What are the odds that 9 GIGs WON'T be enough for Next Gen?

[SanGreal]

FF7 has the entire game code on each disk (you can change disks mid-game and see for yourself), the FMVs are just swapped. So you had maybe 1.5gig of FMV on those discs. This gen we have games over 3 gig and the only FMV they have is the company intros while the game loads and maybe a short ending FMV. Thats a 6x increase in code/assets.

If you really insist switch it for any other multi-CD game. Even Gran Turismo 2 was 2 CDs, or Metal Gear, which was released in 1995 and as far as I know had no FMVs.

As I have said before, give developers more space, they will fill it up.

They certainly didn't this generation. I'd wager most games are probably <2-3gb, with large AAA games averaging around 4gb. Purely anecdotal, of course.

To summarise:

* Sony fans insist it won't be enough space
* Xbox fans insist it will be enough

Sound about right?

Can't say I thought the thread was a good idea

 

[PARANOiA]

No one was happy to swap discs 2-3x for the FF games (or RE4 on GC ). All the people saying its not an inconvenience/doesn't matter is lying. Having a next-gen format would be a huge plus.

Thanks for calling me a liar.

I would exchange every console RPG since FFVII for a game as equally enthralling. Swapping discs twice during the game didn't impact that experience.

 

[onanie]

Originally Posted by Nicked
As I have said before, give developers more space, they will fill it up

They certainly didn't this generation. I'd wager most games are probably <2-3gb, with large AAA games averaging around 4gb. Purely anecdotal, of course.

Does the 2-3gb fit particularly well on anything other than DVDs this gen?

 

[Nicked]

Purely anecdotal, of course.

Obviously.

Thanks for calling me a liar.

Its ok, don't lie next time.

UT2004 is a good indication that next-gen games will require more than 7.4GBs of space.
~5Gb. Nearly 3GBs of textures, 1.5GBs of maps, 500MB of meshes...
Now if you think next-gen games won't require alot more space than UT2004 (which uses less than 500MBs for audio), you're not thinking clearly.

Budgets aren't increasing by upto $20million just for engineers/model artists.

 

[SanGreal]

Does the 2-3gb fit particularly well on anything other than DVDs this gen?

No, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. My point is that they don't fill up DVDs despite having the space to do so. That certainly isn't, by itself, proof that DVDs will be enough next generation. It merely disproves the theory that developers will use whatever space they have.

 

[onanie]

No, but I'm not sure what you're getting at. My point is that they don't fill up DVDs despite having the space to do so. That certainly isn't, by itself, that DVDs will be enough next generation. It merely disproves the theory that developers will use whatever space they have.

I think it is a reasonable theory. Could they have used anything other than DVDs to fit their games? Did they necessarily have to "fill up" the whole DVD? Thus they were given DVDs this gen, and they used it.

 

[SanGreal]

I think it is a reasonable theory. Could they have used anything other than DVDs to fit their games? Did they necessarily have to "fill up" the whole DVD? Thus they were given DVDs this gen, and they used it.

Did you read the quote I was replying to?

As I have said before, give developers more space, they will fill it up

Also, they used the space before they were given DVDs. DVDs just made it easier.

 

[Bjorn]

Outside of FMVs, no it does not count in my book unless someone can tell me why the PC (which has been HD for years) is somehow immune to this amazing high definition disk requirement.

Sure, you've been able to use HD resolutions in the games since what, Quake 1 ? But i wouldn't call Quake 1 a HD game. As has already been mentioned, we already have rather simple games which use 4-5 Gb , UT 2004 f.e. So i have no doubt that there'll be many games that would benefit from using more let's say 10 Gb of space.

 

[Lacero]

Doesn't the 4-5 GB of UT2004 include the whole 2003 game?

 

[Shogmaster]

Sure, you've been able to use HD resolutions in the games since what, Quake 1 ? But i wouldn't call Quake 1 a HD game. As has already been mentioned, we already have rather simple games which use 4-5 Gb , UT 2004 f.e. So i have no doubt that there'll be many games that would benefit from using more let's say 10 Gb of space.

While output resolution by itself does not a high def game make, you add high res textures and you're 90% there (the rest goes to actual high geometry/appearance of high geometry and complex shader FXs).

And we have PC games that are less than 5GB with tons of extremely high res textures. Infact a game like Half Life 2 relies mostly on it's detailed textures to achieve it's beauty (HL2 on DX8 cards still look pretty good due to those nice textures). And keep in mind that Half Life 2 in "ultra high" texture settings is intended for PCs with minumum of 512MB of RAM and 256MB VRAM on the graphics card. Even counting 128MB or so for Windows, that's still quite a bit more than 512MB of total RAM count for X360.

Because X360 only has 512MB of total RAM, the analogy to current gen PC games as far as media size goes, is pretty apt IMO.

 

[Bjorn]

While output resolution by itself does not a high def game make, you add high res textures and you're 90% there (the rest goes to actual high geometry/appearance of high geometry and complex shader FXs).
.....
Because X360 only has 512MB of total RAM, the analogy to current gen PC games as far as media size goes, is pretty apt IMO.

You could then argue that Half Life 2 looks rather crappy compared to f.e UE3 based games like Gears of War. The size of the game could of course always be restricted by reusing textures and such but less restrictions is better imo.

 

[Shogmaster]

You could then argue that Half Life 2 looks rather crappy compared to f.e UE3 based games like Gears of War. The size of the game could of course always be restricted by reusing textures and such but less restrictions is better imo.

