PS3, Holiday 2006

[mckmas8808]

I agree but i think there's a bunch of questions that go along with this:

what % of games will go over 1 disc
will those games primarily be RPGs or all types games?
will gamers care about multiple discs for RPGs? the other games?
If MS can provide a disc with 13G of usable storage, how many games will now be more than 1 disc? Does that change 'everything' in the eyes of developers?
How willt he fact that both Revolution AND 360 be using DVD-9 impact the use of storage beyond the capacity these media?

How can you say that a majority of games WONT fit on DVD-9? What can we base this on?

Perfect questions. I couldn't have done better myself. I think most games within the next year will most defenitely by less than 7.4 GBs. But what if devs decide to use that extra space on the PS3? Will the 360 lose features due to space limitation?

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

I'd have more faith in games fitting on one DVD if Xbox360 used CAV instead of CLV (wait... constant angular... so that's r... yeah, I think that's right). The games may fit on one DVD for the most time, but the loading screens will be "get up and make a sandwhich" level long. It's not so much a question of will it fit, but is it worth it? I mean XBox360 games will be MADE to fit, there's no question about that, but how worthwhile will that be? Will the sacrifice content, load time, CG, detail, resolution, processor cycles? It's a situtation where you can't "have your cake and eat it too", and it's a shame.

 

[mckmas8808]

I mean XBox360 games will be MADE to fit, there's no question about that, but how worthwhile will that be? Will the sacrifice content, load time, CG, detail, resolution, processor cycles? It's a situtation where you can't "have your cake and eat it too", and it's a shame.

This is my only true point when concerning Xbox 360's disc space. I too realize that 360 games will be 360 games. Great question Mefisutofereseu I wish I could give you rep points up.

 

[Mmmkay]

I'd have more faith in games fitting on one DVD if Xbox360 used CAV instead of CLV (wait... constant angular... so that's r... yeah, I think that's right). The games may fit on one DVD for the most time, but the loading screens will be "get up and make a sandwhich" level long. It's not so much a question of will it fit, but is it worth it? I mean XBox360 games will be MADE to fit, there's no question about that, but how worthwhile will that be? Will the sacrifice content, load time, CG, detail, resolution, processor cycles? It's a situtation where you can't "have your cake and eat it too", and it's a shame.

Err, the Xbox 360 drive is CAV. You don't really see CLV drives beyond 3-4x speeds. Also, load times are often more the fault of game development than the technology underpinning it.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

I can't imagine most games going over a 7 GB limit. Expansive genres manage it but that's basically RPGs. The content is just too expensive. PGR3 is a good example I think. You've got detailed cars, lots of them, detailed cities with high-res textures. It's a costly game paid for by MS as a flagship title, and it still hasn't gone beyond the disc limit. Most other games won't have the money to afford as many detailed models and sceneries, let alone afford to have even more cars and cities to choose from. GT5 might well exceed PGR3's content in storage capacity because I can imagine Sony shovelling more money at that game to get 2000 different cars and 50 circuits, just so they can say 'XB360 can't fit this much on a disk'. But the costs otherwise are prohibitive. 7 GBs of uncompressed content is still a hell of a lot and with compression you're looking at plenty more than that.

 

[scooby_dooby]

I had to bold all of the important things that I completly disagree with you on. First why do you keep bringing up games sizes of this gen? We are talking about next-gen games here, so shouldn't we be talking about next-gen textures? And how is a 1 GB times 10 still small enough for 360 games? In my school 1 X 10 = 10.

Point being I don't think the argument should be, "next gen games be bigger than 7.4 GBs?" I think the arguement should be, "is two or three disc a bad thing for MS?" Because we all know that games will go past that 7.4 GBs.

In case you didn't notice those were just random numbers, what if textures only increase 3-4x's? Who knows? I'm not a dev. The point was, todays games are small ~2.5GB, and of that 2.5GB ~2/3 is usually audio and video files. Which mean game files are on average < 1GB. Somehow I'm supposed to believe that these game files will suddenly become 6-20GB??

