MS regulating developers choices on other platforms *spawn

[goonergaz]

I don´t hear that much complaints about the load times of PS3 games any longer. The difference was much bigger when the majority of 360 games shipped on single layer discs. Now that most AAA games require dual layer DVD disks the difference (BD) in read speed is small.

It´s also a bit odd that some people who were strongly against mandatory installs in 2008-2009 have become great fans of installs lately, the times are changing.

yes, but that's "optional"

 

[tuna]

That's right. PS3 development costs for all 3rd party developers, like DICE, is more expensive than the 360's development costs (kind of sounds like 2008 to me). That's why Battlefield 3 has been shown running smoothly on the 360 and not the PS3. That's, also, got to be the reason why DICE has been talking about the trouble and extra work they have been doing on PS3 version of the game. Again, because they got the 360 version running so quickly. That's why DICE has had all that extra time to put together and present developer slides on 360 development of Battlefield 3, right? I think I've got it, now.

Of course, these supposed PS3 issues with GPU and memory has to be why DICE says using the PS3 the way they have was "an excellent opportunity to raise the bar on graphics." So, it's Sony that's "holding the industry back", huh? Got it. Nope, those statements aren't biased at all.

Do you have any sources for these statements?

 

[AlphaWolf]

well we are talking 6 years ago now, it'd be like finding a needle in a haystack...while I'm looking maybe you could find something to back up your comment WRT "Dvd was only challenged as an option by cartridges (and those would have been 256MB or something)" because I'm sure PS3 and X360 would have been being designed around the same time - you make it sound like Sony pulled out some wonder tech that no-one had heard of!

It's even harder to find that needle when it doesn't exist.

Blu-ray wasn't going to be shipping in a $500 console in 2005. Period. Being in the design process doesn't mean jack shit, it matters when you plan on shipping and going into mass production. Including a $300 part in 2005 which becomes a $100 part in 2006 makes a pretty big fucking difference.

Sony pushed the limits by doing it in 2006, but they had a lot more at stake in blu-ray in that they actually benefit from the tech in other ways. MS still probably wouldn't have done blu-ray if they waited a year, but perhaps HDDVD would have been a more reasonable option at that time for them.

If MS had shipped with HDMI, I'm sure you'd be bitching that it wasn't HDMI 1.2.

honestly your entire posting in this thread reads more and more like trolling.

 

[goonergaz]

It's even harder to find that needle when it doesn't exist.

Blu-ray wasn't going to be shipping in a $500 console in 2005. Period. Being in the design process doesn't mean jack shit, it matters when you plan on shipping and going into mass production. Including a $300 part in 2005 which becomes a $100 part in 2006 makes a pretty big fucking difference.

Sony pushed the limits by doing it in 2006, but they had a lot more at stake in blu-ray in that they actually benefit from the tech in other ways. MS still probably wouldn't have done blu-ray if they waited a year, but perhaps HDDVD would have been a more reasonable option at that time for them.

If MS had shipped with HDMI, I'm sure you'd be bitching that it wasn't HDMI 1.2.

honestly your entire posting in this thread reads more and more like trolling.

Shit, you're fucking right.

 

[NRP]

Do we know for a fact BF3 looks and runs better on PS3?

Because if so, I'm gonna take Repi's dog tags on opening day. LOL!

 

[function]

It bothers me so far as that I got the impression some of FFXIII (and other RPGs) questionable design decisions were informed partly by this limitation, just as JRPGs seemed to be moving more and more to worlds where you could go anywhere all the time.

Square said the design for FFXIII was all set out before they decided on the 360 port and that the linear form the game took had nothing to do with the 360 version. They said they worked on getting the PS3 version done before they worried about how to port. The shocking FMV at the start of disk 3 (utter mess) would attest to this. I played (and finished!) the game this year, and the way it flows between locations means an overworld and hub towns wouldn't really fit. They didn't even put a single town or shop (in the traditional sense) in the game anywhere!

Despite the low quality FMV, I think the game being on three disks probably gave the the 360 version the edge over the PS3 version though ...

 

[joker454]

2x BD-drives do not have variable read speeds per layer. In other words, your last sentence doesn't appear to make sense.

Paper specs by and large are useless, all that matters is performance in the field. With the 1st gen bluray in the ps3 anytime you move the head you are screwed on performance. For playing back movies where you move the head once then let it sit there and scoup up mountains of data yeah it's great. For games though it's actually really bad.

