Can Xbox 360 get back the missing GB from it's DVD?

[Rockster]

I agree with most of what has been said. But the idea has been floated that its possible for all existing 360's to be modified to support VMD via a firmware update to the DVD-Rom drive. I have no idea how viable this is, ie. can the hardware really support it, how will the firmware be updated, would they pay to license the technology, and if there is production capacity for VMD discs for a multi-million unit release.

Its obvious developers would appreciate it, but how would you market it? Hence my earlier question about potential consumer backlash. There is no real value to it outside of what can be delivered on a single game disk. No movies, etc. Something tells me the vocal minority who complain about multi-disk releases or content requiring a harddrive, isn't persuasive enough to make this option warrant serious consideration. But it's interesting to think about none the less.

 

[DJ12]

If MS waited for and paid for BR they would be dead from day one. Period. Another generation of being marginalized to 15% marketshare, another few billion lost.

Let's stop rehashing this pointless argument.

I do advise you read on before replying.

 

[assen]

There are many people that said DVD was enough this gen, and I think that has been proven false now.

No it hasn't.

GTAIV is a game as far from the norm as it gets, with its 8 hours of cutscenes and extensive storylines. GTAIV, they say, is the most expensive game to make, ever, with more than 100 mln USD. And it still fit.

How many games will afford double that budget? Bytes are expensive to produce, plain and simple. Even with better tools, filling up a BD-25 will be at least twice as expensive as filling up a "DVD-7".

Even among the behemoths with 200-person teams, how many games will afford to cripple their 360 version, by splitting into multiple DVDs?

When the gen is said and done, and only the shovelware remains - sometimes in 2011 - we should take the list of 100 highest-ranking or bestselling games for the Xbox 360 and measure how many of them were within 90% of the DVD capacity. You win if more than half of them are

 

[Shifty Geezer]

How many games will afford double that budget? Bytes are expensive to produce, plain and simple. Even with better tools, filling up a BD-25 will be at least twice as expensive as filling up a "DVD-7".

Though I agree with your sentiments, this reasoning is patently proven false by the existence of games filling up well over 7 GBs and not costing hundreds of millions of dollars to do - MGS4, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Games can't be priced/budgeted in terms of price per megabyte - it just doesn't work like that.

 

[woundingchaney]

I agree the general concept remains. MS is seeing high profile titles arrive on its system despite DVD9 being limiting in instances.

As of now Im not sure how DVD hasnt been proven to be "enough" for this generation as the system isnt lacking titles now or in the "known" future. These titles are comparable to the competitions on a storage medium that provides considerably less storage.

If anything I think the statement, "DVD is not sufficient for all games of this generation to fit on one disk", is correct.

 

[Dr. Nick]

Though I agree with your sentiments, this reasoning is patently proven false by the existence of games filling up well over 7 GBs and not costing hundreds of millions of dollars to do - MGS4, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. Games can't be priced/budgeted in terms of price per megabyte - it just doesn't work like that.

But once again these games had huge budgets. BD and LO also make use of CG(yes, LO does make use of CG.). Most companies couldn't afford to do what Mistwalker and Kojima productions did. As for MGS4 I have no idea what is up with it to need that much but I guess we will find out soon enough.

 

[jlippo]

But once again these games had huge budgets. BD and LO also make use of CG(yes, LO does make use of CG.). Most companies couldn't afford to do what Mistwalker and Kojima productions did. As for MGS4 I have no idea what is up with it to need that much but I guess we will find out soon enough.

There are already announced x360 games which span to multiple DVDs without lots of video, like Rage.
Using lots of space isn't hard and doesn't nesessarely take any more work to do, in some cases it's easier and faster.

DVD is sufficent yes, but it is also limiting the options how to do things.

 

[eastmen]

Add a second disc and you have 14 gigs .


Problem solved

 

[jlippo]

Add a second disc and you have 14 gigs .


Problem solved

Actually, you need to have some of the data on both disks so you cannot just add the GBs together.

Well, perhaps you could..
I'm pretty sure no-one would mind if in game like GTA: Vice City game character would change from Versetti to a member of a Love Fist when crossing the bridge, but one would still have to swap the disk which might be annoying.

 

[eastmen]

Actually, you need to have some of the data on both disks so you cannot just add the GBs together.

