Speculation: lack of a next gen media format may be a big problem

By offering more capacity

Just for the record, the "1x" data transfer rate on a BluRay drive is slightly north of a "3x" DVD drive. The expected (?) 2x BR drive should achieve roughly a "6.5x DVD" transfer rate.

The one variable we're still missing here is CLV vs CAV.
I don't know what style of "12x DVD" drive the XBox 360 uses, but in the world of PC components CAV drives are the norm these days.
OTOH proper BR movie playback at the maximum defined fidelity requires a constant 54Mbps stream, equal to what a 1.5x CLV drive could (barely) manage. If the PS3 drive is 2x CAV, it wouldn't be able to cope with this requirement, so if it's "only" a 2x drive I'll assume that it is indeed CLV. So ... things look more complicated all of a sudden.

1)A 12x CAV DVD drive will only achieve roughly 5x speeds at the inside of the disc. The rated speed is achieved at the edge. Such a drive would not always have a faster transfer rate than a 2x CLV BluRay drive.
2)OTOH CLV tends to increase seek times because the spindle speed is changing all the time. This would further add to (or explain?) the "bad seek times" people expect from the PS3 drive.

But there's very little doubt that a BluRay disc has a higher maximum storage capacity when compared to a DVD

Edited to account for the info pointed out by gokickrocks

 

according to http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=64 the samsung sd612 12x dvd drive (not the same as the toshiba-samsung dvd drive in the xbox360) gets about 5x at the beginning of the disc, ~8.5x on average, ~12x at the end of the disc...and sustained is ~8x (at least on plextor's 12x dvd)

or if you take a look at http://www.gamespot.com/pages/profile/show_blog_entry.php?topic_id=23916169&user=skektek and look at the second chart, you see that the minimum read speed of a 12x dvd is a little under a 2x blu-ray's constant read speed

so on average, the 12x dvd will have a faster read speed than a 2x blu-ray...but then devs can always take advantage of the hd on the ps3 to level the playing field

 

Those figures can probably be taken as pretty close to a general value for all drives of that speed. The inner and outer radii of a disc is the same, the idea of CAV in general is that RPM is relatively constant, and 12x is relative to a given spec.

I would say simply "add to" as the seek times are also a result of the greater mass of the laser assembly. While average seek times may not be so bad (as a result of the fact that you don't have to cover that much distance (in radius) to seek across greater distance (in data), worst case seek times will be terrible from that alone.

 

Blu Ray Disk and possible importance.

Direct copy paste from another forum

 

Sorry guys I didnt know(or probably forgot) there was already a thread on it

 

Now that I think about it, cell and blu-ray could be considered tactical moves to keep 3rd party games exclusive on PS3 after the E3 stories I heared from ut2k7 and mercenaries 2 developers.

 

Sounds like a possibility. You made a good observation. Never thought of this.

Developers want as much ease and freedom as possible. PS3's enviroment does seem to offer a bit of extra performance, HDD storgare and lots of disc storage. Its hard to imagine a game that is developed for the PS3 that takes more than 10GB to be later ported to 360 in multible discs since it could be a bit of pain in the ass to try figure out how to split the data without sacrificing anything.


Also I have to add that recently I saw some claims that the BR's transfer rate is faster than that of a DVD.

 

What the absolute most part of the devs and pulishers want is to sell games, and more the better, usually. That is why although the original xbox was more powerfull and much easier to develop for, still most of the support went ot the PS3. So IF xbox360, really gains lots of market share and dare I say might even win over PS3 in the US market, due to the high price of PS3, although the xbox360 has a crappy DVD, expect to see more exclusive 3rd party games for that than the PS3, although I will have to say that the 3rd party exclusives will most likely be really far apart from each other...

 

I agree but currently its too soon for the developer to jump to a conclusion. Unlike now, when PS2 launched it had built a much stronger userbase until XBOX's launch which was a new player in the market.
PS3 though isnt what XBOX was and neither 360 is what PS2 was. PS3 has a huge fame due to the success of the previous consoles and 360 isnt as popular as it should have been although its doing considerably well.
What you are saying will be the case only if PS3 fails to deliver thus it wont build the expected userbase.
But all things equal DVD is most likely an issue and devs will prefer BR over the DVD. Assuming PS3 maintains the support PS2 had then the above point in my and moonblade's posts is valid.

 

Hey, a little off-topic, but will 2x Blu-ray be sufficient to play blu-ray movies without skipping or stuttering? I remember the early 2x CD and DVD drives had tons of problems with that.

 

1x would, but not 2x. 2x is the minimum for movie playback.