Blu-ray was worth it - Sony News

/yawn

/stretch

/sneeze

Proper propaganda!

I have a 360 and think PS3 is a bit of a balls up. But I have to admit the sony guy has some merit in what he is saying. I feel like my mum just showed me her old wisened breasts

Recreating the textures?...Couldn't some dynamic lighting system be put in?...

He is right. But it's still annoying.

This gets priority over HALO 3 WILL HAVE 4 PLAYER CO-OP OVER XBOX LIVE??!!

:)

Yawn.

By the way, the Bizarre comment (from Ben, the web guy) was very soon corrected by Alan (one of the designers of the game).

"Games need more space."

No shit, Sherlock.

Indeed.

They were right all along? Naaah. It must be lazy people handling the compression over at Bizzare Creations.

"It's all about the balancing costs thought isn't it?"

A +1 to Xbox for balancing costs?

"By the way, the Bizarre comment (from Ben, the web guy) was very soon corrected by Alan (one of the designers of the game)."

What did he say? "Don't listen to him, HE'S A MADMAN!! Look! A picture of a kitten!"

Devs will make games that fit onto DVDs before putting them on Blu-Ray, rather than making them bigger. That way they can still sell a game for all formats, rather than just making one for the ps3. Which is a shame.

As long as games like Oblivion can fit on a DVD, I don't think the absence of nighttime in a racing game is going to sound the death knell for the format.

Well Bizarre Creations did themselves no favours by admitting to not using dynamic lighting, which would surely have meant that PGR 4 would have fitted on DVD, possibly with another city. Stupid really. Games like Oblivion and Saints Row have day and night cycles but use dynamic lighting to simulate it rather than two sets of textures (presumably).

Sony do have a point though... BD allows developers to make the games they want to without worrying about having to cut bits out, span it across multiple discs (and, thus, alter the level design) or overcompress everything. Even if they only use 10 or 15 GB of a BD disc, it's still more than what the Xbox 360 has access to as it doesn't even have 9 GB of space on a DVD, only 7 GB!

Could we see exclusive PS3 games that look more polished and varied in the coming years and smaller exclusive games on the 360 but more in the way of downloadable content to offset the reduced storage space of DVDs?

Multi-disc games are an option, Blue Dragon, out this month, comes on THREE DVDs but I reckon most developers will choose to squeeze the game onto a single disc for convenience. RPGs are usually linear so disc swapping isn't really a problem but it would be a hassle for a FPS, sports or racing game, particularly when it comes to the online multiplayer. Maybe we'll see future Xbox 360 games that have their multiplayer and single player components on separate discs. That would suit me fine as I don't play games online anyway, I could just leave that disc in the box! LOL

Lair has got poor reviews, so hardly a title to bring up is it?

Here we go again.

meh, i knew this all along.

there's some law that dictates that cpu speed gets faster isnt there? moores law or summat. well my law is that with each generation of console the storage medium for games must get lots bigger.

not rocket science.

"Data will expand to fit the space available."
All that Blu-ray really means for games is that Developers will get lazy with compression and start adding all kinds of "extras" to their games. It just isn't cost effective to spend the time developing a game which uses all that space efficiently and still only retail it for £40.

@Darren

Dynamic lighting never looks as good as baked in lighting though. Dynamic lighting is only something to use when necessary (i.e. when stuff is moving around and NEEDS to be lit dynamically).

I think that maybe later, should MS drive their HD price down, we could see a combination of installable game data and DVD use for larger titles on 360. Maybe not running into the space we see on PC games, but certain assets might be streamable from a small install rather than straight off the disc.

Space looking for games!

I've ranted in the past about Sony forcing Blu-Ray on people, but I'm starting to believe that maybe they're right now.

"Meanwhile, most PC games come on multiple CD's are a single DVD."

Most PC games also install onto hard disk, so that's hardly a fair comparison.

When Microsoft first announced they were sticking with DVD for the 360 I thought it was a short-sighted decision and I still do. Blu-ray has certainly caused the PS3 a lot of short-term issues, but to be honest, there's not even that much point in the PS3 going mainstream yet anyway as the games simply aren't there yet.

