PS3, Holiday 2006
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But to be realistic, the PGR series, in all incarnations across a couple different systems, was arguable a very good game but hardly ever a killer app. I was burned by them on Dreamcast, then on Xbox. The hype for PGR usually is far ahead of its gameplay.expletive said:
Though I have friends who say it's the best racing game out there, so maybe it's just me.
.Sis
Sis said:
I agree. Sorry if i gave the impression that i was selling PGR3 as a 'killer app'. I dont think it is and certainly didnt mean to come across as vaunting it as one. Personally, I think Kameo has a much wider appeal and has a much better chance at selling systems.
Sure is purty tho.
And I wonder if the Gotham TV thing will take off at all...EDIT: Now i see where you got that, it was based on my quoted response to the PGR 3 quote. I meant it as responding for the overall "no killer app evident" rather than just PGR3.
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Sis said:
Not at all sir, its just the types of racers. For me, playing with my four-year old son, Burnout is our favorite racing game, merely because it does not require much more skill than his four-year old hands can handle, it is also a game my wife doesn't mind playing with us.
Playing by myself, I find more enjoyment from the PGR3(semi-simulation)/Forza games.
Back OT: As gamers, it would be great if we could all enjoy whatever gaming system we choose, for whatever reason, without the "need" to defend that choice. The last time I checked neither of the BILLION dollar corporations have actually GIVEN us anything.
Also, does it really matter when the PS3 debuts in your given countries, its not like the gameplay experiences will decrease because it came out n months later.
As I have pointed out on numerous occasions there is no love lost with me and Sony, having said that-it has absolutely no bearing on whether I could have fun on their game system. There are only two companies I refuse to do business with, Wal-Mart and Haliburton.
ImaginaryIndustryInsider
Newcomer
Sis said:
Sadly, I have to agree with that statement...PGR is just one of those games, that while being good, seems to be in-between Racing's sub-genres just enough to put off some gamers.
Mintmaster
Veteran
Well I guess thas settles it, but I'll address your other points anyway.Gholbine said:
You not thinking about development from the same point of view as I am. If all that matters was the install base, then developers wouldn't make games for PS3 either. However, new PS3 and XB360 owners are definately going to buy games at a higher rate than old system owners, so developers are making next gen games.
Once you make a game for a next gen system, you won't be able to port it to PS2. You're mixing up markets. PS2 development is irrelevant to next gen competition. Let me be more clear. Consider the following two scenarios, with one premise:
Premise: As a developer, you've decided to make a game for the PS3.
Situation A: XB360 launches at the same time as PS3. PS3 will likely outsell XB360 by a large margin, so why bother making an XB360 port?
Situation B: XB360 launches well ahead of PS3. Well, there are already so many XB360's out there, and PS3 numbers won't catch up for a while, so may lose over half our sales if we don't make an XB360 port. Heck, the systems have similar enough characteristics that we won't have to modify the game that much.
I don't know why you keep bringing up PS2. You're the one who said that many developers are going to skip next gen development until the PS3 arrives -- the aforementioned premise is your creation. I am discussing what happens at that point. Forget about developers that make XB360 games next year. I'm talking about the slew of developers getting games out within a year or two of the PS3's launch.
Now do you get it? Does my example make sense now that I've shown how all along I've been talking about the context that you introduced? Even considering the many developers waiting until the PS3 is launched before doing anything on XB360, the latter's early launch makes a huge difference in its success.
Umm, difference in graphics from cell? That makes no sense at all. Cell may do some better physics or animation, but it has nothing to do with graphics. And with physics, it's a lot harder to see a difference with a faster processor. You can simply reduce the accuracy, iterations, mesh density, etc. for a weaker processor. Furthermore, you have to figure out a way to use all that CPU power without being constrained by its limitations or by bandwidth.
