DF: Blu-ray makes no sense for Xbox 360

By Richard Leadbetter Published 22 October, 2009

Digital Foundry considers tech implications.

News this morning suggests Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has done it again, pre-empting official announcements by confirming to Gizmodo that the company is planning a Blu-ray expansion drive for the Xbox 360.

When asked if forthcoming 360s will get an internal Blu-ray drive, he replied: "Well I don't know if we need to put Blu-ray in there - you'll be able to get Blu-ray drives, can get Blu-ray drives as accessories."

It looks self-explanatory out of context, but then context is king, and if you watch the original clip it's easy to reach the conclusion that he was talking about buying yourself a separate player for the lounge if you fancy a Blu-ray player, and simply used the magic word "accessories" by accident. Especially as he then talks about video-on-demand being the future in the next sentence.

That said, there's no technical reason it couldn't happen. Assuming an external drive similar to the ill-fated HD-DVD add-on, the technical challenges of bringing Blu-ray to the Xbox 360 are significant, but most of the legwork has been done already. The HD-DVD codebase within the 360's dashboard features support for the same MPEG2, h264 and VC-1 codecs found in the Blu-ray spec.

The only question mark concerns the throughput levels the code is capable of: HD-DVD handled 30Mbps max, while Blu-ray ups the ante to 50Mbps. At the time of the HD-DVD add-on's launch, Microsoft talked about how a combination of both CPU and GPU power was required to handle the decoding. Assuming there's no overhead in the code, it could require significant re-engineering to get it up to BD specs.

Even then, Microsoft would be in the unenviable position of having to charge a premium for a BD playback solution fundamentally inferior to PlayStation 3 performance, most notably due to the limited surround sound options in the lower-spec HDMI 1.2 controller found in the Xbox 360.

Over and above that, Microsoft's strategy thus far has been to say that gamers don't need Blu-ray, and any kind of expansion device would suddenly be suggesting the opposite. Far from offering more value to the Xbox 360, it would immediately make the keenly priced all-in-one PS3 Slim far more of an attractive proposition. Validating Sony's decisions isn't Microsoft's style.

As for games arriving on Blu-ray for Xbox 360: forget it. Some figures bandied about at the time put the penetration of the HD-DVD add-on at a mere three per cent. A BD device would probably be more popular, but the take-up would still be far too low to risk muddying the waters with games available on multiple disc-based SKUs.

In a sense, the Xbox 360's reliance on DVD has defined the storage threshold for this generation. The vast majority of its first-party titles use just the one disc. Third-party cross-platform titles are, with the odd exception, invariably targeted towards the 6.8GB storage limit imposed by the Xbox 360 DVD, to the point where even the PS3 versions are much the same size. The success of the Microsoft console has defined the size of almost all cross-platform games this generation, effectively making the 25GB and 50GB storage limits of Blu-ray superfluous.

In terms of HD movies, Microsoft probably reckons its download-only strategy stands just as much of a chance of success as Blu-ray over the longer term as broadband streaming speeds increase. Its service is also inherently more suitable for the Xbox platform: it's immediate, it's available to all Xbox 360 owners out of the box, it adds value to Xbox Live, and, crucially, Microsoft will make more money from it. Releasing a BD peripheral gives the firm no recurring revenue stream and effectively share-steals from its own services.

Moving into the next generation, all bets are off. The next Xbox will require a higher level of storage and by the time that comes about, a Blu-ray drive will be the cheapest way to deliver that. In the here and now, any kind of move into the BD market would be too little, too late. And besides, Xbox 360 seems to be doing well enough without it.

Picture of Richard.

About Richard Leadbetter

Rich has been a games journalist since the days of 16-bit and specialises in technical analysis. Commonly known around Eurogamer as the Blacksmith of the Future.

Read more articles from Richard by visiting the Richard Leadbetter archive page.

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Comments (94) Latest comment 2 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Xerx3s #1 2 years ago

    "Over and above that, Microsoft's strategy thus far has been to say that gamers don't need Blu-ray, and any kind of expansion device would suddenly be suggesting the opposite."

    And so far MS has been right. It's nice to say that you have the storage capacity to hold much more detailed artwork but the tech to display it just isn't there yet this generation.

  • Peew971 #2 2 years ago

    "The next xbox should have blu-ray as standard though, as the console will have more memory thus allowing more and higher res textures, and require more storage space for those textures."

    Will MS be prepared to give some revenue to Sony though? They could resurrect HD-DVD just for gaming, the technology exists already anyway :)

  • Vice.Destroyer #3 2 years ago

    "The success of the Microsoft console has defined the size of almost all cross-platform games this generation, effectively making the 25GB and 50GB storage limits of Blu-ray superfluous"

    I can somehow just think about the mighty: The next generation starts when we say it does.
    Sorry, I love schadenfreude.

  • Dizzy #4 2 years ago

    I hope next gen consoles drop noisy slow powereating optical drives all together. Solid state please!