Hopefully Sony can bring the price into line just as the PS3's games line up is also starting to look tempting and all of a sudden it will take off. If the PS3 follows a similar timeline to the PS2 then we're in the equivalent of 2001. I remember seeing the PS2 on store shelves that year and there was nothing out for it then, either. The only difference is that Sony have strong competition from Microsoft (which is a good thing as it will drive them forwards faster and lead to competitive pricing sooner)

If developers are already having trouble squeezing games onto a DVD *now* then the 360 is going to wind up being left behind in years to come unless Microsoft make some sort of change to the system, and they have only themselves to blame for that, as they rushed the 360 out to ensure they got there before Sony. (Although ironically they ended up having a huge lead on Sony due to all the delays - if they'd waited as long as Sony delayed the PS3 they probably could have had integral HD-DVD for not a huge amount more)

@ doormat101.

We are ? Damn, maybe i should take my 360 games back and buy Resistance.

@northy

For the average gamer I don't think that is really what makes a difference. I firmly believe it is all down to the games that are available. The only real thorn in Sony's side right now is there is bugger all out there for the PS3. If there was a raft of decent games for the system right now, I don't even think the expensive console cost would be so much of an issue for many people.

I think that the Wii is riding a dangerous wave in that regard too. I think its a great system which deserves to do well, and of course it has already sold in bucket loads, but there are barely any decent games for it and that will eventually become a real problem.

@doormat101

The 360 is also a great console. All three of them are.

And ffs, using terms like xbodge360 just makes you look about 11 years old.

"Stupid really. Games like Oblivion and Saints Row have day and night cycles but use dynamic lighting to simulate it rather than two sets of textures (presumably)."

Dynamic lighting may be all well and good, but surely for any buildings you'd still need two textures to be able to turn the lights on at night? Might still save you some space though.

@northy

Low price doesn't always mean good cost management. For a start the consoles keep breaking. Have they actually fixed the problem yet or have they just committed to keep on replacing them all?

Not that Sony are doing any better, I just think it's strange to put MS over Sony for the way they're handling their costs. They both suck.

@SilasMalkav - "Devs will make games that fit onto DVDs before putting them on Blu-Ray, rather than making them bigger. That way they can still sell a game for all formats, rather than just making one for the ps3. Which is a shame."

I agree, many will, but already there are developers making their games for the PS3 first, like Criterion with Burnout Paradise and Free Radical with Haze, so more may follow their lead once PS3 sales take off. Not all of those games will take advantage of the PS3's BD format but it's possible that some might. It's also feasible that two years down the line we might see Xbox 360 devs pissed off at having to squeeze their games onto DVD and defecting to the PS3 instead with it being dropped for the 360. That might sound far-fetched now but that does happen and the Xbox 360 might not always be the leading format...

And what about games like Metal Gear Solid 4? That's heavily rumoured to be headed for the 360 at some point but it's clearly been made for the PS3 so it's likely to be a multi-disc game if it does. Not a big deal you might think. True, but given the choice I'd rather have the game on a single disc for sheer convenience.

The comment that the Bizarre employee made has nothing to do with whether they are using dynamic lighting or not. It has to do with the fact that buildings (and there are an awful lot in PGR), and other scenery looks more than just lit differently at night. At night you want to see buildings with lights on in the windows, where as at day you expect to see something through the windows instead. So the texture for the walls of the buildings does indeed need to be different during the night as opposed to the day. Unless you are supposing that the buildings are actually fully 3D models with interiors that have then own light sources, which the software can turn on as night draws in. I think we are still an awful long way from systems that can render those kinds of environments, and we probably wouldn't bother even if we could.

@GChris - There's a mod for PC Oblivion that adds lights to windows in the game at night (they aren't there by default) and it uses a few megabytes at most... ;)

I've just had a thought? Why couldn't Bizarre stick as much as they can on the disc, then put the night time textures on Xbox Live and let net users download them?

"Lair has got poor reviews, so hardly a title to bring up is it?"

God forbid a game needing more than DVD's storage ever comes out, to much critical acclaim.

"True, but given the choice I'd rather have the game on a single disc for sheer convenience."

It depends what you mean by this. If its:

a) Halfway through a 60 hour game you have to get up and change the disc - who cares.
b) You are drivng round a GTA like environment you have to change the disc everytime you go over a certain boundary - this is unacceptable :).

"I've ranted in the past about Sony forcing Blu-Ray on people, but I'm starting to believe that maybe they're right now. "

agreed

"Data will expand to fit the space available."
"All that Blu-ray really means for games is that Developers will get lazy with compression"

Lazy with compression? You do realise that the more something is compressed, the more cpu power is needed to decompress it, leaving less cpu power for the game....

I can't see how anyone could argue that 9gb DVD is better than 50gb Blu-Ray. More is always better; developers always find a way of using what they have.

