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

[scooby_dooby]

This sounds dangerously like an argument for "we don't need better technology"

In that case, lets just use 100gb discs, i mean bigger is always better right? Disc space offers a large degree of diminishing returns, we're just going to have to wait and see whether it really add anything to the games that can't be done on an 8gb dvd.

 

[Titanio]

In that case, lets just use 100gb discs, i mean bigger is always better right?

All else being equal, actually, yeah.

Disc space offers a large degree of diminishing returns

To a point perhaps (one that's constantly moving forward), but I think suggesting DVD represents the point at which we'll reach diminishing returns is as dubious as a "need" for 100GB discs!

 

[kyleb]

In that case, lets just use 100gb discs, i mean bigger is always better right? Disc space offers a large degree of diminishing returns, we're just going to have to wait and see whether it really add anything to the games that can't be done on an 8gb dvd.

You aren't trying very hard if you can't see how a game could benift from larger disks. Just take a game like MGS3 and replace all it's low res textures with higher res ones, that is hardly "next gen" but you've already run out of space on a single DVD.

 

[joebloggs]

In that case, lets just use 100gb discs, i mean bigger is always better right? Disc space offers a large degree of diminishing returns, we're just going to have to wait and see whether it really add anything to the games that can't be done on an 8gb dvd.

OK we may not know the full impact of sticking with DVD's for a couple of years but this is seriously a weak argument.

We've had devs complaining. It may not amount to much in the end but let's not resort to playground debating tactics.

 

[kyleb]

Heh, developers have to work with what they hardware can do. Just like Gamecube games are developed in respect to it's smaller media, that doesn't make them inherently inferior by any means but it gives the developers less freedom, the same will be true for this gen as it has been for the previous ones.

 

[Blazkowicz]

who still wants to watch hours of pre-rendered custcenes? are we still stuck in the CDI and "multimedia PC" age?

 

[thenefariousone]

Then why are the vast majority of pc games, which have been using high resolution textures for years, less than half the size of a single DVD?

You aren't trying very hard if you can't see how a game could benift from larger disks. Just take a game like MGS3 and replace all it's low res textures with higher res ones, that is hardly "next gen" but you've already run out of space on a single DVD.

 

[scooby_dooby]

OK we may not know the full impact of sticking with DVD's for a couple of years but this is seriously a weak argument.

We've had devs complaining. It may not amount to much in the end but let's not resort to playground debating tactics.

Ya we've heard from a small handfull of dev's who've complained about disc sizes, what's your point? I'm not debating that bigger discs make a developers life easier, of course they do, it's one less thing they need to worry about, so I would expect some grumblings.

Just because it makes life easier, doen't mean it's necessary, it doesn't mean the disc size will be a limiting factor, it may just mean that developers have to spend more time and money making their game more compact.

Certainly one of the drawbacks of 360 is the developers will have to designate more time dersigning for the 8gb disc, but that's simple one item in a very long list of pro's and con's for both systems.

 

[Crossbar]

Then why are the vast majority of pc games, which have been using high resolution textures for years, less than half the size of a single DVD?

How many years have DVD been the dominant distribution media for PC games? 1-2 years?

 

[Tap In]

.... We've yet to hear a dev say that DVD is all they need for this generation, but ...

you're not serious right?
you have heard the phrase, no news is good news?

why would you expect devs to come out to defend something that needs no defending. Now if people go around the internet continuing to rant that "the disc size sky is falling" long enough, then I'll wager we will hear some counter-points (PR) to your devs that say otherwise. Not all devs are going to agree on the same preferences/needs.

As to the "no technology advancements".... not at all.

I'm certainly not denying that BR opens up some future potential.

I'm just saying that it most likely is not necessary at this time (as some people I'm reading on different boards seem to say) and will not be a distinct advantage over DVD for at least for 4 years or so when it catches the curve.

Again... just my hypothesis on the situation but thankfully, time will prove it one way or another. :smile:

 

[Titanio]

you're not serious right?
you have heard the phrase, no news is good news?