The point is that 360 developers know that if they keep the content tight and compress hard enough they can SAVE X amount of dollars since there aparently is a DVD tax in the form of royalty pr pressed disc vs just the costs.

That's just it, I don't know how much it's this claimed "tax" (which I never heard of) that limits size choices, in my day it was more dev moeny, system memory and optical drive speed that mandated keeping asset sizes in check.

Then it´s usually just a question of having a game that is designed around the swap thing, or changing the game so it will work with disc swaps.

Yes I'd totally agree on that, it is possible that dvd this late in the gen is forcing design changes on some games. Some like LA Noire or Rage don't matter since they are chapter focussed anyways. But what of GTA5, a game presumably where you need to have the entire world accesible at all times. I'm curious to see what they will do there but it's not unreasonable to suspect that dvd size limits will impose some design changes. Note I don't think any "dvd tax" will impose changes at all, i still suspect two dvd's are cheaper to manufacture than 1 bluray anyways.

I don´t hear that much complaints about the load times of PS3 games any longer. The difference was much bigger when the majority of 360 games shipped on single layer discs. Now that most AAA games require dual layer DVD disks the difference (BD) in read speed is small.

I think it's just tolerated and/or rules are bent for it. The slowest loading games this gen are PS3 exclusive games because of how they use the hdd to make up for the blu-ray's speed deficiencies. Presumably they take so long to load because they preload a bunch of stuff on the hdd first. Note though back when I was in the biz, if we shipped a multi platform game that had a load time of a PS3 exclusive game, we would have failed trc. It wasn't a level playfield back then although maybe times have changed.

 

[goonergaz]

It's even harder to find that needle when it doesn't exist.

My bad, the quote was "The reality is, you don’t need HDMI for HD gaming." - still, from 6 years ago I recall that yet I barely remember what I did at work today! lol

 

[goonergaz]

The slowest loading games this gen are PS3 exclusive games because of how they use the hdd to make up for the blu-ray's speed deficiencies. Presumably they take so long to load because they preload a bunch of stuff on the hdd first. Note though back when I was in the biz, if we shipped a multi platform game that had a load time of a PS3 exclusive game, we would have failed trc. It wasn't a level playfield back then although maybe times have changed.

so true, some of the first games were awful...however the uncharted games are great - one load and away you go!

 

[joker454]

so true, some of the first games were awful...however the uncharted games are great - one load and away you go!

I finished both Uncharted games, on my PS3 slim U2 took a long time to load. Little Big Planet 2, Killzone 3, etc all are similar as well. I have to assume that they are doing some form of hdd prep before whatever streaming systems they employ can be functional.

If you don't mind swapping disks.

It's a tradeoff. Either take 15 seconds to swap a dvd disc one time during the course of the entire 15+ hour game, or deal with slower load times off a bluray drive during the course of the entire 15+ hour game. Up to you to decide which is better.

 

[goonergaz]

I finished both Uncharted games, on my PS3 slim U2 took a long time to load. Little Big Planet 2, Killzone 3, etc all are similar as well. I have to assume that they are doing some form of hdd prep before whatever streaming systems they employ can be functional.

Sorry, I meant a one-off load with Uncharted games...I remember Halo 3 being really long loading between levels, and it's odd but I believe installing to the HDD makes it even slower?

It's a tradeoff. Either take 15 seconds to swap a dvd disc one time during the course of the entire 15+ hour game, or deal with slower load times off a bluray drive during the course of the entire 15+ hour game. Up to you to decide which is better.

I'd prefer is MS & Sony would allow complete install TBH, both systems are like a half-way house.

 

[AlNom]

I remember Halo 3 being really long loading between levels, and it's odd but I believe installing to the HDD makes it even slower?

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/bungie-responds-to-halo-3-nxe-hdd-load-time-lag


Check up the GDC presentation on the streaming they employ for more info.

I'd prefer is MS & Sony would allow complete install TBH, both systems are like a half-way house.

Why do you imply MS doesn't allow complete install? You mean still having to get off your arse to put in disc 2?

 

[Squilliam]

I don't think that's true. There's no evidence or suggestion Sony have a mandate saying "you can't publish on our platform if yout textures are of lower quality" or the like, and we see PS3 titles being inferior. This isn't really about performance, but content.

Do we have more that hearsay with the abundance of NDA's in the industry? However in saying that you've got the higher ground here.

Whether this move from MS is affecting how much content devs put on disc, I don't know, though I would like to find out! Would devs really use more of BRD's capacity if it weren't for wanting to maintain parity to be allowed to publish on 360? I find that hard to believe, but it's quite an important question in my mind as it's suggestive that one thing holding back technology is business practice.

