PS3 Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs

[Deepblue]

The amount of FUD about PC games in here is incredible.

And yes, the only possible way a dev is filling a 25GB disc is by not compressing anything at all (plain stupid) or by cramming useless junk in the game in order to artificially create a Sony talking point about the "need" for Blu-Ray in gaming.

 

[ban25]

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

Since....2004? There are plenty of 4-5 disc games out there. Dungeon Siege II is one of them, X3 is another. I am sure there are plenty of others, but these days I buy DVDs if possible, and those are just two I bought in the past year that were on CD.

I can't remember if Sacred Gold was on 3 discs or 4.

 

[Platon]

For me the biggest concern is still development costs, how much does it cost to fill 25Gb not to mention 50 Gb of data?...

 

[-tkf-]

Is the DVD media ok for the 360? Sure

Will there be compromises? Sometimes

But how can anyone argue that more space is a bad thing, it really surprises me.

 

[-tkf-]

For me the biggest concern is still development costs, how much does it cost to fill 25Gb not to mention 50 Gb of data?...

Yeah not to mention how much time will be lost/spent making sure you can squeeze your game down to 9GB or 4.5 if you need the extra speed for streaming. Or 640MB becuase clearly a CD should be enough.

 

[DudeMiester]

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

It depends on what part of the world you live in. Europe and Japan are almost exclusively DVD based, Canada has some DVD based games, and the USA is stuck in CD-land. By the time Blu-Ray takes hold in Europe and Japan for game distribution, the USA will look like some weird theme park of the past when it comes to PC game distribution.

Personally, I've had games delivered from Europe just so I don't have to deal with the hassle of 5 or 6 CDs. It's pretty retarded.

 

[Platon]

Yeah not to mention how much time will be lost/spent making sure you can squeeze your game down to 9GB or 4.5 if you need the extra speed for streaming. Or 640MB becuase clearly a CD should be enough.

No matter how you cut it filling 25GB with textuers, models, CG and what not costs a lot of money, wouldn't you say so...

 

[-tkf-]

No matter how you cut it filling 25GB with textuers, models, CG and what not costs a lot of money, wouldn't you say so...

Why is it more expensive to have highres textures and models? Most assest in games start at a much higher quality anyway.

 

[Platon]

Why is it more expensive to have highres textures and models? Most assest in games start at a much higher quality anyway.

It isn't about having them in higher res that is the problem, because most likely most textures/models for both the 360 and PS3 will be at similar res, what costs is that they will be making more of them for the Ps3 to fill the disc. Creating art is expensive...

 

[London Geezer]

It isn't about having them in higher res that is the problem, because most likely most textures/models for both the 360 and PS3 will be at similar res, what costs is that they will be making more of them for the Ps3 to fill the disc. Creating art is expensive...

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

Games with "more textures" probably won't be multiplatform simply because textures and models will probably be pretty much the same for the 2 consoles.

Games which will have more textures than other games will be the ones like Final Fantasy and most likely exclusive games. But they will have more textures simply because they will be bigger games. As such, of course they will cost more. But they will cost more because Square will also put in very expensive HD FMV videos and soundtrack costs will go up too.

X360 will also have "bigger games" which might or might not use 2 discs, and they will also be more expensive than the average game simply because they're bigger.

Games like COD3 for example will probably be pretty much the same size between the 2 versions. The only difference is that on PS3 the developers might want to stuff the Bluray disc with other mostly useless stuff, like "extras" or uncompressed soundtracks or whatever they can find in the studio to make it look like the game has "more value".

I can't see why the size of the game itself would be any different as the 2 versions will be using the same assets, more or less.

The argument for the alleged use of uncompressed textures on PS3 "just because they fit on Bluray" is silly. Why would devs use uncompressed textures which will ultimately use more RAM too? That would mean we get less textures for any given scene, which is not good as we're already starving for RAM.

So, point of the post is....... uhm........ what's the point of my post again? I got lost...

 

[hey69]

the point of your post is that you dont have a point acording to my points...

 

[Gerry]

I'm not sure what you mean by this.

His point was (I think), that the original poster was implying that the fact BR offers 25GB of data would allow more detailed models and higher res textures than a comparable version on a non-BR console. These factors are more constrained by the internal limitations of the console itself (available RAM etc) rather than whether they can fit on your optical media or not. So the extra size is far more likely to be used for additional content, FMV, and other stuff like that, which equals more time and expense rather than just an easy win. Certainly the extra space available will be great news for certain things, but suddenly expecting ultra-high-res textures isn't realistic.