In these days where most developers seem preoccupied with platform-diplomacy, I don't think most would address it unless asked. Starbreeze did voluntarily, but they may have a particularly strong feeling about it at this point.

It'd be actually interesting if some site with sufficient connections took up the story and polled devs on the matter. We sometimes hear what others have heard in their discussion with various devs, but no detail.

 

[thenefariousone]

It's irrelevant how many cds or dvds or floppy disks for that matter are used, as pc games are installed before they can be played.

How many years have DVD been the dominant distribution media for PC games? 1-2 years?

 

[Tap In]

In these days where most developers seem preoccupied with platform-diplomacy, I don't think most would address it unless asked. Starbreeze did voluntarily, but they may have a particularly strong feeling about it at this point.

It'd be actually interesting if some site with sufficient connections took up the story and polled devs on the matter. We sometimes hear what others have heard in their discussion with various devs, but no detail.

I agree that we wouldn't expect to hear from a lot of the devs that are working on 360 titles to come out and denounce the current media format.

So yea, I agree that many would rather have more space, no argument from me. It evidently (from reading the XNA document and other sources) takes more effort to compress and be smart and utilize a "limited" space. But that doesn't mean that the games won't fit (or use two discs or another workaround). Two different things. If you read Expletive's XNA link, MS is using tools to expel erroneous data that most devs are remiss to remove for fear of breaking the game. That is just one example of utilizing the space.

So yea, I'm sure it's easier for them and they'd be happier to have more capacity but it's not the death (yet) of DVD by any stretch of the imagination IMO.

 

[Kryton]

... Compression will save us, long live compression! ...

Why do people around here persist with this compression 'myth'!

Firstly, compression is very much like batteries, we can't really do much better and any improvements we do make are small. The best we currently do is eliminate any psycho-visual/audio redundencies and then squash the results using lossless algorithms (assuming we retain 'perfect' quality). No one is going to be able to pull a new algorithm out the hat and do substantially better. With HD you have just the same information/redudancy ratio as you do now so expect linear scaling with size.

Secondly, once we compress everything you have to recover it again. The problem, as I see it, with DVD (and specifically the X360) is that if you use some really tricked-out algorithm with funky procedural generation you have to spend time restoring that content. Time restoring content is time wasted when you could be doing better things especially in large evolving environments. Potentially with a large backing store which is *relatively fast* (read: HDD) you can do this ahead of time, without a backing store you must do it just in time. So, the tradeoff is the classic save space and lose cycles or waste space and gain spare cycles. As the X360 doesn't have a HDD it does the first.

The Carmack MegaTexture is an example of this. Reading the forums and the interviews I think a lot of it is procedurally generated so you don't need 20x0.5Gb for the game (seems to be a procedural base texture then decals overlayed on top).

[ Ninja Edit: Does anyone know how standard decompression algorithms perform on the CPUs present in X360/PS3? Based on all the papers its obvious that wavelet coding would run extremely well on both, but what about more generic algorithms? ]

 

[inefficient]

The Carmack MegaTexture is an example of this. Reading the forums and the interviews I think a lot of it is procedurally generated so you don't need 20x0.5Gb for the game (seems to be a procedural base texture then decals overlayed on top).

You just explained the antithesis of what Carmack is doing.

Carmack is against proceedural textures. He wants unique artist created pixels everywhere. That is the goal of megatextures. He wants to bring the end to texture tiling/repeating. Every pixel will be artist created.

 

[scooby_dooby]

Firstly, compression is very much like batteries, we can't really do much better and any improvements we do make are small. The best we currently do is eliminate any psycho-visual/audio redundencies and then squash the results using lossless algorithms (assuming we retain 'perfect' quality). No one is going to be able to pull a new algorithm out the hat and do substantially better. With HD you have just the same information/redudancy ratio as you do now so expect linear scaling with size.