Sorry, I meant to discuss this in my previous post but forgot. I really think you're going overboard with the significance of Blu-Ray for console games. Yes, for PS1 vs. N64 there was a big difference, but the CD had what, 20 times the capacity of a cartridge? Even today there aren't many PC games taking advantage of DVD capacities. PS3 has around 210MB for textures -- comparable to today's video cards (even sub-$100), and a quarter to a half the typical system RAM of a PC, so I don't see art assets jumping so drastically.
The only big advantage will be FMV, which really isn't needed with these consoles. 60fps realtime rendered cutscenes will be just as impressive, if not more so. Furthermore, a few GB of that will be orders of magnitude longer than 50GB of HD video on a dual layer blu-ray disk.
Blu-ray will help PS3 because Blu-ray drives will likely cost a lot at the PS3's launch, but beyond that its impact will be nowhere near what you're suggesting. You can fit plenty of data on a 8.4 GB DVD to take full advantage of hardware twice as powerful as either of these consoles. It's a minor artistic limitation. Worst comes to worst, an epic adventure of a game will use multiple discs.
Sorry, I guess I'm being too obscure.
The point is you can't make judgements about how pre-launch impressions of a small group of people will affect the overall impression of a game or system.
So, making claims about how a kiosk didn't look good, or how some people think game "X" isn't looking as good as it should are irrelevent. The number of people influenced by the content of a kiosk a month before the system launches is tiny at best, and any game can be a hit or even a system seller before it is released. You simply can't know the quality until you've played the final game.
Besides, if we judged a systems success on it's launch lineup then the PS2 would be one of the worst systems in history.
The point is you can't make judgements about how pre-launch impressions of a small group of people will affect the overall impression of a game or system.
So, making claims about how a kiosk didn't look good, or how some people think game "X" isn't looking as good as it should are irrelevent. The number of people influenced by the content of a kiosk a month before the system launches is tiny at best, and any game can be a hit or even a system seller before it is released. You simply can't know the quality until you've played the final game.
Besides, if we judged a systems success on it's launch lineup then the PS2 would be one of the worst systems in history.
ImaginaryIndustryInsider
Newcomer
Mintmaster said:
A game like Halo 3 could be broken into two discs (one for single-player, one for multiplayer) if need be, but when it comes to a GTA-style-huge-world game, things get a bit sticky...how do you break up something like that without killing the immersion with disc changes?
For the first year or two, I would think that DVD 9 will be fine, but after that, blu-ray could really offer a significant advantage over the 360 past movie playback...it's hard to say for sure though, because I have my doubts that MS would shoot-itself-in-the-foot in such an important area like storage.
Mintmaster said:
Cell absolutely will help on the graphics front, just as the Emotion Engine did in the PS2. The system is built that way, with heavy CPU<=>GPU communication in mind. It was the entire philosophy behind the PS2, and it remains so with the PS3.
Even in current PCs, where CPU and GPU communication is nowhere near as important, the CPU can still help with detailed graphics. Take Doom 3 for example, the shadowing was done entirely within the CPU. The Cell could handle shadows, among other things, leaving cycles on the GPU for other activities.
I think it's rather naive to say "Cell has nothing to do with graphics", because that's incorrect, plain and simple.
Mintmaster said:
I'm not quite sure if you follow many of the developers comments, but at least 5 of them now have either A) complained about the lack of disc space or B) stated that their game fills up the entire DVD-9 disc. Just recently, the developer of Frame City Killer stated that his game (which isn't even graphically impressive) is taking up the entire DVD-9. Now you could retreat to the argument that "it's probably just because of CGI", but in all truth, what does it matter how they're using the space? The fact of the matter is, they're filling up the discs, and the generation hasn't even begun. This news is bad. It's terrible news, in fact, because the games are only going to get larger, and in many cases, using multiple discs just isn't an option (or is a very inconvenient option).
The situation is bad. Much worse than some of the Xbox supporters are willing to admit. There's rumours of Microsoft developing a 15gb DVD disc that works with current drives, but even if these rumours end up coming to fruition, and the 15gb discs are released at some point before the end of the Xbox 360 life-cycle, it still puts them at a solid 35gb behind the PS3. While this would certainly help, it doesn't eliminate the problem, not even close.
