Mark Rein (Epic VP): next-gen games disk space 20G+

[AlNom]

so what is he talking about? UT 2004 was NOT 6 gigs, that's false.

5.5GB full install close enough!

 

[London Geezer]

5.5GB full install close enough!

That's the space on the HDD after install i think. The space occupied on the actual DVD was less than that. You know how these programs magically inflate when you install them.

I had a stupid 20MB program occupy some 400MB after install!!!

 

[expletive]

IIRC, UT 2004 came on 4 CDs on the PC so do the math.

J

 

[London Geezer]

IIRC, UT 2004 came on 4 CDs on the PC so do the math.

J

There you go, if it was on 4 CDs, it couldn't have been more than 2.6GB (650MBx4).

 

[expletive]

Seems like you can view it 2 ways:

1. Not having the larger optical format or a guarenteed hard drive, will force the 360 to decompress streamed texture data on the fly. It will move a compressed texture from the optical disc into main system memory faster but will require processing to decompress.

2. Having a larger optical format will allow them to use uncompressed textures on the optical disc, not require any processing to use them, BUT it will take a lot longer to move the textures off the optical disc into main system memory.

Is there one method thats more preferable regardless of the format? How much processing power by the CPU or GPU is actually required to decompress on the fly?

J

 

[seismologist]

probably talking about this UT2004
http://www.ebgames.com/ebx/product/245074.asp

Now can we get off accusing him of "lying"

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Seems like you can view it 2 ways:

Is there one method thats more preferable regardless of the format? How much processing power by the CPU or GPU is actually required to decompress on the fly?

This issue has been raised before, and the short of it is it's faster to decompress files then to load them uncompressed. Therefore all games should be compressed regardless of if they have spare room on the disc or not.

 

[London Geezer]

Seems like you can view it 2 ways:

1. Not having the larger optical format or a guarenteed hard drive, will force the 360 to decompress streamed texture data on the fly. It will move a compressed texture from the optical disc into main system memory faster but will require processing to decompress.

2. Having a larger optical format will allow them to use uncompressed textures on the optical disc, not require any processing to use them, BUT it will take a lot longer to move the textures off the optical disc into main system memory.

Is there one method thats more preferable regardless of the format? How much processing power by the CPU or GPU is actually required to decompress on the fly?

J

Well you have 3 cores. One core could take care of that in the background so it should have no impact on the rest, however i'm sure it won't be that simple. We're talking about GBs of data being copied from the DVD to the HDD. Besides, the HDD is not standard now so developers won't be able to count on that.

I still can't see how more than 9GB is actually "needed" on most games - not Final Fantasy games.

 

[hey69]

DOOM3 uses compressed data : if you decompres it manually (with winrar) you gain some noticable speed ingame. the only disadvantage is it consumes more spaces

this was one of those tricks to bump the speed up of doom3 on mid and low end pc's

 

[Acert93]

Very difficult to compare consoles and PCs. As someone mentioned PCs do a lot to cater to different hardware setups. Another reason is consoles will compress information on the DVD. This improves transfer rate and the cost of unpacking is cheap. PC games tend to be sloppy as well. What would you expect from a platform where all the game data is put on a massive HDD? There will be games that will be affected by the DVD limitations, but as the past has shown devs either work around it directly by managing content better or indirectly by using more than 1 DVD. And of course, there will be "HDD only" games, like MMOs, that will surely put information on the HDD so you would have 1 core DVD that had to be in and then could have numerous other DVD's copied to the HDD. While a BR drive would have been nice for the Xbox 360 there are other issues surrounding the format and format wars, not the least of which being the cost (which is rumoured to be as much as $100+). DRM, HDMI for HD movie content, HD-DVD competition, drive speed, availability. media content supply and demand, HD market base, egad! Enough to make your head spin.

But I do wonder if MS experimented with any multi-layer DVDs beyond dual layer. With the rumors of HD-DVD and BR being able to do many layers, a quad layer DVD would be what, ~15GB of usable space? Obviously that would be for down the road... but I would be interested to know what formats they looked at, including proprietary ones.

