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

[Hardknock]

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.

Uhhh, that did not happen at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

 

[Sethamin]

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.

I think this is highly unlikely. DVD9 had plenty of capacity to spare for most games, and yet nobody did this. Why would BD be any different? Since you say this is "the direction the market is heading", name one title that has actually done this? Or even one publisher or studio who thinks this is a good idea and wants to do it?

 

[Nicked]

if you really like CG then I would say get a PS3, no doubt about it.

Gameplay is the bread and butter of my RPG's.

You totally misunderstood.
The INGAME, story cutscenes could've been more than 2 guys on screen talking to each other with very limited animation. It would've made the game better. Undisputedly.

Uhhh, that did not happen at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

I'm not sure if CG cutscenes were cut (I doubt they would make them then dump them just to fit on one disc, they aren't cheap to make ).

Normal story scenes (cutscenes) are replaced with two people standing on screen talking but not doing anything with poor facial animation. The stuff that CG would be used for in a game like FF has in-game cutscenes.

Edit; Its got nothing to do with disc space, its a time/budget issue.

 

[Hardknock]

if you really like CG then I would say get a PS3, no doubt about it.

Gameplay is the bread and butter of my RPG's.

You can fit over 4 hours of HD Video on a DVD.

Normal story scenes (cutscenes) are replaced with two people standing on screen talking but not doing anything with poor facial animation. The stuff that CG would be used for in a game like FF has in-game cutscenes.

Those are not "cutscenes" in EM that is dialog, and has been in the game from the beginning. in every RPG I've played, when people are talking a picture of their face pops up next to the dialog so you can know who's speaking. Same concept here.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Uhhh, that did not happen at all. I'm not sure where you're getting that from.

Have you watched the gameplay videos? Almost all the cut-scenes are now realtime, with a teeny bit of CG mixed in.

Now, this developer said the disc was barely going to fit on 3 discs, that means without a doubt there used to be tons of CG in this game. Where did it go?

This is pretty obvious. Especially when you see how half-baked the dialogue between character is, it was obviously supposed to be handled with a CG cut-scene. I think the japanese dev will get better with realtime cut-scenes for sure.

 

[scooby_dooby]

You totally misunderstood.
The INGAME, story cutscenes could've been more than 2 guys on screen talking to each other with very limited animation. It would've made the game better. Undisputedly.

While they would've made the game slightly more enjoyable, it would not really make it better. I did miss your point, and I agree that cut-scenes, cg or otherwise, are quite important to an RPG, but it's not a problem with realtime cut-scenes in themselves. It's that they changed strides and decided to toss CG very late in the development cycle, judging by their comments not too long ago this was clearly a last minute move.

And that's really irrelevant, I agree they suck. But it's basically as bad as it could get, and it's still not THAT bad. That's something that can totally be overcome, japanese dev's are just too reliant on CG cut-scenes. My point was basically that this is the type of marginal difference I believe we'll see, and the difference will actually decrease over time as developers become less reliant on CG.

Sakaguchi will show them how it's done, he left FF cause it went all CG with PS1, so....you know he knows how to do it right!

1up's take:

Animation is also severely lacking, as traditional RPG cut-scenes are missing from the game. Story scenes that would in most games be handled through real-time cut-scenes are instead replaced with two people standing and talking. Making this even worse is the lack of facial animations -- people might be happy, sad, laughing, crying, etc...yet the faces of the characters never change...almost like mannequin dolls. Sometimes they do move their arms a bit, but otherwise the look is one of two ghostly dolls on screen with voices coming out of them (not helped by the completely non-synched mouth movements). Still, for the really important scenes, there are CG sequences made from in-game graphics. These look sharp, detailed, and great (limited animation aside). But they only occur about as often as an cinema sequence in a Final Fantasy game would.

 

[seismologist]

I think this is highly unlikely. DVD9 had plenty of capacity to spare for most games, and yet nobody did this. Why would BD be any different? Since you say this is "the direction the market is heading", name one title that has actually done this? Or even one publisher or studio who thinks this is a good idea and wants to do it?

It's been happening ever since Sony entered the market and we went from arcade style Sega games to fully acted cinematic games with more substance. It would be short sighted to think that this trend isn't going to continue.

 

[Hardknock]

Have you watched the gameplay videos? Almost all the cut-scenes are now realtime, with a teeny bit of CG mixed in.

Now, this developer said the disc was barely going to fit on 3 discs, that means without a doubt there used to be tons of CG in this game. Where did it go?

