Sorry, I read your comment as disagreeing for some reason!? I totally agree, I'd just love that you didn't have to still swap disks during play - Sony should def implement this syste, esp. since the slim PS3s BR drives are noisier (well I guess less well sound-proofed)
MS regulating developers choices on other platforms *spawn
- Thread starter Gubbi
- Start date
Sorry, I read your comment as disagreeing for some reason!? I totally agree, I'd just love that you didn't have to still swap disks during play - Sony should def implement this syste, esp. since the slim PS3s BR drives are noisier (well I guess less well sound-proofed)
Which is another way of saying they confined their launch shortages to some markets. Whatever launch shortages XB360 ahd would have been similarly reduced if they launched in different territories at different times.
PS3 has the mammoth PS brand behind it, so could survive a premium. It was also the only HD movie playing console, and the most affordable BRD player. It's premium had added value. An HD XB360 launching at the same sort of the price at the same time without the same strong brand would have lost all the advantages that have allowed MS to grow the brand significantly this gen.
HDDVDs could be printed using refactored DVD plants, but needed specialist plants to mass produce. If the HDDVD format died and MS was left with a console requiring a proprietary format, it'd have pushed up the costs of games considerably. Such that I imagine if that had happened, publishers would have dropped down to DVD to save costs.
They made cost savings, but then they also provided HD output out of the box, unlike Sony. And Sony lost way too much money on their box for financial sense. Even waiting a year just to add HDMI wouldn't have done MS any favours. Instead they launched the first HD console and provided HDMI for those who particularly wanted it.
I see no arguments to support the idea that waiting for an HD optical drive would have done MS any favours. Every argument - cost, limited availability, delaying release, performance issues - says to me DVD was the right choice, and I dare say the present proves that. Can you present a hypothetical history that shows XB360 launching with an HD drive and securing more of this generation than they have done?
That still doesn't change the fact that a shortage existed in the world markets/supply chain.
Brand power? Are we suddenly forgetting the popularity of Sony/PS?
Not everyone is an early adopter of an expensive product.
Just because the media is relatively cheaper than BR, does not make it absolutely inexpensive.
Are you serious?M/S - the worlds biggest, richest company not brand enough!?
PlayStation was synonymous with gaming. It had the two greatest selling consoles of all time on the trot. XB had trouble expanding out of NA, and the MicroSoft name comes with a lot of baggage despite (or maybe even because of) how much money they have. XB360 has more than doubled their last generation performance with a box that's actually making money, even if the net result isn't a big win.Now present a case where launching a year later, alongside PS3, at the same price, with the weaker brand in the console space, with serious trouble sourcing components, in the beginnings of an HD format war, where more people choose XB360 over PS3 and MS sell stronger over the next 6 years.
What does that have to do with selling the Xbox brand to the mass?M/S - the worlds biggest, richest company not brand enough!?
L. Scofield
Veteran
Though more often than not it's due to the limitations of said deviceSometimes one has to lower the bar to match one's skill level on a device.
upnorthsox
Veteran
Though more often than not it's due to the limitations of said device
or said platform owner.
M/S - the worlds biggest, richest company not brand enough!?
MS aren't even in the top 100 richest companies. They are tiny compared to Walmart or even Sony in terms of revenue.
so Sony are richer than microsoft!?
the ability to buy exclusives and brain-wash folk with endless TV ads
Are you serious?
Funny that, so how did that happen? Let's go back to the 90s - I thought Nintendo/Sega were and Sony just made TVs & Videos - I mean, MS when they launched had nothing to do with gaming bar a little thing called Direct X...when Sony launched what did they have to do with gaming? How do you think they would have done if they launched their first console months after the well estabilshed gaming company Sega?
SedentaryJourney
Regular
Like I said, this is something that's fixable. There's nothing that can be done about RAM size or GPU for any of the consoles once they've shipped, these elements are fixed. Game capacity however does not necessarily need to be tied to the size of a single DVD. Addressing the other stuff you alluded to would just be pie in the sky wishful thinking.
It certainly hasn't hurt Microsoft. Good for them. However, Microsoft and gamers as a whole don't share an identity of interests. I'm not Microsoft, so why should I care? Gamers just want better games that provide value for their money. A game doesn't necessarily get better by virtue of being larger, but it helps not having that restriction.
Game aren't tied to the size of a single DVD though. As well as multi disk games there are games with download content, and Forza even has content across 2 disks that can be accessed from one.
The only other thing that could be done is ditching play-from-DVD, and stiffing Core / Pro (20GB = 10 GB) / Arcade / 4GB users. If MS have any sense, that's about as likely as upgrading the GPU or releasing a Bluray model with Bluray games.
