Peter Moore G4TV interview online - devs voice their concerns

[jvd]

Well he was very clear that the core version will not suffer compared to the Premium in terms of game performance. Good to hear, if I didn't want the HD cables or the wireless controller I would be more than happy with the core version.

but they also said caching will be used with the hardrive thus speeding up loads .

So if we are both playing each other in perfect dark zero .

I have a hardrive and you don't .

It takes me 30 seconds to load up the map and it takes you 45 seconds or more . That is 15+ seconds each map load that i have to wait whie sitting in the game twiddling my fingers . Now pdz has 64 players . So that can be alot of people sitting around waiting for 1 or 2 core players to load up . Quite annoying in my opinon

 

[ninzel]

but they also said caching will be used with the hardrive thus speeding up loads .

So if we are both playing each other in perfect dark zero .

I have a hardrive and you don't .

It takes me 30 seconds to load up the map and it takes you 45 seconds or more . That is 15+ seconds each map load that i have to wait whie sitting in the game twiddling my fingers . Now pdz has 64 players . So that can be alot of people sitting around waiting for 1 or 2 core players to load up . Quite annoying in my opinon

Who is "they".
People who are speculating and haven't started developing games yet?
It sounded to me like Moore( who actually works for MS) was emphasizing the fact that the gamer wouldn't notice a difference and that is after playing real games by developers who have actually made real games . Even if there is some increase in load times the difference should minimal since this gen the games will have more RAM and a faster DVD drive for streaming.
We have seen streaming technology used in the past to make games load fast without an HDD. And to be quite honest after playing many systems and games like Halo and Halo2, I really don't see the faster loading that everyone is talking about. Games like RE4 load much faster than Halo2.
Once develoers get over the paradigm shift and change their thinking and stop whining, they will get down to the business of building games from the ground up without an HDD. Of course if you take a game that is designed for an HDD then pull the HDD it will load slower. But if you think from the beginning "no HDD' you will build the technology to make it load fast without one.

 

[jvd]

Who is "they".
People who are speculating and haven't started developing games yet?

The devs from oblivion have said the hardrive will decrease loads and will make a smoother playing experiance

It sounded to me like Moore( who actually works for MS) was emphasizing the fact that the gamer wouldn't notice a difference and that is after playing real games by developers who have actually made real games . Even if there is some increase in load times the difference should minimal since this gen the games will have more RAM and a faster DVD drive for streaming.

Well he says they have a 3times faster dvd drive but they have 8 times the amount of ram to fill and have no hardrive. So games that use the hardrive for caching are going to decrease load times by a noticable amount unless the dev sucks at caching

We have seen streaming technology used in the past to make games load fast without an HDD. And to be quite honest after playing many systems and games like Halo and Halo2, I really don't see the faster loading that everyone is talking about. Games like RE4 load much faster than Halo2.

You've never played halo 2 with out a hardrive however . If you were to go on your pc and take a game like doom 3 . And have one ata 100 drive 5400rpm with 2 meg cache and put in a faster drive 10k rpm with 8 meg cache lets just say , you will notice load times decrease

Once develoers get over the paradigm shift and change their thinking and stop whining, they will get down to the business of building games from the ground up without an HDD. Of course if you take a game that is designed for an HDD then pull the HDD it will load slower. But if you think from the beginning "no HDD' you will build the technology to make it load fast without one.

Devs have a right to whine. Its them that are making the games . A hardrive will decrease load times as long as its done properly .


Thus the case that i've explained where there will be those waiting for the hardless players to load up

 

[ninzel]

The devs from oblivion have said the hardrive will decrease loads and will make a smoother playing experiance

I neve heard that, I heard that they wil make "extensive use" of the HDD, but I didn't hear in what way.Also remeber they are ONE developer.There are going to be exceptions always.