Well, perhaps you could..
I'm pretty sure no-one would mind if in game like GTA: Vice City game character would change from Versetti to a member of a Love Fist when crossing the bridge, but one would still have to swap the disk which might be annoying.

there are tons of games where it wouldn't be a problem .

I'd take gears of war that had a disc devoted to single player and a disc devoted to multiplayer. Even call of duty 4 can be split across both discs. Sure there will be some redundant data but that is already done with bluray to help with load times. Its not a perfect solution as some games slip through the crack , but for every game there is a dozen that doesn't. Shooters are still the most popular format on the 360 and they can easily be split across discs .

There are more games like that than there are examples of gta type games.

For ms this generation is almost over , we are already into 2008 and ms can release a new console as early as 2005 if they want too. They don't even have to stop supporting the 360 as it can continue to accept ports as the ps2 does now esp if it keeps a sizable lead in NA. A $500 xbox next in 2010 with a $150-$100 xbox 360 would help ms stem any losses from the xbox next . We've already seen from this generation that the head start has helped them greatly and in its first year of life it would get some exclusives like the 360 did and it can even take enhnaced ports from the ps3.

 

[assen]

They don't even have to stop supporting the 360 as it can continue to accept ports as the ps2 does now esp if it keeps a sizable lead in NA. A $500 xbox next in 2010 with a $150-$100 xbox 360 would help ms stem any losses from the xbox next.

Yep, especially if the new console is fully backwards compatible.

 

[eastmen]

Yep, especially if the new console is fully backwards compatible.

Right and since ms owns the chips currently used in the 360 we can bet it will have backwards compatiblity .

I'm expecting the cpu to be something like they originaly wanted for the 360 , a 12 core version of the waternoose and gpu will be something akin to the dx11 (or whatever is new in 2010/2011 ) version of the xenos.

The only question for ms is when sony can launch a new system. I'm sure whatever ms puts out will blow away the ps3 in tterms of graphics , however if its 2 years or further out from a new playstation it might not be able to keep up graphicly with that system. Of course if sony does take an additonal 2 years to launch a ps4 the following xbox can be 2 or 3 years after that .
release a xbox 360 lvl console in 2011 and be content with that
It will be interesting to see what ms does and what the industry does. But I don't think the dvd problem is as big as many make it out to be. This console launched in 2005 , we are now into 2008 . I could understand if this was a 2007 console and we were stuck with dvd untill 2013/2014 but really the next 360 will be out in a few years and we will most likely see a fast bluray drive in it and most likely 2gigs + of ram . I don't think ms has anything to worry about. They just need to keep enough exclusive content this generation to stay close to sony.

I think many of you forget what 2005 was like for ms. They had sold 25m units of the xbox worldwide and sony had sold 110m ps2s . Ms was lossing money on each console sold though out the life of the xbox . By all accounts the 360 is breaking even or making a small profit. Many in the industry believe that ms will be at most 20m units or so behind sony when this generation finishes and they may even keep NA by a large margin . That is a far cry from being 90m units behind sony. This was a huge sucess for ms no matter how you slice it. Perhaps it could have gone better for ms esp without the rrod problems , but sony had its own problems with its first 2 consoles and they have learned from it and built a great solid console finally . Hopefully with the xbox next ms learns from that also .

 

[-tkf-]

GTAIV, they say, is the most expensive game to make, ever, with more than 100 mln USD. And it still fit.

Of course it fits... and do you know why?

Because if it didn´t "fit" it wouldn´t work

It´s like saying.. 1 pint of beer fits perfectly in a 1 pint glass.

See these size 10 shoes? they fit perfectly on my size 10 feet.

It only proves one thing, that within these size constraint we get the GTA4 that we have now. If there were 18 more gigs to "waste" it would have been different. Design choices, programming stuff etc maybe even story choices would have been different.

 

[joker454]

It only proves one thing, that within these size constraint we get the GTA4 that we have now. If there were 18 more gigs to "waste" it would have been different. Design choices, programming stuff etc maybe even story choices would have been different.