  • kipper #5 2 years ago

    @ Dizzy
    I certainly don't want them to drop optical media completely. Nobody is expecting a return to game cartridges, and you only have to look at the relatively poor sales of the PSP Go to see how unpopular the idea of download-only gaming is. Nobody wants a monopoly of supply as prices will inevitably rise.

  • swissorc #6 2 years ago

    Why would I buy a poor quality over priced acessory when I can buy a stand alone blue ray player. Not that I will since GT5 is out next year :-) roll on spring 2010
    Additionally, due to piracy issue I personally believe microsoft will not use blueray in their next machine and as well as nintendo they will use general electrics new high storage media which apparently stores data on 7 different axis' can hold upto a terabyte of data and are apparently cheaper to produce than bluerays
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 10:14

  • des #7 2 years ago

    This is the most stupidest article i have ever read on DF...by far
    All of this is like pixel counting,totally irrelevant for 99.999% people
    Audio complaint is the most silly one,no one mentions that you need to spend trucks of money on quality receivers and speakers to be able to hear the difference...join some audio forums and see what equipment people there buy,you can easily buy a car for it...
    Not to mention that not all blu-ray movies are equal in picture,audio quality,tons of crappy transfers.
    Also complaint about software rewriting is lol...I bet software was in place 4 years ago

    But all of that is totally irrelevant,if it gets released it will be nothing but a PR point,look 360 can play blu-rays,no need for PS3...of course they will make hefty profit on it like on hard-drives,nothing new...zzzz
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 10:24

  • Eoin #8 2 years ago

    Will MS be prepared to give some revenue to Sony though? They could resurrect HD-DVD just for gaming, the technology exists already anyway :)

    Microsoft will already be paying Sony some (small) amount of money through one of the DVD licensing pools. They'd be paying a bit more to license Blu-ray, but definitely not enough to worry them.

    Re-using HD DVD would probably actually cost more than licensing Blu-ray. They'd have to retool pressing plants to ensure that they had the manufacturing capacity that they needed, whereas with Blu-ray they could just lease existing pressing facilities. Additionally, HD DVD would come with its own licensing costs, and these would be similar to Blu-ray's. Just because the format is commercially dead doesn't mean that it's suddenly free to use.

    Re-using HD DVD would come with additional downsides as well - it doesn't hold as much as Blu-ray, development of HD DVD has obviously stopped (so there are no really fast drives, whereas it should be easy enough to source masses of 8x or 10x or maybe even 12x Blu-ray drives), plus of course Blu-ray comes with the added benefit of offering Blu-ray movie playback, and, while HD DVD can offer sort of the same thing, obviously the library is much smaller than Blu-ray's, and not going to ever grow significantly.

    In short, next generation, Blu-ray will offer a higher capacity format than HD DVD, for around the same price or less, with quicker loading times, much more movies, and more durable discs - the only real downside for Microsoft would be having to pay money to a(nother) licensing pool that Sony is a member of...and they won't mind that too much. Assuming that they go with any kind of physical format, I think that Blu-ray is the logical choice.
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 11:25

  • Gurgeh #9 2 years ago

    What about a hybrid DVD / download solution?

    You purchase a DVD which has the executable and acts as "security" to allow you to run the program. The first time you run the program it downloads all the parts that wouldnt fit on the DVD. When you're done with the game you can sell the DVD second-hand just like you can now.

  • hiddenranbir #10 2 years ago

    Don't need Blu-Ray. MS want to push forward digital distribution.

  • mcmonkeyplc #11 2 years ago

    True, true. You can get a blu ray player for £69 from tesco's anyway. As the forum informed me this morning!

  • MrNyarlathotep #12 2 years ago

    Even if releasing a Blu-ray drive accessory for the 360 is completely unnecessary, I can actually see them doing so just Marketing can add another bullet point to their press releases.

  • SliderNL #13 2 years ago

    The PS3 has Blu-Ray but the drive is very poor if you look at gaming. All the developers I talk to tell me the same thing. The Transfer speed of the PS3 Blu-Ray drive is slower than a regular DVD-drive. That's the reason why so many games have mandotory installations. Very poor thinking of Sony. What's the point of a 50 GB disc if you can't stream content fast enough?

    I wonder why Microsoft doesn't use on of the new revisions of the DVD-format. It's is possible to increase the data limit to about 10 GB with the right media and duplications technology.

  • Eoin #14 2 years ago

    What about a hybrid DVD / download solution?

    That's sort of a "best of both worlds"/"worst of both worlds" scenario. It does have advantages, but it has downsides as well - not only does it require a physical purchase, but it would also require Microsoft to commit large amounts of bandwidth, and would mean that many games, despite being on the disc, would not be fully playable out of the box (presumably most or all of them would at least be partially playable).

    Additionally it would require that every system came with a hard drive capable of storing a reasonable amount of data - which mean less revenue for Microsoft from over-priced proprietary hard drives.