Well he says they have a 3times faster dvd drive but they have 8 times the amount of ram to fill and have no hardrive. So games that use the hardrive for caching are going to decrease load times by a noticable amount unless the dev sucks at caching

"IF" a developer uses the HDD for caching there should be a difference, it sounds though like the difference is being minimized by the use of streaming technology from the DVD which is faster this time.

You've never played halo 2 with out a hardrive however . If you were to go on your pc and take a game like doom 3 . And have one ata 100 drive 5400rpm with 2 meg cache and put in a faster drive 10k rpm with 8 meg cache lets just say , you will notice load times decrease
Devs have a right to whine. Its them that are making the games . A hardrive will decrease load times as long as its done properly .


Thus the case that i've explained where there will be those waiting for the hardless players to load up

I'm not doubting that an HDD if used properly can decrease load times, but if a game is desginged from the ground up without one load times can also be made minimal just be using other means.
Look , I know it sucks to have been so hyped about having an HDD and you want to justify the purschase of the premium version but I would do it with other factors like the multimedia capabilities and DLable content. The magority of developers will not build for the HDD, they won't alienate a portion of their customers to satisfy a minority that insists on an HDD. They aren't going to charge the same for two versions of the game where one performs les well. This is a business and guy's like yourself are in the minority unfortunately.

 

[jvd]

I neve heard that, I heard that they wil make "extensive use" of the HDD, but I didn't hear in what way.Also remeber they are ONE developer.There are going to be exceptions always.

There is a big 13+ page thread over on ign.com about hardrive caching and the quote is in there .

"IF" a developer uses the HDD for caching there should be a difference, it sounds though like the difference is being minimized by the use of streaming technology from the DVD which is faster this time.

According to allard he is telling them to use the hell out of the drive and it seems like they are making it very easy to enable caching in the newest sdk release .

I'm not doubting that an HDD if used properly can decrease load times, but if a game is desginged from the ground up without one load times can also be made minimal just be using other means.
Look , I know it sucks to have been so hyped about having an HDD and you want to justify the purschase of the premium version but I would do it with other factors like the multimedia capabilities and DLable content. The magority of developers will not build for the HDD, they won't alienate a portion of their customers to satisfy a minority that insists on an HDD. They aren't going to charge the same for two versions of the game where one performs les well. This is a business and guy's like yourself are in the minority unfortunately

There is no reason why ms wont enable caching . There will def be games that use it . With that we know that there will be loading diffrences between the 2 .

There isn't a minority that insists on a hdd . Microsoft insisted on the hardrive constantly last generation. Over and over again how it was a great feature and now they are pulling it and back peddling and giving us answers that don't match up .

 

[ninzel]

There is no reason why ms wont enable caching . There will def be games that use it . With that we know that there will be loading diffrences between the 2 .

There isn't a minority that insists on a hdd . Microsoft insisted on the hardrive constantly last generation. Over and over again how it was a great feature and now they are pulling it and back peddling and giving us answers that don't match up .

I never said MS won't eneable caching in fact Im sure they will and let developers choose. But how is a developer going to justify building different games for the same price. If you look at the total console gaming polulation which represent potential customers, a small minority have systems with HDD. 65 million PS2 owners don't have an HDD, 18 million GC owners don't have an HDD, a small percentage of Xbox games make use of the HDD even when it was standard. Now with the PS3 and the 360 not having standard HDD I don't see why the magority developers would feel the need to make games that use the HDD.

 

[jvd]

I never said MS won't eneable caching in fact Im sure they will and let developers choose. But how is a developer going to justify building different games for the same price. If you look at the total console gaming polulation which represent potential customers, a small minority have systems with HDD. 65 million PS2 owners don't have an HDD, 18 million GC owners don't have an HDD, a small percentage of Xbox games make use of the HDD even when it was standard. Now with the PS3 and the 360 not having standard HDD I don't see why the magority developers would feel the need to make games that use the HDD.

Its not 2 diffrent games . Its the same game . Its just that if you have the hardrive it will load fsater . That is all .

As for the ps2 and gc they didn't have hardrives or in the case of the ps2 had a half ass attempt at a hardrive add on .

