Okay obviously we have some issues communicating.
Everything you're saying seems to assume the HDD is optional, but Mark Cerny clearly said PS4 would have an HDD builtin because games will need it. This FUD about PS4-crippled-because-it's-not-like-durango has to stop.
Why so defensive? I have never said at anytime that the PS4 would not have an HDD. In fact, in this very same thread, I pointed out to someone that wanted a PS4 with just 8 GB of flash why it is imperative that PS4 include an HDD. Especially when the PS4 reveal itself shows the PS4 with HDD.
HDD caching on level loading screen == wait time loading each level the first time.
Partial Install of time-sensitive data == longer waiting before playing the first time.
Full Install == lots of wait time before playing the first time.
Ah, I see, it seems that you are the one completely misunderstanding due to some unreasoned fear that I'm in some way attacking the PS4. Why in the world would I do that?
Both companies are going to have to have mandatory HDD installs. Mandatory HDD installs as ERP pointed out and as I've been pointing out in multiple posts now does not mean insert disk and wait for the entire game to install before you can play it.
None of your suggestions provides for a compelling game play experience
with the increased data sets that will be required for next gen gaming, especially when you take into consideration that Digital Downloads (as Shifty points out) are also going to be playable
while installing. When your data sets for a level for true next gen games increases by a factor of 10-25x over what we currently have, loading anything off the optical drive except for cutscene videos isn't going to be very good.
That seems to be the bit that your blinders continually ignore despite the fact that I've continued to point out that mandatory installs includes the ability to play the game while it is being installed. In other words, insert Optical Disk, start playing game. Simultaneously it'll be installing the game while you play. The first time you play the game in this way, it will take a while to load due to the speed of the optical drive (low sequential read speed and huge random seek times). But for the first time playing a game (loading into menu and then first level of a game) data can be optimized such that random reads are reduced, that same cannot be done once past the first level of a game. As well the fact that the game is continuing to install itself to HDD while in the games menu should help hide the fact that the optical disk is so terribly slow when it comes to modern games.
I expect the more complex storage API of the PS4 to have zero bottlenecks and still allow the exact same games available on disc, dd and streaming (native, running local), with varying local storage needs, and much much smaller initial waiting times as any full-install options. The key is how they write the storage API, it will only work if they plan it correctly from the start.
There is nothing the API can do to get rid of the relatively huge random seek times that all optical disks suffer from which greatly magnifies the lower sequential read speeds of optical drives or the anemic speeds for internet bandwidth. Those are all very real bottlenecks that become very very serious when the data that your game requires starts to grow. These are the SAME bottlenecks that exist on PCs that have been dealing with up to 2 GB of data for many many years now.
Even then, do you want to sit there and wait 1.5 minutes for your 2 GB worth of data used in your game to load before you can play or 20-30 seconds (depending on what 5400 RPM HDD is included) assuming a completely unrealistic scenario of completely sequential reads with zero random reads. If you want 4 GB of data in your games that's going to be 3 minutes of sequential reads off the optical drive before you can start playing.
Of course, purely sequential reads are never going to happen for any game so those times are going to explode. When every random seek means spending 1/10th of a second (just wasted the ability to read 2.7 MB of data at 27 MB/s) to find the file (which may only be 200 KB in size), then potentially 1/10th of a second to get to the next file, etc. Compare that to only spending ~16 ms (16/1000 of a second) for the same random read (1.28 MB out of 80 MB/s).
That random seek time and differing games reliances to it are the main reason why some games on PS3 were able to get huge load time boosts from an SSD while some didn't (versus same data on 7200 RPM 2.5" HDD).
Caching only partial data won't work if your game is designed around that because then it makes digitally downloaded games unplayable for quite a while as you download since you have to install the pre-cache assets first. It also means your optical drive game is no longer instantly playable because you must pre-cache all of your shared assets before you can start the game, otherwise you'll have a horribly long wait time as level loads deal with random seek times. And it also makes playing a game instantly off optical drives impossible for games that stream data if it requires that all shared resources have to be cached on HDD to avoid as many random reads as possible.
Playing a game while it is installing is nothing new. There's nothing magical involved. There's no need for exotic API's. And it's basically what Sony are planning to do if their intent for Digital Downloads (as stated by them in the PS4 reveal) is true. Since they can do that, then it's basically a no-brainer to expect the same for games released on optical media.
Regards,
SB
