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

My money is on System Wars, circa 2002.

 

the lowest common denominator is still the dvd for next 3-4 years. if there are any game busting load points, it will be on sony first party games.

multi-platform on multi-dvds says hi!

 

Of course its the lowest. The Xbox360 released with DVD, hence, lowest.
But I would suggest that for a next-gen format, Blu-ray is on 50% of the platforms, since Revolution is clearly not competing.
When discussing a Revolution multi-platform game, that version is more likely to be the PS2/Xbox version with unique controls.

 

Wired says no, as well:

http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,1484,00.html

 

Um, no it doesn't. If the Enchant Arms game data was pared down to one disc, that doesn't mean it was easy or there weren't tradeoffs associated with it. If the disc available to them was big enough in the first place, they wouldn't have had to waste time fitting it all in or throw things away to fit on one disc.

The more important point I see is this- if a developer is already reaching the limits of the storage medium available to him when making a launch title, how much more crowded will things become as we progress through the intended long life cycle of the Xbox 360? I don't know when the 360's successor is scheduled to appear, but it seems naive to think several years from now, no one will want/need extra space.

I remember playing games on my Commodore 64's huge floppy 5 1/4" disks. The capacity was 170kb per side! That wasn't that incredibly long ago. And I'm sure people wearing penny loafers were saying we'll never need more, we can compress it more to fit, etc. And then games started to span more and more discs. Space requirements always increase. I'd hate to think that the reason next-gen games don't become all they can be is because of something as mundane as disc size limitations and a developer's subsequesnt desire to "get it all on one disc".

 

Thanks for backing up your comments with a good post. I do disagree that just because someone's conclusion may be flawed it means they must be Microsoft shills. I think they went with the best data they had, but I will agree that drawing conclusions from flawed data is not worthwhile and that in the end time will tell.

 

This thing always ends up breaking down to some version of:

DVD-9 is more than enough/Blu-Ray is over-kill/An excuse for metrosexual Japanese CGI-fests.

or

I heard that 360 launch games will be on 4(+) discs!/Give me Blu-Ray, or give me death.

I think there is plenty of wiggle room between those two extremes.

 

Yeah, I was supposed to be making the point that there is no-one that claims to have heard him say this, and that he denies it. A bit like the bogus "100 million Xbox sales" claim and no-one saying "Beam me up Scotty" in the original Star Trek tv show (er, afaik). Guess I missed the mark in making that point though!

Incidientally, I found that 96k demo to take up about 330MB of memory (according to task manager) after a few minutes of play. Not that that shows anything significant, just wondering if there was somewhere else I should be looking too ...

I think generating material on the console is something that should be encouraged, and I'm not just talking about visual assets and doing it for the purpose of cutting down on load times and saving memory. I'm sick of lisenced music that adds nothing to the game, and doesn't adapt to the game world. Modern consoles should be able to synthesise music of extremely high quality.

 

the same people who once claimed the gamecube storage was not big enough now explain that DVD was overkill xbox/ps2/gc gen and will be enough next gen.

 

You'd think so, but a few people are doing their best to stick to the extremes!

- In 1991 there were games that filled CDs. In 2001, most DC games could be put onto a CD with little or no loss in quality.
- In year XXXX Mr XXXX thought XXXX kb/mb would be more data than humanity could ever use.

What do either of the above points conclusively prove? Nothing.

 

That Enchant Arms quote has become the cornerstone of these threads.

 

I look at the disk space thing is sort of in line with the way Sony has been operating over the years and it's one of the reasons they are currently on top. For example, while Sega was games-only, Sony has always been focused on delivering a more complete experience. It's just something I've noticed. I can see the Blu Ray working with this vision which is one of the reasons Sony been calling the 360 an Xbox 1.5. It's not ready for the direction the market is heading.

I'm thinking next gen we're going to see alot more extras packed into games. Pretty soon it's going to be hard to imagine shelling out $60 for a basic game like Fight Night 3. People will come to expect a complete package Fight Night 3 which includes maybe the history of boxing, famous clips from earlier fights, interactive boxing lessons from a personal trainer (I'm just making stuff up). All of a sudden you've got a package that's more than just a game and would seem alot more worth the high price tag.

For us as gamers it may not seem like that big of a deal since we're all about the polygons and textures but the casual gamers actually care about this and it's part of the reason the industry will continue to grow.
If Sony manages to stay in control, that's the way I see things playing out. You pay $60 for Fight Night 3 that has enough content to fill up a 25 gig Blu Ray. You dont pay $60 for a $19 PS2 game with slightly better graphics.

 

Why do people insist on perpetuating the notion that blu-ray is in the PS3 for any other reason than to push the format?

If it somehow helps games, that is just a plus, not a primary goal.

That said, I do expect many games to easily surpass the storage capacity of a DVD (especially on PS3) but that changing discs is not a big deal, unless shooters/fighting games or something of that sort starts coming on multiple discs. That would be a monumental inconvenience.

 

I also have no idea why people imagine that the Elder Scrolls games are the largest games out there. Not even close.

 

I like how people also forget the sound quality like lossless DTS HD and Dolby True HD are only something capable like with bitrates on Blu-Ray disc's. That's something else you'll lose out on, on DVD-Rom only games for 360. That and shitloads of horrible texture compression on DVD-Rom games, hell just look at Ninety Nine Nights, the textures are horrible, same thing is happening with Obvilion has well.

 

So does 100gb really provide more benefits than 50GB in today's day and age? No.

There's something called diminishing returns, so the question is not "is more better" it's, "is more going to make a difference?" That's the real question. Is DVD really insufficient? will more size actually make a difference to the gamer?

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

It's easy for developers to fill a disc with some poor programming(note: vast majority of large games are low budget pos games) or HD Video clips, but I'm talking about a real difference. In graphics. In the length of the games. In the overall innovation of the games on the system?

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.

 

The arguement that you are using is facetious. The developer fitting the data onto one disc and your argument that the developer cut down content to make it fit do not correlate on to another. You are introducing unsupported evidence. When you get a quote from the developer that they had to leave out code/assets in order to make it fit, then your argument will be valid. However, have you even seen the size of the game dump?

Of course developers will always have to work with space constraints. Even a Bluray disc can be filled with relative ease if the developer chose to. Do you remember those point and click adventure games that would span 5cd's? Bonus content, movies, etc. "Value added" materials will never be in short supply. However, I've heard no indication from the developers that the size of the disc was a constraint. In fact it sounds to me that the developer originally was not opposed to releasing the game on 2 discs or more (going by the aforposted quote).

 

And what happened with EM?

They look like they replaced all the CG cut scenes with crappy realtime ones with 2 characters floating over the screen, and it fit on 1 disc.

As bad the cut-scenes are they don't really affect the quality of the game, and will likely improve as all devs get used to using realtime cut-scenes for their x360 games.

This is a good example of the true 'difference we're going to see between PS3 and 360 games, not much, devs'll make it work.

 

I would guess its a cross between not truly knowing how much they were going to fill at the time and dropping stuff to release around launch.

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.

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