What's your opinion on Blu-ray technology?

[dukmahsik]

I am not sure about BD, but man hd dvd movie quality is insane especially if you have the right hdtv to view it on.

 

[ERP]

As a game developer, I can tell you that the only things I have ever had to worry about space wise on DVD is audio and video, and we usually scope those early on so we know they will fit.
To some extent it's self scopng anyway since we have fixed time and budget.

I have been caught out a couple of times by the largest data block issue on Xbox, but even then it's usually marginal, and we rarely have to split game data into more than one chunk.

 

[scooby_dooby]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/699/699152p1.html

"One area of DOA4's development that caused problems for Team Ninja was disk space. Team Ninja filled up the entire disk for its first Xbox 360 title, and even had to make adjustments as reports came in daily of having reached the final few megabytes of space. This isn't a problem with DOAX2, as the team is keeping a close eye on space as they work."

There are also a number of dual-layer/dual-disc games on the PS2, including Onimusha 4, Grandia III, Star Ocean III, Xenosaga, and Champions of Norrath. There can be delays while switching layers on dual-layer discs, as evidenced in movies and some of the listed games. Hopefully, developers will be able to minimize that delay with optimized data placement.

PS2 disc sizes are generally far bigger than xbox which just goes to show the benefits of more compression. These new much consoles have more de-compression power than before, and developers have never really had to be too concerned about conserving disc space.

As ERP says, look at any game, the majority is going to be audio and vidoe files, take those away, and you're usually not left with much at all(of course there are always exceptions). As far as I'm concerned all these high capacity discs will really enable developers to do is include tons of HD Video/cutscenes.

I've been watching CG cut scenes since FF7, look at gears of wars cut scenes and tell me we still need to use CG. Realtime cut-scenes are where it's at, and once they start becoming common place, that should solve most problems with fitting HD video on dvd.

 

[SPM]

BD-R disks are $48! There goes Sony's profit margin!

Just think, every disk Sony produces will put them deeper in the hole. I see bankruptcy coming in 6 months.

The manufacturing costs of a BD-ROM disk is supposed to be the same as a DVD-ROM once the tooling costs have been paid for to manufacture it. The price should drop once the rarity value dissapears. In any case Sony can always put games on DVD format until this happens if it is too costly. The cost of blu-ray players is more of a problem because it has to be there from the start.

I think Sony will have to do whatever it takes to get blu-ray widely adopted as early as possible - and if necessary license the technology out royalty free, since it is really critical to the PS3.

 

[SPM]

Also I am not sure about how much of the blu-ray price is due to the fact that manufacturers can charge a premium due to the shortage of supply right now. If they sell a player at $300 only to have it marked up to $1600, what does the manufacturer get out of it? If Sony is tooling up for blu-ray anyway, then does Sony lose any more by not putting blu-ray on the PS3 and if it is put on the PS3, how much will Sony have to discount it?

Without knowing Sony's actual costs, it is difficult to say.

 

[Titanio]

As ERP says, look at any game

Woah there. Not to be academic about it, but ERP only referred to games he has worked on to date.

If we'd always used the past/present as a reference point for the future, we'd never have moved past games with KBs of data

the majority is going to be audio and vidoe files, take those away

Audio quality is pretty important, at least to me.

But asides from that, even if you saw no requirement beyond DVD capacity for game data, even the ability to replicate that data and distribute it across a disc could be an enabler (in the absence of a standard HDD, at least). I know David Braben mentioned that as one of things he was most interested in in PS3, although I haven't seen much discussion of it beyond that.

And even getting back to the core point, we've seen other developers quite explicitly disagree with the notion that we don't need more than DVD capacity, and some even just expressing comfort with more disc capacity for whatever reason (be it audio assets or otherwise).

Ultimately, this is one of those things that most of us have fairly little visibility on right now, and we're probably not going to get an answer immediately.

 

[Lycan]

"and yet you only gave two examples..."

:d) A lot of square-soft titles (with enormous cut-scenes), MGS4 most probably, Naughty Dog will probably use it for their engine...dIDN'T Ninja Theory developers adress the issue by saying that they will benefit from it ? As I said, exemples ARE NUMEROUS...

 

[Shifty Geezer]

These new much consoles have more de-compression power than before.

Greater decompression power means higher compression ratio methods which would otherwise decompress too slowly on current gen. However if you look up compression schemes, you'll see the difference between an average compression commonly used now versus the most intense and slow compression, is very little gains. You're talking in the order of 10% file reduction with 'Slow Supercompression' versus bog standard .zip in most cases. The only way to compress files far smaller than existing methods is to go lossy. So if you have textures and meshes for a current gen game, a 5x improvement in size of this data in a next gen game, 5x the number of textures/size of textures, and 5x the poly resolution of meshes, you're looking at 5x the disk requirement. If these assets take 1 GB in current gen, that'd be 5 GB required next-gen. The question then is how much more are the assets going to grow next-gen? 5x the quality of current gen? 10x? If you just double everything up, with 2x the types of creatures, 2x the number of textures each monster has (like normal map + diffuse map), 2x the polygons per creature, 2x the variety of scenery, you're looking at about 4x the data requirement. I'm personally hoping for a lot more than just twice as varied games than this gen!

eg. CON on PS2 was dual layer. I'm not sure of actual size but let's say 6 GB. You had a few different enemies in a dozen different terrains. I'd like to see 10x the improvement in variety, quality of models and scenery, greater texture res etc. That'd be 60 GB straight 'upscaling'. There'll be workarounds, such as for random dungeons which ate a lot of disc space, using procedural synthesis more effectively, so maybe you're looking at 30 GB for a straight upscaling. You're going to need lossy compression to get that onto 8 GB of DVD.