But you're talking about MS "fixing" something in a way that's against their (and a lot of 360 owners') interests. That's my only point - if you want more capacity that's understandable.
You don't understand how sales relate to shortages in stores?
Of the 35 games I own, there's one with multiple discs. During which you have to swap discs once every 40 hours of play.
Yes, for example - I sell a product - it sells 10. What does that tell you? Do I need more stock? Did it sell well? (etc)
You only mention half the story, all you tell me is MS sold more product tham Sony in a given time-frame...it has next to nothing to do with how short stock was (without more data), for example both could have shipped 1.5M showing one was indeed supply constrained and the other was on shelves.
lol, one you have to swap after 40 hours of play? OK seriously, I'm interested to know what that is! Either way the hassle is still just one click vs all the other benefits I listed earlier:
Faster loading (most games)
Less background noise (all games)
Less wear and tear (all games)
Less pop-in (most games)
The reality is that there is no financial incentive for 3rd parties to extra content for one platform over another when they can instead charge for it. So unless Sony decided to throw a bunch of money around you would not be seeing more content than what you are seeing. What MS's policy does is set a higher bar for Sony to secure these deals as they need to sweeten the deal to the point where the risk (remember, MS's policy is that they MAY refuse certification) of not being able to release on 360 is compensated for. Obviously, there are some high profile titles that can bear this risk better since the chances of MS denying them is slimmer. It then comes down to how much of this extra content is Sony willing to pay for. My guess is not much.
Other uses for the extra space that don't conflict with MS's policy like higher-quality textures don't get used because there are bottlenecks in the PS3 architecture that prevent them from being used.
Well, I wouldn't really argue with that. I only hope to provide more context of why BR hasn't been more of a differentiator than it has proved to be. It's not just because MS is standing in the way. I would argue it's not even MOSTLY because of MS.
The list that was posted showed a bunch of titles hovering around the max capacity for the 360 DVD, it may be pure coincidence but it´s more likely that it´s the small space that simply sets limit to how much space a game can take. And without really knowing the inner workings of textures on the different platforms isn´t fair to say that the assets that are used on one platform would take more than just "better resolution" in order to be used on other platforms with plenty of space. Simply because alot of work goes into fine tuning the textures for the exact space they can take up. And secondly there is more to better textures than just the resolution. You need a engine that can take advantage of the higher res as well as the power to drive that engine.
But would anyone in here really suggest that if there was more space on the 360, like 25GB it would not have made any difference what so ever on the games? both in terms of content and quality? not to mention game design.
I bet that if this was a discussion about CD-ROM vs DVD games on the PC platform there would no discussion
The list that was posted showed a bunch of titles hovering around the max capacity for the 360 DVD, it may be pure coincidence but it´s more likely that it´s the small space that simply sets limit to how much space a game can take. And without really knowing the inner workings of textures on the different platforms isn´t fair to say that the assets that are used on one platform would take more than just "better resolution" in order to be used on other platforms with plenty of space. Simply because alot of work goes into fine tuning the textures for the exact space they can take up. And secondly there is more to better textures than just the resolution. You need a engine that can take advantage of the higher res as well as the power to drive that engine.
But would anyone in here really suggest that if there was more space on the 360, like 25GB it would not have made any difference what so ever on the games? both in terms of content and quality? not to mention game design.
I bet that if this was a discussion about CD-ROM vs DVD games on the PC platform there would no discussion
I think there is a potential for higher fidelity, sure. But memory and bandwidth constraints are also present on the 360 and even more so on the PS3 that I believe put a cap on how much of that potential could be realized. Sony needed to put BR in the PS3 to promote BR as a movie format. Looking just at the benefits that have been realized in games in no way justifies the costs of its inclusion.
If it had been possible for the PS3 to launch a year or 2 later with more memory, a faster drive, and other tweaks to allow the system to better leverage the additional storage in a way that made sense for developers and publishers I think it would be a completely different story. It wasn't possible, though, unfortunately.
And the CD->DVD transition for PC games took a really long time past when DVD-ROMS first became available. This despite the constant march of PC hardware advances.
Just having the ability to play a DVD does not mean the drive meets the performance requirements of a 12x DVD drive (And it didn't, it spun DVDs at nowhere near 12x) To play a DVD movie you only need 1x. It was also a conscious decision to focus the XBox on non-disc entertainment. We released the addon for those that wanted to play HD DVDs, and therefore didn't force everyone to subsidize something that only a few users would use.
Um? In gross revenue terms you might be correct (MS is at #120 globally), but MS is #10 in the world on profit. Sony doesn't even feature, considering they lost $3 billion last year. Net revenues, not gross, are the true measure of the health (or richness) of a company.