This is pretty obvious. Especially when you see how half-baked the dialogue between character is, it was obviously supposed to be handled with a CG cut-scene. I think the japanese dev will get better with realtime cut-scenes for sure.

Ummm, NO it's not obvious at all. Devs have to pay millions of dollars to get pre-rendered video. I very highly doubt they would throw that a way to merely get the game on 1 disc. That doesn't make any sense.

1. That dialog between characters has been like that since BEFORE they made complaints about disc space. There were screens released and everything.
2. EM never said it would be on 3 discs, the most I've heard is 2 discs.
3. In an interview FROM stated that they had trouble fitting it onto one disc with just the game data, that was without the pre-rendered footage.

What this tells me is that the game was highly unoptimized. The game was since delayed and they were able to compress their game data to fit on a single disc.

 

[scooby_dooby]

They said:
""The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim." "

In august. So maybe 2 discs but probably 3 is basically what he said. Barely 2 was what I shou;ve said.

If you think the game data itself filled 2-3 DVD's you're crazy. He simply said Data, that means everything on the disc. The only thing that could fill that much space right now is CG, and it seems to be gone now.

 

[Hardknock]

They said:
""The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim." "

In august. So maybe 2 discs but probably 3 is basically what he said. Barely 2 was what I shou;ve said.

If you think the game data itself filled 2-3 DVD's you're crazy. He simply said Data, that means everything on the disc. The only thing that could fill that much space right now is CG, and it seems to be gone now.

First of all that is not the interview I'm talking about. They stated game data would barely fit a DVD.

Secondly CG costs a shit load of money. A regular DVD can hold over 4 hours of HD footage with the proper compression.

Lets not kid ourselves here, eM is not going to sell anywhere in the same freakin galaxy as a SquareSoft RPG, do you honestly think they were going to spend tens of millions of dollars on CG and thus lose money on the game??? The whole thing just doesn't make any sense. Think about it.

 

[Nicked]

And that's really irrelevant, I agree they suck. But it's basically as bad as it could get, and it's still not THAT bad.

The way 1up describes it, I think thats pretty horrible in lieu of FFX-esque cutscenes (cutscenes for story, CG for really important story). The ingame cutscenes done alot to advance the story, emotion and general feel of the game.

Sakaguchi will show them how it's done, he left FF cause it went all CG with PS1, so....you know he knows how to do it right!

The last thing he directed at Squaresoft was the FF movie. When that failed his position was diminished and he left a few years later.
Being that he done a CG movie, I doubt he hates CG

Those are not "cutscenes" in EM that is dialog, and has been in the game from the beginning. in every RPG I've played, when people are talking a picture of their face pops up next to the dialog so you can know who's speaking. Same concept here.

1up's take:

You and 1up tend to think a bit differently on the matter? Cutscenes they are.

 

[Hardknock]

You and 1up tend to think a bit differently on the matter? Cutscenes they are.

Well when you have to stand there and press the 'A' button to advance the dialog as you talk to people around town is not a "cutscene" to me. A cutscene is a movie that the user has no control in (whether real-time or pre-rendered).

I understand the complaints of not using the actual in-game characters to illustrate the dialog for the game. But my guess is they used the card-board cutouts to save on time (not space since the models are already on the disc anyway) of having to animate and get the camara work and things just right in order to make the game a launch title. Which was their primary goal.

 

[Sethamin]

It's been happening ever since Sony entered the market and we went from arcade style Sega games to fully acted cinematic games with more substance. It would be short sighted to think that this trend isn't going to continue.

What you're referring to is the trend from trigger based arcade games (what's called "high twitch" games) to games with greater story depth and more cinematic qualities. That's a trend that's been happening since the days of Pac-Man. I don't think that has anything to do with Sony.

But that's not what you were talking about. You said that games are going to start including more extras on this disc, which is both different and not a trend I really see occurring at all, except insofar as companies recycling their IP and repackaging their older games (e.g. Quake 2 on Quake 4 disc, original Prince of Persia on newer POP game, etc.).

 

[ihamoitc2005]

Nice article, shamelessly stolen from GAF. I primarily wanted people to see some of the data, since it's interesting. We can discuss the conclusion, which I have a bit of disagreement with:

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

And their conclusion:


The biggest issue I have with the conclusion is that we see the greatest jump in capacity usage towards the end of the life of the console. It's fairly well agreed that Xbox's life is a year or 2 short of typical. Therefore, I think the conclusion really should be: it'll be fine for a few years, but we'll see a lot more two disc games towards the end of Xbox 360's life.