The xbox did and I think u will see that many games actually did use caching many more than we know of because to us it should be transparent as you could never take away the hardrive and play the games. This time its not transparent . This time we can tell the diffrences becasue we can remore the hardrive and see the diffrences

 

[scooby_dooby]

You've never played halo 2 with out a hardrive however . If you were to go on your pc and take a game like doom 3 . And have one ata 100 drive 5400rpm with 2 meg cache and put in a faster drive 10k rpm with 8 meg cache lets just say , you will notice load times decrease

if you delete the cache files and play Halo 2 (BTW halo 2 uses 2 Cache directories for well over 1 GIG of cache!) it takes OVER 60 seconds to load.

After the files have been cached, 10-15 seconds to load.

Can anyone honestly say in 2009, having a HDD to cache too would NOT be a godsend on a game that pushes the envelope like Halo 2? Over 1 GIG of cache files, LAST GEN!

Moore saying that Core system sill not suffer is a load of pure BS plain and simple. How does he explain Oblivion then? A launch title where core users will have MUCH slower loading times.

Hopefully they do seperate the memory card gamers from HDD gamers on live, but I think they will pretty much HAVE to. I mean, HDD gamers will have patches right? So the non-patched gamers really can't play with them I don't think...

 

[ninzel]

if you delete the cache files and play Halo 2 (BTW halo 2 uses 2 Cache directories for well over 1 GIG of cache!) it takes OVER 60 seconds to load.

After the files have been cached, 10-15 seconds to load.

...

Well of course it takes much longer to load , the game was designed to use an HDD so of course if you pull one of it's resources it will suffer.That prooves nothing though. That's not the point. If a game is designed intelligently from the beginning to not use an HDD and the game is designed to stream from the disk it can have quick load times as well.
Jeez you guys are not listening and so determined to see the HDD as the only solution, you fail to see and hear that there are other solutions to loading games quickly.

 

[ninzel]

As for the ps2 and gc they didn't have hardrives or in the case of the ps2 had a half ass attempt at a hardrive add on .

The xbox did and I think u will see that many games actually did use caching many more than we know of because to us it should be transparent as you could never take away the hardrive and play the games. This time its not transparent . This time we can tell the diffrences becasue we can remore the hardrive and see the diffrences

You're not listening. You're assuming all devs will make each game to run with an HDD, then the HDD less core version will run slower. Of course that will be the case in some games.
You are not allowing for the fact that many devs will as has been stated develop for the lowest common denominator. The HDDless core version. So you will not notice any difference at all. When you make a game you have to tell the game if HDD= present load game ethis way.
If the developer doens't tell the game to look for an HDD or that an HDD is present, it will not just work as if there is one all on it's own.Game don't auto detect an HDD. THere will be games where developers do not make the game for the HDD in which case other methods for quick loading will be used and you wil never know the difference.
THe reason I mentioend the PS2 and GC is that it shows that the magority og gamers are not screamong for an HDD. if that were the case the Xbox would be selling the most and the PS2 would be dead. Seeing this is not the case, what incentive do devs have to make every game for an HDD when you risk alientating a large group of your consumers.
Or have the features underfor the HDD under apprecaited because no HDD is present..

 

[Vince]

Can anyone honestly say in 2009, having a HDD to cache too would NOT be a godsend on a game that pushes the envelope like Halo 2? Over 1 GIG of cache files, LAST GEN!

Whoa, really? That's like 1/7th the total space available for an XBox360 game in cache files alone... insane. How is that going to scale come 2009?

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The amount of available space hasn't increased though. Still 1/7th the available DVD space for a game. now factor in 1 Gb non cached data took the game from 15s load time to 60s on XB. Now consider that the XB360 drive is 4x faster, taking that 60s from XB down to 15s for XB360

Other things to consider are the XB360 has more RAM to fill = potentially longer loads, but also that when that first 60s uncached Halo2 load occurs on XB it's also (presumably. I've no hard evidence) caching the data to HD, copying a load of stuff for later loads. If that caching of data to HD didn't occur perhaps the Halo2 load time would be half what it is pre-cache?