The real point is; the games. Maybe a game could only be done on a 50gb blu-ray disc... but who cares - if the game sucks the game sucks. If the games is great the game is great

"I've ranted in the past about Sony forcing Blu-Ray on people, but I'm starting to believe that maybe they're right now."

Sony are right. But they're not right yet. They'll be right when a good game comes out on PS3, that is impossible to do on the 360.

Will the mass-market consumers pay for the additional content? If the price of games doesn't go up, and the sales figures don't improve, what developer is going to pay to produce five times as much asset data than is in titles that currently sell well?

Did the PS2 get any flak for using DVD?

Not a rhetorical question. :D

@northy - This discussion is about storage space for games not 720p vs. 1080p.

@Rirekon - Compression results in a loss of quality in not only the audio but the textures and FMVs as well and it's not something you particularly want in a high-definition game. It'd be fine for games on a standard definition TV but hi-def ones running on an HDTV show up these deficiencies more. Thus BD allows devs to maintain the high quality and only compress when it's absolutely needed, e.g. to fit the textures for a level into the memory footprint of the PS3.

Did the PS2 get any flak for using DVD?

No, because it was a necessary upgrade with so many big PS1 games appearing on more than one disc.

See the massive difference this time round?

"Did the PS2 get any flak for using DVD? "


yeah i remember owning a couple of dreamcast mags at the time, they criticised it for being expensive for devs and people were only buying PS2s to watch the matrix.

yeah but they should be more concerned about how bloody long it takes to load anything on PS3, especially if there is potentially more data to load. I had my first proper taste of PS3 last night and was shocked at how long everything took to load from the simplest of menus to different colours on cars and the levels themselves. dayum, that needs addressing seriously.

Wayne - "I've just had a thought? Why couldn't Bizarre stick as much as they can on the disc, then put the night time textures on Xbox Live and let net users download them?"

I'm sure that what will happen because I get the impression that Bizarre had already created those textures but just couldn't squeeze them onto the disc because PGR 4 is twice the size of PGR 3. If that's the case, then it would make perfect sense for them to release them as downloadable content as it's easier than making entirely new tracks. The crunch will be whether that content will be given away free or sold. My money (no pun intended) is on the latter but it would be nice to be proven wrong!

i laugh xbox fans tent to downtalk blu ray because they think its sony trojan horse whlist might be true but i cant see why someone in their right mind would consider more space as something bad?

i don't disagree that the point is how it is used but the option of 50+GB is better than makin 6DVDS its common sense.

that fooking excuse for a demo Heavenly sword was 996MB its 1.5times bigger than what you used to play 6-7 years ago as full games. get a grip if you dont mind having games split over 5 dvds that doesnt mean blu ray isnt or wont become a necessity in the future and PS3 is already equipped for it you might not
like paying the price for it neither do i but ps3 is more future-proof, Sony is right.

on the plus point experimental blu ray disks reach 100+gb just the practical side of things needs to be stated.
on the bad side of things imagine if MS one day supports HD-DVD format games and forces you to buy the drive for 150+$ that would make the price of 360 even closer to PS3 price point

@optimusprym8 - I presume you're referring to MotorStorm which I agree has absolutely horrid loading times but of the ten PS3 games I own, only that one is unbearable. About two-thirds of the games I have come with an option to install a cache file to the HDD (some automatically install it anyway like Oblivion) and it makes a nice difference to the loading times such that games load far quicker than their Xbox 360 equivalents, e.g. Ridge Racer 7 and Oblivion. The others appear to load as quickly without a cache, i.e. Harry Potter OotP loads as quick if not quicker than the Xbox 360 version.

I seem to recall playing Xbox 360 games with horrid loading times too, remember PGR 3 or Burnout Revenge or MotoGP '06 or even Oblivion? Granted most 360 games now load pretty quickly but you still come across the odd game where you feel like you're staring at a loading screen more than actually playing the game, e.g. Colin McRae DiRT!

"xbox 360 is awesome!" - Micsrosoft
"Wii rocks!" - Nintendo
"Semi skimmed milk better than skimmed milk!" - farmer who only makes semi-skimmed milk.

I mean, come one...

32MB RAM is enough.

/runs

Steroyd - surely you mean 640K? Nobody'll ever have a use for more than 640K of RAM.

i wonder if its was xbox that had HD-DVD drive and PS3 a simple dvd drive
how much of the xbox community would run happily around jumping in joy
that sony did the greatest mistake ever after eve ate the apple in paradise