.Sis

They have missed many simple explanation why new games of same length must have more space. Much higher resolution screen (3x) so all detail data like polygons, normal texture, bump-map texture, fmv etc must be more, much more RAM (8x), much much more data processing power, and very high expectation of customers. For 480P to 720P resolution and same look, 3x more detail is needed, but for better look and higher resolution, more than 3x more detail is needed. How much more detail before much better look is gained? Maybe 2x? Maybe 5x? I dont know. But this is why more space is needed. I think this is why Microsoft made often talks of compression and L2 lock for GPU direct access. So Xbox360 will need more space than DVD but maybe for many games they can use more compression like Microsoft suggestion no?

 

[TekkenMaster]

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.

 

[Nesh]

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.

Xenosaga 2: disc1=4.37GB disck2=4.37GB total=8.74
Silent Hill4=3.51GB
Silent Hill3=3.33GB
It seems that 4.37 is the maximum a single layer disc could fill

 

[NavNucST3]

snipped for brevity and sanity

I am pretty sure I mentioned this a couple pages back, that merely comparing game titles and saying that they are X size does not take into account the other systems. If I recall correctly every version of GTA that has come on the xbox has been smaller in size than its PS2 counterpart.

So even if you use a larger font next time it does not mean that what someone said isn't true for their respective system.

 

[zidane1strife]

EDIT: some more

Heres a screenie from a certain site with the rips. Note that the sizes are of the game RARed. From experience, unRaring will usually add at least 1gig-2gigs to the size.

PGR3 is using 6.54gigs RARed.

Now imagine a game with several times the number of cars and tracks of the same quality(gt5 or gt6), impossible without blu-ray..

textures will be downsized to 1024x1024 or 512x512 anyway, to be able to fit into the memory.
And as inefficient says you don't see all texture data at once. Moreover, high res is useful when you get close to the characters or walls, and texture data is nowadays used for normal mapping / parallax mapping as well, which reacts to lighting and is used to fake geometry detail. the 2048x2048 stuff for UE3 is about normal maps I think.

I've seen some of the old lower rez models, they can be seen in some areas of one of the older trailers. Suffice it to say even from afar it didn't look good, that was the source of my complaints back then, later trailers/screens fixed that, and have only used characters far sharper than those. Those CG'ish looking character are using the max quality textures they've said they'd use, obviously, you don't want a blurry mess up close, so at least for close-ups the highest quality textures will have to be kept on the disc if you don't want a gphx downgrade.

Rounin: Thx for the disc spaces. With the 4 mentioned previously, that's an average of 5.24 which is not too bad, we can expect the average to probably push right up to the 8.5GB limit.

We'll probably be looking at the same 3% or so of games that go over, just like many of us have been saying forever.

7GB limit, no?

Impressed.Didnt expect HL2 to be that small.I scanned the article actually.Didnt read it in detail to tell the truth.Thats good news for the 360
I d like to see more examples though.A list of more games would be more informable.

HL2 is recycle content r'us, many many repetitive areas and enemies, tons of stuff reused over and over again, and still said to be short(I've not finished it yet.).

Anyway, now for my 2 cents:

GTA dev.s have been exponentially increasing the size of their game from sequel to sequel. Maybe they'll not do it in their first nextgen gta(which should still be pretty big consider high-rez multitexture for everything and high-poly. 10x ps2 data at least, I'd hope.), but what about the sequel to that one, or the sequel to that one too? Should they constraint themselves from exponentially increasing in size each time? No. What if on top of that they want to include the last game's cities, something everyone wanted this gen, should they not do so if they want to? No. Maybe they'll design with 360 in mind and make most of the story/missions take place within individual cities/regions, but on ps3 large multi-city/region missions stories will be possible, along with seemless travel between all of them. This is the fate of either gta next or one of its sequels if the dev. keeps tradition.

A nextgen God of War, Champions of Norrath, or a racing game with the amount of content in gt4(aka a supposed gt6) would be impossible on a single dvd disc. For most games this does not matter, and won't be a problem(worst the ps3 version will be considered slightly better due to being on a single disc in these cases.), but for two particular types of games it could be a problem. Ambitious GTAs and Ambitious Gran Turismos and their rivals.

 

[inefficient]

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...

"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

 

[scooby_dooby]

Being that he done a CG movie, I doubt he hates CG

Never said he hates it, but he has been quoted directly as sayign the reason he left the FF series whe it hit PS1 was because him and his team had no experience with CG. FF took a huge turn for the worse after he left...