I have a feeling Microsoft will be forced to allow an hdd install for GTA5. Basically, ship the game on two discs and require that disc 2 be installed to the hdd. If the jump from Vice City to San Andreas is any indication, then one would expect GTA5 to be far more massive than GTA4 so they probably won't have much choice. It's not like Microsoft can really say no to that anyways. I mean what are they gonna do, not allow a GTA game on 360?

 

[betan]

I have a feeling Microsoft will be forced to allow an hdd install for GTA5. Basically, ship the game on two discs and require that disc 2 be installed to the hdd. If the jump from Vice City to San Andreas is any indication, then one would expect GTA5 to be far more massive than GTA4 so they probably won't have much choice. It's not like Microsoft can really say no to that anyways. I mean what are they gonna do, not allow a GTA game on 360?

They can push DLC direction which implicitly ignores core/arcade users as opposed to explicitly which disc based solution will be doing.

 

[AlNom]

They can push DLC direction which implicitly ignores core/arcade users as opposed to explicitly which disc based solution will be doing.

What's disturbing at the same time is that 3GiB+ of DLC is nothing to scoff at considering that the 20GiB SKU only has 14GiB available for such things. If they continue pushing multiple DLC packs that are entirely new city areas, lots of new dialog/audio etc etc... people are going to wind up needing that 120GB drive.... at a ridiculous price even.

 

[Dr. Nick]

They can push DLC direction which implicitly ignores core/arcade users as opposed to explicitly which disc based solution will be doing.

Either way core/arcade owner will be screwed at least when it comes to GTA. HDD install=screwed, Large DLC=screwed. If Microsoft plans on doing HD installs they better lower the prices of the hard drives or just let us install our own(I wish).

 

[silhouette]

No it hasn't.

GTAIV is a game as far from the norm as it gets, with its 8 hours of cutscenes and extensive storylines. GTAIV, they say, is the most expensive game to make, ever, with more than 100 mln USD. And it still fit.

Not so fast! After I see what can be done as texture quality wise with Gears (which is a proof that it can be done) and still see low-quality textures, sometimes here and there and sometimes almost everywhere, I am thinking if this is a problem of "non-enough RAM" because of larger world or of simply DVD size limitations. If the problem is the latter one, GTA4 might have better graphics than what it has right now, but it can't because they can not fit the data in one disk. I kind of agree that it may be a problem now and it will definitely a problem then.

Unfortunately, non of the solutions are a simple easy fix. I do not mind multi-disk games as long as the game is linear. But, for open-world games (GTA4, Oblivion, Mass Effect), that supports fast transport, there is no way that you can design your game around multiple-disks. And, with 20 Gig default storage space, I am not sure if installs are also an option (btw, MS prensented an API about creating a virtual disk with a specified size on the hard-disk for a game, and the game can read/write anything on that virtual disk. So, the API is already there for some time). VMD is the best bet, and they can put the firmware update in the first layer of the disk that games use, but of course if it is possible. DLC, I am not sure.. Same problem with install. I wish the 360 has also one of the HD formats, but we all know why MS did not go that path which is understandable.

 

[-tkf-]

I have a feeling Microsoft will be forced to allow an hdd install for GTA5. Basically, ship the game on two discs and require that disc 2 be installed to the hdd. If the jump from Vice City to San Andreas is any indication, then one would expect GTA5 to be far more massive than GTA4 so they probably won't have much choice. It's not like Microsoft can really say no to that anyways. I mean what are they gonna do, not allow a GTA game on 360?

That would depend on Microsofts willingness to "admit" that no mandatory HD was a mistake, in the sense that they would give up those that have a HD-less v360. I doubt that, i can see a 2 disc version where you have to swap discs when going from one "city" to another (and again a game designed around this to reduce the swaps) and the same for multiplayer where you have to select map and swap discs before starting the game. My biggest grip with a non hd install would be the imposed limits on streaming. But it might just be so that the Graphics engine can´t render anything more than what we see already

Ii would happily give up 50% of my harddrive for a "better" game.

 

[Zassk]

As MS's HDD accessory prices come down, it'll no longer be a big deal to tell people "upgrade your Arcade 360 to play GTA5". People will do it because it'll be far cheaper than buying a new PS3. We're talking about 2009 or 2010 in this context, so I bet the smaller HDD will only cost $50 by then - even at MS's inflated accessory prices - that's cheaper than the MSRP of a single game. People will pay it.