As far as I'm concerned, if Oblivion which looks amazing, has over 250hours of gameplay, and where 50% of the disc is dedicated to audio can fit on one disc(only using 3.5GB for actual game files), then the sports, action, fighting, racing, platformer, adventure games should have no problem at all.

RPG's nobody cares if they have to swap discs. So the only potential genre that could be affected is GTA-style games. And still GTA on xbox was only 2.8GB, with alot of that dedicated to audio!

I dunno, the way I see it, by the time this does become a problem it'll be about time for PS4 and XBOX3 so it's a non-issue. In the meantime, it'll be the odd game, but no biggie.

 

[Mefisutoferesu]

Err, the Xbox 360 drive is CAV. You don't really see CLV drives beyond 3-4x speeds. Also, load times are often more the fault of game development than the technology underpinning it.

Darn it... I did get them backwards! Sorry. (Must remember, CLV has the same transfer rate throughout.) And yes, granted the way game data on a disc is laid out is currently the most important issue with load times, but as games get larger and they really need to make use of the full disc the difference in data rate will be of more importance, or so I think. Also, I know you don't typically see high speed CLV, but I was just saying it from a theoretical sort way. It'd be nice if I was rich. It'd be nice if there was no disease. It'd be nice if it was CLV.

EDIT:: By the way, excellent point shifty! Cost plays a factor in this as well. I have to keep that in mind.

 

[Edge]

> "RPG's nobody cares if they have to swap discs."

The 360 will hardly get any also, so it should not be a concern.

 

[expletive]

In case you didn't notice those were just random numbers, what if textures only increase 3-4x's? Who knows? I'm not a dev. The point was, todays games are small ~2.5GB, and of that 2.5GB ~2/3 is usually audio and video files. Which mean game files are on average < 1GB. Somehow I'm supposed to believe that these game files will suddenly become 6-20GB??

As far as I'm concerned, if Oblivion which looks amazing, has over 250hours of gameplay, and where 50% of the disc is dedicated to audio can fit on one disc(only using 3.5GB for actual game files), then the sports, action, fighting, racing, platformer, adventure games should have no problem at all.

RPG's nobody cares if they have to swap discs. So the only potential genre that could be affected is GTA-style games. And still GTA on xbox was only 2.8GB, with alot of that dedicated to audio!

I dunno, the way I see it, by the time this does become a problem it'll be about time for PS4 and XBOX3 so it's a non-issue. In the meantime, it'll be the odd game, but no biggie.

Is the reason why oblivion fits on the disc becuase of the use of procedural synthesis? I rememebr reading they were using it but have no idea how much or what the impact would be on disc space...

 

[expletive]

I'd have more faith in games fitting on one DVD if Xbox360 used CAV instead of CLV (wait... constant angular... so that's r... yeah, I think that's right). The games may fit on one DVD for the most time, but the loading screens will be "get up and make a sandwhich" level long. It's not so much a question of will it fit, but is it worth it? I mean XBox360 games will be MADE to fit, there's no question about that, but how worthwhile will that be? Will the sacrifice content, load time, CG, detail, resolution, processor cycles? It's a situtation where you can't "have your cake and eat it too", and it's a shame.

I think the processor cycles will mainly be used during the load screens since thats when a majority of the decompression will be used no? As for streaming textures isnt that compression directly supported in the grfx hardware?

 

[mckmas8808]

RPG's nobody cares if they have to swap discs. So the only potential genre that could be affected is GTA-style games. And still GTA on xbox was only 2.8GB, with alot of that dedicated to audio!

I dunno, the way I see it, by the time this does become a problem it'll be about time for PS4 and XBOX3 so it's a non-issue. In the meantime, it'll be the odd game, but no biggie.

So what is Frame City Killers considered? Does this game automatically not count anymore? Are we acting as if we don't have the dev's comments right on this board?

 

[expletive]

So what is Frame City Killers considered? Does this game automatically not count anymore? Are we acting as if we don't have the dev's comments right on this board?