 

[overclocked]

Yeah its bull that it will have no affect on loadtimes.
In a closed box i think its even more important that you can optimize load/features on the HDD, but to ask that devs should be as good as streaming a game(say JAK) and also make some benefit of a HDD seems odd.
So if there is no use in the HDD, oh you must have it for BC and live things, does parents know this when they buy, i doubt.

So i will have a harddrive that are used to store all kinds of media as i see it and thats the use but why should i want a 20gig drive for that?
Add a zero to that and i can take that.

 

[EndR]

I don´t know, for me.. I have come to terms with the 2 SKUs approach. There will still be lots of greats games, with our without the hdd.

If let us say that PS3 comes out at 299, then MS could sell the premium pack for around 299 and the core-pack for 199 and this would be pretty sweet deal.

 

[pc999]

I do think that chaching is important but it is only one of the many advantages of the HDD (see my sig), while that is nice the others things could make new features/games.

 

[Sis]

Well of course it takes much longer to load , the game was designed to use an HDD so of course if you pull one of it's resources it will suffer.That prooves nothing though. That's not the point. If a game is designed intelligently from the beginning to not use an HDD and the game is designed to stream from the disk it can have quick load times as well.
Jeez you guys are not listening and so determined to see the HDD as the only solution, you fail to see and hear that there are other solutions to loading games quickly.

You're right--I've found this discussion in the past highly frustrating, since one side offers little real proof that the hard drive did anything for load times (or did anything for anything, for that matter).

I would again point people to God of War, on the PS2, with no hard drive, as an example that the hard drive is not a requirement for quick load times.

.Sis

 

[Sis]

I do think that chaching is important but it is only one of the many advantages of the HDD (see my sig), while that is nice the others things could make new features/games.

This is your sig:

This is what MS killed. Plus, NO MAP EDITORS , games made from the ground up to/around HDD (e.g. persistent worlds), MMO, no MC. XB Live>>>XB360Live (no headset) and no new interfaces (simple e.g.).On the top of that they insult us, trying to make us belive that there is 2 options. It woud be a brave new (gaming) world . What a sad day...

What's the hard drive have to do with Map Editors?
Why does a MMO require a hard drive? Would a 64 meg card work just as well? [Edit: Also, I find it highly disengenious to suggest that MS killed off MMOs, when an MMO will be released soon on the Xbox 360]
XB Live >>> XB360Live doesn't make any sense. There's only one Xbox Live.
No new interfaces seems like a non-sequiter.
In fact, there are two options and I know at least 2 people who would be fine with buying the cheaper version. What I think you mean to say, "For me, personally, there is only one option."

.Sis

 

[jvd]

You're right--I've found this discussion in the past highly frustrating, since one side offers little real proof that the hard drive did anything for load times (or did anything for anything, for that matter).

I would again point people to God of War, on the PS2, with no hard drive, as an example that the hard drive is not a requirement for quick load times.

.Sis

There has been plenty of proof and there will be even more when the games come out .

 

[Sis]

There has been plenty of proof and there will be even more when the games come out .

Pointing out that a particular game made use of the Xbox hard drive is not proof that the hard drive was necessary for a particular feature and/or performance enhancement.

I would again point people to God of War, on the PS2, with no hard drive, as an example that the hard drive is not a requirement for quick load times.

.Sis

 

[Tap In]

it's not so much the quick load times I'll miss.

It's the LACK of load times between worlds/levels.

The seamlessness with which several Xbox games moved between levels and worlds with NO load screens through the entire game, creating the illusion of one continuous expanse was really cool and never seen before (by me).

Now whether devs can optimize the game to do that with OR w/o a Hdd or with the disk streaming/Ram, remains to be seen. I just hope this is not the end to a really cool feature.