What's your opinion on Blu-ray technology?

Is it really absolutely necessary to start off every post with an annoying "Muhahaha"?

 

Muhahaha you really gave me some good laughs

 

Just a quick glance over your last posts i can see the irony in your "keep it on topic".

And true to PCE form you ignored what i wrote.

The i added this:

To make the point that EVERY BIT WILL BE USEFULL

 

There is no irony. Some people were going off topic to discuss who they think I am, I just responded.

What you added doesn't point to anything being useful. All you needed to say was that BR offers higher capacity and that you prefer it for movies or games. There is no need to inject HD DVD into this discussion.

 

Then you should probably quote Gholbine as he was the one extrapolating, not me.

I was simply pointing out that game sizes can in fact shrink as a generation goes on, despite content growing in size. There seems to be this idea that games grow signifigantly as time goes on which isn't always true.

 

I disagree. On the whole the idea games get bigger is a fair summation. If the typical current-gen game is 3 GB say, last gen it was all of a 5th that. And prior to PS1, games were what, 10MB tops? That's smaller still. On the whole, with more data going into a game, they have to be increase in storage requirements. The only way this won't be the case is if procedural generation has a strong influence. There was that 48kb (or whatever it was) FPS game on PC for example. However no-one can take that game and say next-gen FPS's only need <100kb! On the whole, games won't be getting smaller next-gen, nor staying the same in size. What is uncertain at the moment, for me anyway, is how much bigger they'll be getting.

 

Nonsense. On average, game size goes up big time each generation. Using one game out of litterally thousands of games, to prove something when noticing that a later version happened to be smaller than an older version really does nothing to your credibility.

 

I don't disagree with that, I think its more accurate to say that from generation to generation games grow in size, but within the same generation some games may actually decrease or stay the same in size, as familiarity with hardware increases.
I'm 100% with you on "...how much bigger they'll be getting."

As an aside: Do I think DVD is enough, maybe not, but I do know that it got me a great console a helluva lot sooner, and it brought my wife into playing games, that benefit far outweighs, whatever, directors interview/making of add-in will be added to fill the space of the BD-ROMS. If those extras don't fit on the DVD version of the game, release the extras to the Live Marketplace, like the GRAW Development Diaries, this way not only do those players who have bought the game get the extras, but it just might entice those who were either on the fence or who had no clue about the game.

 

But he did mention, "...as a generation goes on", not from generation to generation, as you stated, so in that respect, I wouldn't call it nonsense.

 

When did I say it doesn't go up each 'generation'?? Please read more carefully. I said it doesn't always go up as a generation progresses.

 

And all I said was that they needn't be which would need to be taken into account for your tool.

I would say Yes wholeheartedly! It just needed to be pointed out that games deal with all sorts of textures with many different characteristics unlike the photo processing work you do. That's all, I'm not performing a character assassination, I'm just saying that you can't assume your tool would work for the assets used by a game.

You're trying to turn the argument around. You're the one who made the argument that instead of doing it by hand like Faf mentioned, we, the games industry, could just push a button on a tool like yours.

Then I simply said that I didn't believe that tool existed (I was referring to 3rd party tools actually) and later on simply asked you how your tool works.

Uhh...all I asked for was a bit more information to find out if your tool could be used in the manner like you said it could.

If you don't know how your tool really works, no biggie. If you're confusing Winzip for your in-house tool, no biggie.

Just a hundred bucks? Not very confident are you?

I agree! So what does that make us?

Well sure, likely because they were/are you! Like the U-Com fellow who also got banned.

Yep, and that's all we're saying. That in the end, you need the human eye to look over everything to make sure what compression is doing to your assets.

 

Last gen it was a 1/5th of that, sure. But 6 years ago(i.e. the beginning of last gen), it was 4/5's. That's my point.

 

Doesn't that rather support the idea that in a few year's time, next-gen will be in the order of 5x this gen in size, and you'll be looking at dual-DVD games as more of a standard than exception on XB360? Or do you personally think the increase will be much less than usual to date (5x ish, sort of, thereabouts) and 9GB is likely going to be the norm?

 

Well that's assuming that the jump between generations remains the same. Which it won't. Obviously the curve will flatten. Do you expect disc space to increase 10x's every 5 years? Do you expect 100gb games in 2010? 1tera-byte games in 2015?

We can see the actual jump in size from xbox to 360, instead of theorizing about it, and most 360 games seem to be between 4-6gb. I think games will continue to grow, but DVD will remain sifficient for a long time, especially as developers use better asset management and best practices to conserve space.

 

You're right, or we would have companies pushing buttons to create a game. Organizing and compressing your art assets in a game is a time consuming and expensive process.

 

I don't think that using the X360 as an analogy is a good idea. The games so far are mostly ports or are rushed games (or bugged games). Plus, its the only "next-gen" console out and we have no other comparisons to make. In other words, it may well turn out to be the exception, with Nintendo going from 3 gb to 9 gb (assuming they use DVD, going to be 3x the size on the same resolution) and Sony going from 9gb to 50gb.

Using previous gen trends seem to make sense in this respect if we take into consideration the resolution changes, audio changes, expectation changes, etc. Ie. N64 -> GC size, PSX -> PS2 size and looking at respective media sizes / game space usage Six years ago, would we have anticipated that Tekken would go from 1 CD to a DVD (7 times the size)?

 

Fair enough, although if the actual games are as good or better on 360, that doesn't say much about the extra space being necessary. PS3 will definately be skewed as well as they try and justify the need for the space.

In the end, all we can do is compare actual games, and ask the question: is BR making the games better? Are 360 games worse as a result of using dvd? We'll have to wait and see on that one.

 

HA! The "best" games are all under 50MB,

 

OH NOES YOU DON'T. You're not allowed to use logic in this thread sir because otherwise you will have upset the trend NANOTEC set for all of us.

But on a serious note, we can also compare actual games. Gamecube vs N64 games, and PS2 vs PSX games (in this case we can even compare PS2 CD games vs PS2 DVD games). Or, would Tekken 5 on CD be as good visually and pack as much value as Tekken 5 now? It might, but then we might need to consider the dev time required to (if possible) fit it all into a CD (obviously though, this is no problem for NANOTEC's one push of a button technology !).

But of course, waiting and seeing is the way to go when things look dire

EDIT: Biggest game on N64 was 32megs. GC? Do the math. (I'm looking at a special someone). One might go further and suggest GC got less games because of difficulty making games (competitive with those on the other platforms) fit on the system

 

Forget about what it will or will not do for games for a minute.

For little marginal price increase over the price at which the X360 premium launched at, you get a next-gen blue-laser disc player.

What's not to like, especially if you have or will have an HDTV?

That marginal price difference will be far less than buying a standalone HD-DVD or Blu-Ray player.