Business practice is all about ROI is it not? There really isn't even a correlation between higher ROI and greater use of data on disc so you can probably forget even attempting to find a causal link. Another thing is you need to separate 'what developers want' with 'what are developers best interests'. Developers in many ways want what isn't in their own best interests. So whilst they may hate things like the limit to download sizes on the Xbox 360 or the requirement for people to pay for DLC or the limit to size of content by the 360 DVD standard, they would annoy their customers with increased downloads and patches, reduce their income from DLC if it became a trend for it to simply be given away and they would pay more to produce content which doesn't have a positive ROI.

 

[bkilian]

Sure DVD was the best 'off the shelf' but remember, initially there was to be a small gap between launches, so to suggest it was the only option is way off the mark.

Yep, and have you wondered why the PS3 slipped 6 months? The Blu-ray launch also slipped a few months before Sony slipped the PS3 launch.
In 2005, the day the XBox 360 launched (to a resounding *thud* in Japan, where I was at the time) I was in Japan, at a Toshiba plant, working through HD DVD issues. That's _the day it launched_. If MS had wanted a HD DVD drive in the XBox, it would have had to be complete at least 6 months before that. At that time, the spec was still evolving.

Even had MS been willing to take on the insanity that is launching with a product that itself has not yet launched, neither BD or HD DVD drives at the time could meet the performance requirements. MS planned a hard drive-less console, and so was not going to skimp of optical drive streaming rate. 6 years later, and you've got mandatory HDD installs on a lot of PS3 games, and, surprise, none on the XBox.

Don't think that a HD format was never contemplated, it was, but the requirements couldn't be met in ship time, units manufactured, or performance specs. It was probably a simple choice in the end.

 

[Squilliam]

Don't think that a HD format was never contemplated, it was, but the requirements couldn't be met in ship time, units manufactured, or performance specs. It was probably a simple choice in the end.

Would HD-DVD have been good enough in 2006? If the answer had still been no then I guess we can lay this 'could-woulda-shoulda' issue to rest.

 

[upnorthsox]

Are PS3 exclusives using bluray discs in any significant way outside of multiple languages and better FMV quality and sound ?

Not sure but here's a tweet from one ps3 dev who seems to be using it......a bit.

http://twitter.com/#!/cbalestra

we're getting close to 50GB. Hopefully it will fit

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

Paper specs by and large are useless, all that matters is performance in the field. With the 1st gen bluray in the ps3 anytime you move the head you are screwed on performance. For playing back movies where you move the head once then let it sit there and scoup up mountains of data yeah it's great. For games though it's actually really bad.

I will go along with the whole "paper specs by and large are useless." The following post, from a forum member, is from direct testing:

http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=913202&postcount=55

From my own personal experience testing a Sony BD-RE drive (actually uses a Panasonic drive mechanism) and a Hitachi-LG drive of similar specs, for similar sized data sets the BD drive typically has almost the same if not significantly faster random seek times. That's generally because data sets between 4-8GB span the entire disc for for DVD-ROM while only covering a third of a BD-ROM, so on average a BD-ROM is going to have seek times in the range 50-100ms with a worst case scenario of around 200-230ms. The DVD-ROM drive will average between 110-150ms with a worst case scenario of around 170-230ms.

 

[AlphaWolf]

My bad, the quote was "The reality is, you don’t need HDMI for HD gaming." - still, from 6 years ago I recall that yet I barely remember what I did at work today! lol

Which is completely true. I have a release day 360 and I can game in 1080P with component cables. So what's your point again? Not that many games are actually 1080P, but the 360 can output that without an HDMI cable. In fact it can do it with the cable that came in the box.

 

[Richard]

Would HD-DVD have been good enough in 2006? If the answer had still been no then I guess we can lay this 'could-woulda-shoulda' issue to rest.

I don't think that's necessary. Had MS waited for HD-DVD, even just 6 months, it's very likely they wouldn't be in first place in NA right now. I mean, we only have one data point to go on but it appears reasonable, no?

Obvious examples are LA Noire and Rage. You'll note that both of those games are multi disc games on the 360, 3 discs and 2 discs respectively.

As an aside, Rage for xbox comes on 3 DVDs also.

 

[Lucid_Dreamer]

So the exception proves the rule, right?

What was popular in the past is what will always be, right? DICE isn't the only example. This seems to be becoming the norm for devs wanting to push the graphics bar up (by using the SPUs as "another GPU compute source" in parallel).