 

[scooby_dooby]

You're comparing the credibility of a claim that something took place and things were said with that of a direct interview? If you can't tell the difference then I'm obviously wasting my time here...

And if you disagree with the direct quote of Mark Rein, maybe you should send him an email before you question the site that requoted what he said...

lol, in 2001 they posted a FAKE INTERVIEW with Konami....so maybe you can enlighten me as to the difference between an interview posted in 2001 and one in 2005

I'm not saying he's said it or not, but I do question the validity of this article based on the fact they have posted FAKE interviews in the past.

 

[London Geezer]

lol, in 2001 they posted a FAKE INTERVIEW with Konami....so maybe you can enlighten me as to the difference between an interview posted in 2001 and one in 2005

I'm not saying he's said it or not, but I do question the validity of this article based on the fact they have posted FAKE interviews in the past.

I'd love to see that fake interview. Seriously. I'm bored here, really need some entertainment.

 

[expletive]

But I do wonder if MS experimented with any multi-layer DVDs beyond dual layer. With the rumors of HD-DVD and BR being able to do many layers, a quad layer DVD would be what, ~15GB of usable space? Obviously that would be for down the road... but I would be interested to know what formats they looked at, including proprietary ones.

Ask and ye shall receive:

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/12392

Looks like 2nd Gen - 3 layer FVD discs are about 15G.

I wonder if current players can read them in their current state or with a firmware update?

J

 

[kyleb]

I'd love to see that fake interview. Seriously. I'm bored here, really need some entertainment.

You could try the wayback machine, but it has been nearly 5 years since it happened so good luck.

 

[[maven]]

DOOM3 uses compressed data : if you decompres it manually (with winrar) you gain some noticable speed ingame. the only disadvantage is it consumes more spaces

Good thing that the Doom 3 you're talking about was for the PC and we're talking about consoles. Anyone that doesn't make use of (on disk and in memory storage of) DXTC / 3Dc for a fixed hardware target that supports it (particular assets with compression artifacts or similar excluded) ought to be shot!

Doom 3 on the PC did a few things. It included precompressed as well as the original uncompressed textures (for the higher quality modes) on disk and then stores all of those inside a compressed archive. See the difference?

 

[Phil]

lol, in 2001 they posted a FAKE INTERVIEW with Konami....so maybe you can enlighten me as to the difference between an interview posted in 2001 and one in 2005

I'm not saying he's said it or not, but I do question the validity of this article based on the fact they have posted FAKE interviews in the past.

Mate, accoarding to the link YOU posted to lend your claim credibility that CVG does invent things (an interview), it was NOT an interview:

CVG claimed that a press conference took place, in which Hideo Kojima said the full version of MGS2 would be PlayStation 2 exclusive, and the Xbox version would be a mix of the original and the sequel.

Either back up your claim properly or let it be.

 

[kyleb]

It seems to me that a press conference is a form of interview with multiple interviewers, I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise.

 

[mckmas8808]

I still can't see how more than 9GB is actually "needed" on most games - not Final Fantasy games.

Well to be technical 7GB, not 9. I know, I know but you have to be precise here. 2 GB can go a long way. And how many devs have to say that more than 7 GB would be useful until we finally give this weak arguement up? What's the speed of a 12X DVD drive? Is it 144 Mbps?

 

[EndR]

Question..
What are the chances that 360 could end up reading FVD-discs that MS are co-developing with Taiwan?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26057

If MS can talk about "maybe" upgrading to a HD-DVD or BD-drive in teh future, wouldn´t a better solution be to upgrade 360 via software so that it can read FVD discs?

 

[mckmas8808]

Question..
What are the chances that 360 could end up reading FVD-discs that MS are co-developing with Taiwan?

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26057

If MS can talk about "maybe" upgrading to a HD-DVD or BD-drive in teh future, wouldn´t a better solution be to upgrade 360 via software so that it can read FVD discs?

Well yeah, but how many people are going to upgrade their X360s? Maybe 25, 35, or 50%? Will it ever be enough to make a dev use it?