Except this ignores the fact that the last generation consoles had very weak CPU's and not very much decompression power, especially the PS2, so many files can now be compressed that otherwise weren't last gen. The best example I know of is GTA: SA for ps2 which wasted 2.5GB(compared to the xbox) because it was unable to decompress mp3's on the fly.

I think this is the main reason XBOX games are almost always smaller than PS2, more decompression capabilities. I don't know how mich of an impact going from the 733celeron to XeCPU will have, but it will definately enable comrpession in some cases where it otherwise wasn't possible.

Bottom line, dev's are smart, if they can figure how to thread their game engine over 7 spu's and they can figure out split 1mb of cache between xenon's 3 cpu's, then they can use those same bright minds to figure out how to fit the game they want to make within 8gb, it's still ALOT of room.

 

[kyleb]

It's irrelevant how many cds or dvds or floppy disks for that matter are used, as pc games are installed before they can be played.

It's not irrelevant as there are costs involved in using more disks, and on top of that many consumers do have reasonable limits on the number of disks they are willing to bother with as well as the amount of space on their HDDs they are willing to devote to a single game.

Then why are the vast majority of pc games, which have been using high resolution textures for years, less than half the size of a single DVD?

For all the same reasons that games with low res textures before that tended to take less than a single GB and yet some others 3 or 4 GB; different games designed under different standards.

 

[kyleb]

Except this ignores the fact that the last generation consoles had very weak CPU's and not very much decompression power, especially the PS2, so many files can now be compressed that otherwise weren't last gen. The best example I know of is GTA: SA for ps2 which wasted 2.5GB(compared to the xbox) because it was unable to decompress mp3's on the fly.

I think this is the main reason XBOX games are almost always smaller than PS2, more decompression capabilities. I don't know how mich of an impact going from the 733celeron to XeCPU will have, but it will definately enable comrpession in some cases where it otherwise wasn't possible.

Bottom line, dev's are smart, if they can figure how to thread their game engine over 7 spu's and they can figure out split 1mb of cache between xenon's 3 cpu's, then they can use those same bright minds to figure out how to fit the game they want to make within 8gb, it's still ALOT of room.

What you are overlooking here is that developers are also smart enough to figure out good stuff to do with more than 8gb when they are working on a platform that has that extra space free to use.

 

[Ben-Nice]

What you are overlooking here is that developers are also smart enough to figure out good stuff to do with more than 8gb when they are working on a platform that has that extra space free to use.

Ony 7GB available for games on the 360

 

[thenefariousone]

The "costs of using multiple disks" argument really doesn't apply considering the miniscule cost required to press dvds. Using multiple bluray or hd-dvd disks is another story.

Again - on a pc, where the amount of space available in general is much higher than any console, most games are only 2-5 GB in size. Even though a 10 GB game wouldn't be a big deal at all on a 3 year old pc.

Think about it: 10 GB is probably half of the average user's mp3 or digital pictures collection. That's barely enough space to deal with 5 minutes of video editing!

Even the cheapest new computer dell sells, comes with an 80GB hard drive. And the gamers playing the lastest pc games, and willing to buy Dual GeForce 7900 GTX cards to do so, can get 320GB drives!

I had a 120gig hard drive die on me under warranty a year ago, and the manufacturer sent me a 200gig hard drive as the replacement.

Space is not an issue at all on a pc.

Yet. Game sizes still average 5 GB or less.

It's not irrelevant as there are costs involved in using more disks, and on top of that many consumers do have reasonable limits on the number of disks they are willing to bother with as well as the amount of space on their HDDs they are willing to devote to a single game.

That's certainly true. However pc games designed to use the latest and greatest graphics and to push the hardware as much as possible like Oblivion, Battlefield 2, Half-life 2, and F.e.a.r., only consume on average: 4-5 GB of space.

That's been a consistant trend for the past two years. Despite the advancements in graphics on the pc end.

For all the same reasons that games with low res textures before that tended to take less than a single GB and yet some others 3 or 4 GB; different games designed under different standards.