Obcourse GoW looks better than LH2. It's pushing more impressive FXs. And isn't it interesting that a game designed for only 512MB of total RAM looks better to you then a game with a mode designed for a 1GB of total RAM? *imagines a bulb lighting up over Bjorn's head*

 

[jvd]

Remember compression just isn't for video .

I believe the xbox 360 has 20-32 diffrence compression methods .

Unlike pc games each xbox 360 will have the same

Which means sound wil lbe compressed , textures will be compressed (3dc , dxtc and other ways ) video will be compressed . Some compression is 2:1 some will be less some will be greater . However all these will help to ease the space barrier .


Right now the cheapest way to fill up disc space is fmv . Now we all have difrfrent opions of it . SOme of us dn't like it and want it to go away . Some of us like it and want it to stay and others wnat it in some games and not in all . But I think we can all agree with the new lvl of graphics we will have less fmv .

Now using ms's codec we can get about 2 hours of video in 4 gigs I believe . I really don't recall a game having 2 hours of fmv but perhaps osme might . So at the most we are looking at half a dl dvd . So really if the game itself required 1 dvd this game would easily fit into 2 dvds . 4 hours of video would still fit onto 2 dvds . I also believe that the 2 hours of video at 720p is at 60fps (and was figured out by looking at the hd dvd videos) I don't believe 60fps will be needed for video and thus the footprint may be smaller at 30fps .


Now what I see happening is sony will most likely end up using single layer bluray discs at some point for some games . Ms will simply use 2 dvds . I honestly don't see anyone needing more than 14 gigs of room next gen . Anyone that does will either have so much fmv that u will need a good 8 hours or so just to watch all the videos or wll have such a huge budget to fill it with textures

 

[Coola]

Procedural Synthesis

 

[jvd]

Now here's the thing I don't get. People say DVD will be enough, but if you look the history of gaming industry, every generation was ushered in by a new storage medium with a higher storage capacity. It went from low-storage cartridges to higher-storage cartridges and CD-Roms to DVD-Rom's and now to Blue-Ray. Every new generation has required more storage capacity. How can people honestly say this generation will be different? As with every new generation, the complexity, the polygon counts, the texture resolutions, and the number of textures applied to every model increases.

actually we had the sega cd , neo geo cd , turbographics 16 cd and then that was reused with the sega saturn , ps and the n64 reused carts

Then we had the dreamcast with giga rom , we had the cube with 1.2 gig discs , we had the xbox and ps2 with dvd .

Next gen we will have 2 with dvd and 1 with bluray .

Also once again you will have new compression that will change this . Last gen if u did normal maps and needed 128 megs of them that was it . This gen u can use 3dc and change that to 64 megs

Just look at the increasing amount of data developers have put on game discs this generation. You look at the PS2 launch, and games were using only one CD-Rom, yet now every game that comes out on the PS2 is DVD, and in some cases are Dual-Layered DVD's.

Yet look at the end of the 32 bit gen . SOme psone games had 4-5 cds . So we were already coming close to dvd sizes . Yet a funny thing happened. Dc games came out with new compression and suddenly they fit on giga roms . Most barely filling up a cd amount of room on them.

 

[Martin Eddy]

To summarise:

• Sony fans insist it won't be enough space
• Xbox fans insist it will be enough

Sound about right? :|

Except I'm an Xbox "Fan" and I would rather have HDDvd than just DVD.
Wouldn't it be better for performance to have the game data uncompressed already than to waste CPU cycles doing it.

 

[V3]

Yet look at the end of the 32 bit gen . SOme psone games had 4-5 cds . So we were already coming close to dvd sizes . Yet a funny thing happened. Dc games came out with new compression and suddenly they fit on giga roms . Most barely filling up a cd amount of room on them.

Those PS1 games used 4-5 CDs are for quick loading time, I belive.

 

[jvd]

Except I'm an Xbox "Fan" and I would rather have HDDvd than just DVD.
Wouldn't it be better for performance to have the game data uncompressed already than to waste CPU cycles doing it.

Errr what data ? textures which aside from fmv will take up the most amount of room and modern gpus like the xenos has hardware decompression built in or in some cases doesn't need to decompress them .

When you have a fixed platform you wlil nkow that all your textures in x format can be read by the platform so why not just compress them and store them . It makes no sense not too .

Those PS1 games used 4-5 CDs are for quick loading time, I belive.

I never read anything like that .

 

[Sandwich]

Except I'm an Xbox "Fan" and I would rather have HDDvd than just DVD.
Wouldn't it be better for performance to have the game data uncompressed already than to waste CPU cycles doing it.

The cpu has nothing better to do while playing FMV cutscenes.
Uncompressed video isn't even a consideration. truecolor 640x480 @ 24 fps is 1250 MB per minute.

If you meant uncompressed textures; not enough memory on any console to fit enough uncompressed textures. Texture decompression is not done by the cpu.

 

[Martin Eddy]

Errr what data ? textures which aside from fmv will take up the most amount of room and modern gpus like the xenos has hardware decompression built in or in some cases doesn't need to decompress them .

When you have a fixed platform you wlil nkow that all your textures in x format can be read by the platform so why not just compress them and store them . It makes no sense not too .

I never read anything like that .

The cpu has nothing better to do while playing FMV cutscenes.
Uncompressed video isn't even a consideration. truecolor 640x480 @ 24 fps is 1250 MB per minute.

If you meant uncompressed textures; not enough memory on any console to fit enough uncompressed textures. Texture decompression is not done by the cpu.

Well sorry for having an opinion.
Maybe my facts are off, but I personally would rather pay an extra $50 for a future proof console.