Note: Developers only have 7gb of space per disc for their games on the Xbox 360. 1.5gb of the space is taken up with "security features", or something of the sort. This puts both the Revolution and the original Xbox at an advantage to the Xbox 360 in disc space terms. While the difference between DVD-9 and Blu-Ray (7-1) is not as large as the difference between CD and cartridge (10-1), it's still a significant difference, and this issue was enough to almost single-handedly destroy the N64, when Nintendo was the previous market leader by a large margin. With that in mind, what's it going to do to a company that's not even the market leader? Time will tell, but the facts are overwhelmingly against the Xbox 360 in this instance.
Even if you just want to ignore all of the developer comments about this issue, it's still plainly obvious that disc space requirements jump significantly in consoles every generation, and this is even more true in the coming generation, because of the leap to HD resolution, as well as 7.1 surround sound and higher audio quality. History is an excellent example of what to expect when it comes to disc space requirements, and when in videogaming history has a newer console ever had less disc space than its older counterpart? None that I can remember. While it is unfortunately for Microsoft, the developers and the people buying the system (including myself), it's not entirely surprising that those who wish the system success (including myself) are talking down the issue. However there's also some of us that refuse to blind ourselves to reality by pretending the issue doesn't exist, because quite clearly, it does. I, as with anybody else buying the system, can hope that these 15gb discs are released to alleviate some of this problem.
I'd also like to point out that the days of CGI sequences are not gone, not by a long shot. While real-time rendering quality has certainly improved dramatically in the next-gen consoles, it's still far below what's possible in pre-rendered sequences. Even if the developer chooses not to use pre-rendered sequences, some of the real-time cut-scenes must still be recorded and played back during the game, to avoid flow-stopping loading times. Xenosaga is a perfect example of this. Pre-recorded (but real-time) cut-scenes were in heavy use, because the cut-scenes took place in many different locations throughout the game, and loading times would have killed the directorial flow of these scenes. The game ended up being 2 DVDs. As for “real-time is just as impressive as pre-rendered, if not more soâ€, don’t be ridiculous. If you think they’d have been better off showing Advent Children in real time, maybe you should have taken your idea to Square before they blew millions on their pre-rendered work.
Your comparison to PC games was interesting, but it doesn't exactly prove what you wanted it to. The fact of the matter is, console games take more space than PC games... significantly more space, because of compression and streaming issues. Take GTA3 for example. The PC version is about 500mb installed, but the PS2 version is nearly 6 times that, and at half the resolution! Now with console games rivalling PC games for resolution, what's that going to do to the disc space requirments? Suddenly 6x becomes 10 or 12x the space. In other words, comparing PC games to console games for disc space just doesn't work, unless you're trying to prove that console games will always require more disc space than PC games, even if they're exactly the same game.
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ImaginaryIndustryInsider said:
Only thing i can think of is "Hard Drive Required" for those games. I wonder how far off we are from that actually happening.
Does anyone know the details of the 'speed' of BR drives? Ive heard they are very slow but i dont know the details or HOW slow or if theyre really slow in the first place.
That said, i would rather change discs once during a game and have ALL The laod times be faster then to never switch at all yet have load times be more distracting.
expletive said:
If the BD-ROM in the PS3 is 2x, then the data transfer speed will be 9MB/s, as opposed to 16MB/s offered by 12x DVD-ROM drives. While the figure does look bad for Blu-Ray, it doesn't tell the whole story, because there's many more factors than raw transfer speeds. After everything else is factored in, the drives would probably be within 10% of each other in terms of raw speed, but then there's the issue of data-duplication on Blu-Ray to improve streaming, which may even push it ahead of DVD for loading times and streaming.
All speculation of course, so we'll only really know when they release the BD-ROM drive speed details, and then when we actually play some of the games. It won't be a major issue, though.
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