PS3 Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs

I don't see the need for the X360 Defense Force to jump in here and try to prove the BR drive is a stupid idea!

C'mon, how can you guys say that it's not needed, when the PS3 hasn't even been released yet! It's still got another 8-10yrs ahead of itself! And yeah, I for one would not want to get up to change discs everytime I move to a new city in GTA7! Hell No!

 

So basically they optimized their compression to take advantage of 25GB Blu-ray media rather than 9GB DVD media.

 

Honestly, I get a little fed up with these space debates, what's enough and isn't enough.

This is especially true any time the word "needed" comes up. Strictly speaking, virtually nothing is needed. You have a way to process your data, a way to accept imputs, a way to get your game to the consumer... A developer designs a game within the constraints of the system, not some imaginary box titled "what we could use." If you "need" more than a DVD's space, then you most certainly "need" 96TBytes of RAM, 5 Petaflops of CPU/GPU performance, a system that transforms what you're thinking into an actual model that works perfectly within your game environment, and so on. Sure, purely semantics, right? But the way some people structure arguments around that word sometimes makes me think the word shouldn't be used at all.

There's no doubt the lower amount of space is a huge inconvenience. It would have been great if MS could have shipped with HD DVD, or better yet, holographic versatile disc, or better yet, Several hundred gigs of HDD space and a downloadable game pipeline. Then the developer could decide on whether they could accept lower read speeds and higher seek times or whatever, and go with the best option for their game. But none of those were realistic options, the only available choice is DVD, and that's it. More games are going multiplatform than in the last generation, so developers are dealing with it. So, uh, in conclusion, nothing is needed, everything would be nice to have.

Sorry for the interruption.

 

Often times the debate is positioned as "The PS3 can do something the Xbox 360 can't because of disc space." The debate then spins out on these silly tangents of one side coming up with a hypothetical situation that positively, absolutely can't be done without more single-disc space and the other side saying, "Oblivion."

My position has been that DVD-9 is good enough for this gen, but really what I'm saying is that the choice that MS made for the Xbox 360 was probably ok, kind of a wash in terms of pushing game play forward or holding it back.

I think Blu-ray may push game play foward, by alleviating disc space concerns, but I'm doubtful. The biggest benefit may be that it frees development time up for having to worry about it, which in itself is a Good Thing. But I understand Sony's position: If you got it, flaunt it.

I just think the end-user benefits will be negligible, other than being able to sleep easy at night knowing that your PS3 game disc has more data on it then your friend's Xbox 360 game disc.

 

And your point was previous generations didn't fill their available space, which is completely false. It was obvious by the end of PS1 that CD was completely insufficient.

 

With what 1080p FMV and sloppy code ?

There is no doubt that Blu-Ray will benifit the Ps3 to some extent, but anyone here who thinks it will makes games noticeably any better (especially exclusive content) is dreaming.

Worse case senerio 360 games have to use 2-3 disc's, it's not the end of the world.

 

I'd give the dev's more credit than that! C'mon guys, if you don't like it, don't buy it. If you don't agree with it, too bad, cuz SONY's done it, and that's that! But no need to start trashing the dev's too. That's just uncalled for!

 

Wasn't really having a dig at dev's, but PC games have been using 1200x1600 for a very long time with multiple textures and settiings, and they haven't even come close to 25 gb's.

 

Huh? You know this? Its the same as the 'common denominator' factor. Just because they programmed for the PS2 last gen, didn't stop the dev's from making the XBOX version much smoother, adding additional game elements like custom soundtracks (due to HDD support for XBOX) etc. My point? If it's available, they'll make use of it.

But if you've got both consoles, which game would you choose? The BR PS3 version (1 Disc), or the DVD X360 version (4 discs)?

 

but...but...but...PC games aren't Next-Gen. Sony hasn't said so.

Anyone knows the largest PC game installed?

 

Well depends , the PS3's price will probably stop me having a PS3 for quite sometime, plus if the PS3 version was more expensive because of the use of Blu-ray then I would probably say the 360 version.

Swapping disc's on the PS1 and with some games on the PS2 never bothered me, infact it always made me feel like i was getting more content (which probably isn't the case).

Edit:- I forgot to mention that i did say exclusive content in my previous post as well, in which case there would be no choice.

 

PC games aren't console games. Different genres, different storage requirements. That and since there wasn't the copious amounts of space before, PC devs don't have a need to push in that direction. It took long enough for PC games to come to DVD, yet PS2 and Xbox games were on DVD from Day1, and using that space too. If PC devs could rely on a BD or HD-DVD drive being in most computers, they'd no doubt find ways to quickly fill that space. If you build it, they will come, and there's no reason they can't make that extra space VERY useful. It's all down to devs. PEACE.

 

What media they prefer to use is besides the point, my point was that most PC games have to be installed on to a harddrive which is much larger than a Blu-ray disc.

Pc dev's are far less restriced to content size than either PS2 or Xbox games, whether they come on 1 DVD or 10 CD's is besides the point.

Eample :- Crysis looks much better than Resistance (at least in my opinion) yet do you think it will be taking up 25 gb's of storage space ?

 

These games still have to be distributed to the user on disc, and until recently, most games were distributed on multiple CDs (say 5 discs at 700 MB each).

 

PC games tend to use non real-time decompression leaning very heavily on fast hard drives to cache large amounts of data. This lets them use more aggressive (& slower) compression algos. PC gamers seem to put up with much longer load times. It takes many of these PC games a half hour or more to install, a luxury consoles cannot afford. Though with a standard HD...

 

I've heard that Everquest 2 is ~14gb installed. Don't quote me on that though. Many games reach 6 - 8 gb.

 

Most pc games are distributed on 5 CDs? Since when?

 

your kidding right, console loading times are painful compared to the PC, if you compare a game like GTA that had maybe a second or two loading on the PC and a close to a minute on the PS2

the only thing I have to add to the subject is that if any games that have been shown so far is using close to 25GBs of data it doesn't show much compared to games on other systems

 

1. Data doesn't come on the HDD. It needs to be stamped on something first, which once again raises the issue of storage capacity.

2. Again, consoles were using games on DVDs long before the PC did. PC games on DVD have only become standard over the last couple of years. Devs were still shipping games on multiple CDs. The problem being proliferation of said drives. For consoles, the drive is guaranteed in the box, so there's no reason for console devs to wait. They can start exploiting the extra space of BD now.

3. How the game looks means nothing. Have you seen all the levels of Crysis and Resistance? Have you gone through and taken inventory of the scenery in each game? 40 levels with 300MB of unique data each amounts to 12GB of just level data. But hey, what do the actual devs of the game know? I mean, they must not have a good reason for needing over 20GB of space, right? They certainly weren't able to fit those R&C games on a single DVD in the past, so it must be indicative of their inability to shrink a game down....

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I find the attitude in this thread to be bordering on the point of ignorance. If you build it, they will come. Just b/c there hasn't been a need before, doesn't mean there won't be in the future. Just because you can't think of a good way to use that extra space, doesn't mean some dev won't come along and make that extra space almost a necessity. For a technical forum, sometimes we can be extremely resistant to change. PEACE.

 

I thought we where talking about PC games not PS2 ports. Obviously the things that make GTA load fast on PS2 also apply to the PC. You need to look at pc games with super high rez textures and tons of next gen features to see my point(HL2,FEAR,etc).