To be fair, aren't oblivion and PGR3 a much better example of what CAN be done on 7.5g than FCK is of what CAN'T be done? At this moment, i'll give the guys at bizarre and bethesda the benefit of the doubt as being beacons of what can be accomplished on a DVD-9.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, FCK has been resoundlingly underwhelming until just recently. They'd have to prove, to me at least, that they can get more out of a shrink-wrapped game engine (UE3) on the 360 until they become the "standard to what can be accomplished on the 360"

 

[blakjedi]

> "RPG's nobody cares if they have to swap discs."

The 360 will hardly get any also, so it should not be a concern.

Edge.... sometimes I wonder why you even bother. Stop trolling.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Not to mention we didn't see a linear proression in game size last generation, to the contrary most of the "best" games tended to be quite small, and filesize did not really increase as the generation went on. The bigger games were usually sloppy pieces of crap.

Developers will be able to make 7.4GB work just fine, there are many workarounds they could use. I found it funny some of the same people who think HDD's are unnescescary cause Dev's will just find workarounds and use RAM, think these same Dev's are somehow incapable of fitting their game in 7.4GB.

As for X360 having no RPG's, I can think of 7 or 8 coming out in the next 2 years, that's pretty sweet IMO, but to each their own I guess I'll be RPG'ing up a storm

 

[_phil_]

unnescescary

i love that word.

 

[mckmas8808]

Not to mention we didn't see a linear proression in game size last generation, to the contrary most of the "best" games tended to be quite small, and filesize did not really increase as the generation went on. The bigger games were usually sloppy pieces of crap.

Developers will be able to make 7.4GB work just fine, there are many workarounds they could use. I found it funny some of the same people who think HDD's are unnescescary cause Dev's will just find workarounds and use RAM, think these same Dev's are somehow incapable of fitting their game in 7.4GB.

As for X360 having no RPG's, I can think of 7 or 8 coming out in the next 2 years, that's pretty sweet IMO, but to each their own I guess I'll be RPG'ing up a storm

First 7 or 8 RPGs in two years is absolutely horrible. Secondly your opinion on 7.4 GBs being enough is a good well thought out opinion. I guess we'll just have to wait and see if devs do what you think will happen (i.e. become smarter in using the space that they have) or do what I think (i.e. eventually cut out some extras, not have many CGI cutscences, and have 2 or maybe even 3 discs).

 

[scooby_dooby]

Not when the RPG's are AAA caliber like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Oblivion, Fable 2, Jade Empire 2, KOTOR 3 and Mass Effect. And I'm sure there's many more to come...

I'm more than happy with that selection of RPG's, all looking to be excellent games.

 

[mckmas8808]

Not when the RPG's are AAA caliber like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Oblivion, Fable 2, Jade Empire 2, KOTOR 3 and Mass Effect. And I'm sure there's many more to come...

I'm more than happy with that selection of RPG's, all looking to excellent games.

Hate to break it to you but some of those games you listed could be busts. They may come out and be very underwhelming games. Mass Effect may be a 9.5 game, while Blue Dragon may be a 6.5 type game. I think a consoles needs about 15+ RPGs a year so...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Not when the RPG's are AAA caliber like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, Oblivion, Fable 2, Jade Empire 2, KOTOR 3 and Mass Effect. And I'm sure there's many more to come...

I'm more than happy with that selection of RPG's, all looking to be excellent games.

On an unrelated-to-this-thread sidenote, how do you rate AAA? For all we know Lost Odyssey or Blue Dragon will be diabolical tosh; same as any game that's not yet released to play for real. So does AAA not need any guarentees of game quality to class as triple-A?

 

[scooby_dooby]

Hmm, Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey crap? Well when the original team behind ChronoTrigger reunites I tend to have high expectations. And for lost odyssey it's the guy who created FF3 combined with a team over 30% comprised of ex Square employees, bankrolled by MS, I have no doubt this will be a AAA game.

And I'd extend that same common sense approach to any dev, regardless of the system. I think you're really reaching if you think either of these will be flops, I'm not sayinf they're gaurenteed hits or anything, but if you had to bet your paycheque, what would you guess?