Again with video, if you're going HD and want HD output, you're increasing your video sizes. If audio is going 5.1 as standard with lots more variety of audio, those requirements will increase. You can lossy compress those to Betsy to make them fit, but it'd be nicer if you didn't have to.

I wouldn't be surprised if it took a long time for games to grow to fill up higher capacity discs, and a lot of games might do well on DVD, but I think some games will make use of BRD and show the benefits.

 

[Npl]

I dearly hope Bluray Games come multilingual (translations can be horrible) ala Jax&Daxter, and have correctly encoded Movies for either region and either Aspect-Ratio (for example FFX dint ship with a 50/60 Hertz mode, because the movies would skip on 60Hz - no space for both versions)

 

[aaaaa00]

The manufacturing costs of a BD-ROM disk is supposed to be the same as a DVD-ROM once the tooling costs have been paid for to manufacture it.

Someday, maybe, if they get spin coating working.

If they're stuck with film application, they will be at a serious cost disadvantage for the forseeable future.

Right now, BD is more like dollars per disc, whereas DVD is more like discs per dollar in terms of cost.

 

[weaksauce]

PS2 disc sizes are generally far bigger than xbox which just goes to show the benefits of more compression. These new much consoles have more de-compression power than before, and developers have never really had to be too concerned about conserving disc space.

So it wasn't because xbox had HDD as standard? And why waste power on compression?

Look, ps3 developers will make up things to make use of the space. They know they have it and can find new possibilites.
I mean they can have far larger visions now.

Also, CGI get better graphics too you know.

I get the feeling MS doesn't want to evolve:
"Games today only use 20% floating point and 80% integers, so well stick to that eh"
"Games today also fit on DVDs, better stick to that too"
"Let's make the same games for five years!"
- "Also don't program for ps3 because it's too hard, you don't have to learn if you program for 360, just stick to what you know!"

haw hawhawhawh

 

[Edge]

The manufacturing costs of a BD-ROM disk is supposed to be the same as a DVD-ROM once the tooling costs have been paid for to manufacture it. The price should drop once the rarity value dissapears. In any case Sony can always put games on DVD format until this happens if it is too costly. The cost of blu-ray players is more of a problem because it has to be there from the start.

I was being sarcastic. In has been made clear numerous times by the Blu-ray Association and Sony that manufacturing Blu-ray disks is just a little bit more expensive than DVD disks. No format can succeed unless the manufacturing costs of the media is low.

The fact that Sony is releasing every PS3 game on Blu-ray media points to the fact it is low in cost to manufacture or Sony would be releasing games on DVD-ROM.

 

[Edge]

Right now, BD is more like dollars per disc, whereas DVD is more like discs per dollar in terms of cost.

But probably not more than a couple. In reality, you don't know, as the most the manufacturers have indicated is that it will be a little bit more expensive. Not a lot more. In the end the difference is negligble, especially considering people will be willing to pay a premium for the greater format.

 

[Edge]

These new much consoles have more de-compression power than before, and developers have never really had to be too concerned about conserving disc space.

But that's an extra cost, and takes more time in development to compress stuff. I'm not against that myself especially if it aids loading times, but aren't you guys against higher costs, as per your arguments against Blu-ray's superior format?

360 developers can save space and cost, by using lower resolution textures, and have more repeated use of those textures, and be less concerned about compression. Is not lower cost the ideal goal for you guys? If a Blu-ray disk cost a whole dollar more, you certainly would be interested in saving a dollar per game in developement costs?

 

[PSman]

I forgot to add, another great advantage of Blu-ray is that, it is MUCH more durable than DVD:smile:

 

[Fafalada]

If a Blu-ray disk cost a whole dollar more, you certainly would be interested in saving a dollar per game in developement costs.

Spending additional time to find ways to fit data onto smaller disc tends to increase development costs, not reduce them.
Anyway the increases on disc costs will come down to publisher discretion - the exact same argument was true when PS2 launched (CDs were noticeably cheaper to press then DVDs) and for that reason some early games opted to release on CD. Sony isn't preventing anyone to still use CD/DVD for PS3 as far as I'm aware of.

 

[Ben-Nice]

. Sony isn't preventing anyone to still use CD/DVD for PS3 as far as I'm aware of.

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/696/696057p1.html

All games will ship on blu-ray disk.

 

[randycat99]

How do you read that article and then make the leap to say Sony is "forcing" anyone to do it? For all we know, BR is the clearcut route to go from a publisher standpoint. It may be Sony's suggestion, but it may also happen to be the publisher preference, if only to take advantage of anti-piracy features. If the benefits are desirable, no one really needs to be "forced". It's just the right way to go about it.

 

[Fafalada]

All games will ship on blu-ray disk.

When I see a TRC check point stating something along the lines of "Title may only ship using BluRay disc", I will happilly agree with you.
Until then, I see no official confirmation of any kind in that article.

 

[mozmo]

BD9 which is effectively the same as a dvd9 is part of the bluray spec, developers could use that format and it would still be classified as a bluray disc. I have a feel a lot of first gen stuff will use BD9 cause it's cheaper to press and there is plenty of space. Also using BD9 results in no royalties going to the dvd forum but into sony's pocket.

Certain games that of course need more space for hd video clips will use the blue laser 25gb bluray discs which of course cost more to manufacture.