're talking about content creation here, it's obviously about single-player content.

Gears cost roughly $10 million to produce, but that doesn't include game engine development. That's $10 million in content alone.

That's speculation on your side, isn't it? If it was true, how does that $10 million compare with content creation budgets for other projects?

EDIT: One more speculation, if they can recycle the engine in Gears of War 2 they should be able to pay much more for the content creation for the sequel. Does it fit on 1 DVD? I doubt the superior compression technology jump in here for the rescue.

 

[Powderkeg]

We're talking about content creation here, it's obviously about single-player content.

There is no specualtion there.

The game uses the Unreal Engine 3, which wasn't developed exclusively for Gears. Gears wasn't even the first game to use the engine. The engine wasn't even developed by the Gears team, it was developed independently, and thus, it's cost isn't included in Gears production.

As for how does a $10 million content bill compare with other projects, it's not that different from other major game production costs. Take the Spiderman 3 game for example. $32 million to produce. Remove the cost of the game engine and porting to multiple systems, and I bet the content creation would still be at least 30% of the total costs.

 

[AlNom]

Powderkeg: You said Gears was ~6GB. Do you know what the figure is without the multiplayer maps? Sometimes I wonder aboot devs having a single player disc and a multiplayer disc. It'd seem like the thing to do...

Anyways, kinda OT...

 

[Powderkeg]

Powderkeg: You said Gears was ~6GB. Do you know what the figure is without the multiplayer maps? Sometimes I wonder aboot devs having a single player disc and a multiplayer disc. It'd seem like the thing to do...

Anyways, kinda OT...

No, I don't know a specific breakdown, only the total size. Slightly over 6GB.

 

[crazygambit]

There is no specualtion there.
As for how does a $10 million content bill compare with other projects, it's not that different from other major game production costs. Take the Spiderman 3 game for example. $32 million to produce. Remove the cost of the game engine and porting to multiple systems, and I bet the content creation would still be at least 30% of the total costs.

32 million for Spiderman 3? Wow that sounds like a lot for a game I've heard nothing about. I'm not doubting you btw, but where did you get the number? Also do you know if that includes the advertising budget? I guess that might account for a lot of that figure. And yes I realize it's way OT, but I was just wondering. Might be interesting to know Blue Dragon's budget as well (see what I did there? )

 

[RobertR1]

Let's be realistic here, there is no way that MS could have launched when they did with anything but standard DVD, Sony is having enough problems right now trying to get blue laser diodes a year later.

Why even attempt to add facts to the threads?....I've already tried to explain that the HD DVD spec was not even finalized and MS still had no preference when the 360 specs were finalized but reality isn't as fun for some folks. They rather cling to "what if" scenarios endlessly. I'd look up the dates what difference would it make?

But it would be amusing to see both consoles "launching" while fighting for the blue diode supplies! However, Sony would easily win that battle since MS would be launching at the same time and going head to head on cost but hey that's a whole another topic...

You know if they could have magically added HD DVD, there would still be endless bitching about "NO HDMI 1.3!!! MS SUCKS!!!

 

[DuckThor Evil]

Why even attempt to add facts to the threads?....I've already tried to explain that the HD DVD spec was not even finalized and MS still had no preference when the 360 specs were finalized but reality isn't as fun for some folks. They rather cling to "what if" scenarios endlessly. I'd look up the dates what difference would it make?

But it would be amusing to see both consoles "launching" while fighting for the blue diode supplies! However, Sony would easily win that battle since MS would be launching at the same time and going head to head on cost but hey that's a whole another topic...

You know if they could have magically added HD DVD, there would still be endless bitching about "NO HDMI 1.3!!! MS SUCKS!!!

I think the main argument "the other side" is saying is that MS should have launched X360 later, when the technology is available. I however don't agree with that at all. We already saw how much good it will do launching after Sony, it just doesn't work, at least for now, maybe in future generations MS will have more breathing room for different strategies If they have secured more marketshare and brand loyalty, but this time they absolutely couldn't affort to launch after Sony or imo at the same time.

 

[Dr. Nick]

They would have been screwed on the cost of the drive if they launched this year with HD-DVD and probably next year as well. While some say the cost to them doesn't matter this time last year people where making a big deal about how much money MS was losing on the Xbox 360.

Back on topic I couldn't care less if the game came on 3 DVDs just get to my side of the world ASAP.

Offtopic again. Is there really anything that MS can do with compresion in the future on the Xbox 360 that hasn't been done before. Also what happened to that DVD tech that was supposed to increase the amount of info a regular DVD can hold and would it be viable for the Xbox 360?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Offtopic again. Is there really anything that MS can do with compresion in the future on the Xbox 360 that hasn't been done before.

Not a great deal. There's not much room for improvement across lossless compression. They could go for more lossy compression where useable, such as images (textures), and use a better method such as JPEG2000 versus JPEG. It depends how much of a game these assets make up as to how much more can get squeezed on there.

In this case, it's assumed much of the content is HD FMVs. You could thus squeeze them down to lower bitrates and get the game down to 2 DVDs, and then compress the beejebers out of the music and audio. You'd be losing quality though.

 

[Powderkeg]

32 million for Spiderman 3? Wow that sounds like a lot for a game I've heard nothing about. I'm not doubting you btw, but where did you get the number? Also do you know if that includes the advertising budget? I guess that might account for a lot of that figure. And yes I realize it's way OT, but I was just wondering. Might be interesting to know Blue Dragon's budget as well (see what I did there? )

http://www.gamespot.com/news/6157548.html?part=rss&subj=6157548&msg_sort=1

I was a bit off. It was $35 million, not $32 million.

I have no idea what Blue Dragon cost to produce. I suspect at least as much as Spiderman though.

 

[London Geezer]

32 million for Spiderman 3? Wow that sounds like a lot for a game I've heard nothing about. I'm not doubting you btw, but where did you get the number? Also do you know if that includes the advertising budget? I guess that might account for a lot of that figure. And yes I realize it's way OT, but I was just wondering. Might be interesting to know Blue Dragon's budget as well (see what I did there? )

Well the Spiderman games on the last two generations of consoles were good (except for one) and also very successful. I don't think 32M for a game like this is out of this world, considering it's probably gonna be a massive game (like the last one on PS2/Xbox was) and it's also on next gen consoles.

Personally i can't wait to see the movie, it looks great from the trailers.

 

[scooby_dooby]

What about Gears of War 2? You think you want 4-hours game next time instead of 5-hours?

Stop spreading FUD.'

Your argument is absolutely ridiculous. First of all gears is a 12 hour game played on the normal difficulty (not casual) and more importnatly Gears of War is a completely linear game, as such, it can easily be spread across multiple discs. There is really no space limitation when it comes to linear action games like Gears.

Surely, even you can realize that simple point.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Oh, and IIRC, the budget of Gears of War was not that big, that was what Marc Rein said.

And most people realized that was fairly meaningless because he didn't include the costs of developing the engine in the equation.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I think the main argument "the other side" is saying is that MS should have launched X360 later, when the technology is available. I however don't agree with that at all. We already saw how much good it will do launching after Sony, it just doesn't work, at least for now, .

If the issues are still in the laser production then the net result of both formats having a HD optical format would probably be:

take current PS3 launch numbers and divide between Sony and MS.

Geee, next gen would really catch on then!