Which is more or less what you were saying.

 

[London Geezer]

His point was (I think), that the original poster was implying that the fact BR offers 25GB of data would allow more detailed models and higher res textures than a comparable version on a non-BR console. These factors are more constrained by the internal limitations of the console itself (available RAM etc) rather than whether they can fit on your optical media or not. So the extra size is far more likely to be used for additional content, FMV, and other stuff like that, which equals more time and expense rather than just an easy win. Certainly the extra space available will be great news for certain things, but suddenly expecting ultra-high-res textures isn't realistic.

Which is more or less what you were saying.

Oh. Yes that was my point. I think. Coffee. Now.

 

[-tkf-]

His point was (I think), that the original poster was implying that the fact BR offers 25GB of data would allow more detailed models and higher res textures than a comparable version on a non-BR console. These factors are more constrained by the internal limitations of the console itself (available RAM etc) rather than whether they can fit on your optical media or not.

I´m curious how it can be that on a 32MB system developers had no problem filling up a DVD and on a 512MB system it´s no problem that they have the same space to fit their game on.

Anyway, i guess we need some of the developers to describe how the actual pipeline for creating textures really works. Are they created with a specific resolution/size in mind from the start or?

 

[CEO]

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.

2. DVD Became standard for PC games by spreading and becoming cheap. There are still CD Versions of DVD games availible in the US and other countrys, it depends on how far DVD-Drives are spread. It has nohting to do with other consoles. The PC is more flexible thats the point.

Yeah sure the already can exploit the Storage Space of BD-Discs. Still has nothing to do with acceptance among the "PC" Based world.

3. They have a good reason for Needing extra storage space, less compression more marketing.
there is you point of ignorance. what do you think why sony tries to push BD? For giving you your storage space? Its about the money. check out Jesus2k6 post for more hidden sarcasm.

 

[London Geezer]

I´m curious how it can be that on a 32MB system developers had no problem filling up a DVD and on a 512MB system it´s no problem that they have the same space to fit their game on.

PC games have had much higher res textures than PS3 and X360 games will be using too, and some of them were on CD up to not too long ago!

The 32MB vs 512MB RAM argument makes no sense at all. As i said, it really depends on the game and how the devs want to use the extra room on the disc. Game data size (which includes all models and textures) has never been the issue so far.

It's kinda logical too. If devs were so starved for disc space, FF12 wouldn't be on a single layer DVD. I use that as an example because it's obviously a mammooth game with lots of FMV too.

Point of the post is that games size has really not been dictated by the textures up to now, but by a plethora of other things.

 

[CEO]

For me the biggest concern is still development costs, how much does it cost to fill 25Gb not to mention 50 Gb of data?...

just as much as filling up a DVD9. Skip compressing tho

 

[-tkf-]

PC games have had much higher res textures than PS3 and X360 games will be using too, and some of them were on CD up to not too long ago!

The 32MB vs 512MB RAM argument makes no sense at all. As i said, it really depends on the game and how the devs want to use the extra room on the disc. Game data size (which includes all models and textures) has never been the issue so far.

It's kinda logical too. If devs were so starved for disc space, FF12 wouldn't be on a single layer DVD. I use that as an example because it's obviously a mammooth game with lots of FMV too.

Point of the post is that games size is really not dictated by the textures, but by a plethora of other things.

PC games normally uncompress and install on the harddrive as well, and there is rarely use for padding etc for streaming.

The 32/512 argument doesn´t make sense? It´s not like the extra memory will be used for gamecode is it. Afaik (and read here to) the 64MB vs 32MB was one of the reasons why games looked better on the XBOX, sheer simple textures size.

If you have 4.7GB of space it´s kind a hard to use more isn´t it? So if FF12 was made with 1 disc in mind, and no dual layer (for many reasons) it´s pretty obvious that it would fit on SL DVD. But would you are say that if it had 5 times as much space it wouldn´t or couldn´t have looked better?

 

[Gerry]

just as much as filling up a DVD9. Skip compressing tho

Why would you want to skip compressing though? It takes time to load data from optical media - surely any opportunity to minimise this is a good thing.

 

[CEO]

you commenting on your self??

That i call ADD something to the post. Or is there a edit function i should know of?