    I wonder why Microsoft doesn't use on of the new revisions of the DVD-format. It's is possible to increase the data limit to about 10 GB with the right media and duplications technology.

    Many of those formats require extra licensing costs, and/or are not currently readily available in mass-manufacturing amounts, since they're niche formats. I think that when they were designing the Xbox 360, Microsoft made the decision that DVD was fine, held just about enough data and was a fast enough format, and of course easily available in whatever numbers were necessary, and that waiting for either Blu-ray or HD DVD would be counter-productive. That decision, at least for games, seems to have been correct for this generation, from Microsoft's point of view.

    A DVD variant holding more data would be an interesting choice for next generation, but would have many of the same disadvantages as HD DVD would. We're now at the stage where the only disadvantage Blu-ray as a format has compared to DVD is the (small) extra cost, so although Microsoft might consider a DVD variant - perhaps even strongly consider - I don't think that they'll choose to actually use one as a primary format.

  • Eoin #15 2 years ago

    msoft are the most largest most sucessful software company in the world, do people honestly think they havent got a clue how fast internet speeds will be in the next few years and how much of their target market will have it.

    Microsoft certainly do have relative accurate indications of how internet connection speeds and internet availability and takeup will progress over the course of the next 3-5 years...which is why, although there'll be a continual gradual push towards downloads, their next console will almost certainly include an optical drive as well. There's still too many people unwilling or unable to switch completely to downloads, and there's infrastructural issues, and of course, as we've seen with the PSP Go, specialist retailer reluctance to push any format that threatens their own profit base.

  • DevilsNeverCry #16 2 years ago

    "The success of the Microsoft console has defined the size of almost all cross-platform games this generation, effectively making the 25GB and 50GB storage limits of Blu-ray superfluous."

    And this is the reason why on PS3 we have Stellar exclusive line-ups - MGS4, KZ2, Uncharted 2, GoWIII...but on the 360 I can only admit to liking Fable and Gears.

    Developers favour the shortest possible development cycle over optimisation and general perfection of the code they have, which is why in the Sony exclusives mentioned above, and more, they take advantage of technology such as Blu-ray and even with a measley 2x BR drive in the PS3 Uncharted, KZ2, amazing games and technologically superior to most games on both systems have hardly any loading and no installs.

    I'm not saying 360 NEEDS Blu-Ray here, but all of you saying that Blu-ray is basically redundant - you're wrong. Even If it's only major benefit is being able to store gigs worth of uncompressed HD data - it sure makes it easier for devs to make the most of what they have.

  • drumbaby #17 2 years ago

    "Hogwash. What I'd really like to know is when does Sony intend to offer rays of different colours. I'm sure a Turquois-ray would be appreciated by some. "

    Howabout a RedRay, to match that nice ring on the Xbox 360?

  • Trejser #18 2 years ago

    SliderNL:

    "DVD drives like in the X360 average 6x with 12x on the outer rim and 2x on the inside (thats is DVD speed spec) (~63.3mibits/s)

    Blu-ray drives are same speed across entire plater. That is 2x blu-ray spec on the PS3 (~72mibit/s)





    the 2x on a Blu-ray is faster then 6x on a DVD drive



    Since the average speed of a DVD drive is slower the actual throughput of the Blu-ray drive is faster

    But if you need fast access to data with a x360 DVD drive you can place it on the outer ring and access it faster (~15% of the drive space) then a Blu-ray player"

  • peterfll #19 2 years ago

    Hypothetically speaking I would be very surprised if the 360 didn't have enough grunt to support BR playback. I agree though that it's now become moot point with little relevance for 360 owners.

  • LargeDebt #20 2 years ago

    Argh. Someone deleted their account. My comment makes no more sense. And also, I got a negative comment for what I thought was quite funny.
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 18:48

  • makeamazing #21 2 years ago

    in regards to games blu ray has shown NO advantage over the 360s

    The ability to play BR movies and store more data... because putting a game onto multiple disks is beginning to be an issue. You might not think thats an issue, but if you think when the next machine comes out that data sizes will decrease, well they are not. Just audio in games could fill up a BR disk.

    Yes BR was a hinderance to Sonys console, but the tech is there now, and speeds will get faster, which means transfer times will improve, so the issues with BR have been negated by this generation... doesnt mean the next gen shouldnt take advantage of it,
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 17:42

  • Yaz #22 2 years ago

    @Trejser

    I'm not sure where you cut and pasted that comment from, but it's wrong, to the point of practically lying. My guess is that it's from a Sony forum where some gamer was trying to prove the 360's drive isn't as fast as claimed. Correct?

    The key point here is the speed claimed, yes it's 12x on the outer rim, but it's about 6x on the inner rim, NOT 2x as claimed! No 12x DVD (DL) drive drops to as low as 2x on the inner rim, not even the cheapest drives! The worse I've seen for cheap 12x DVD dual layer drives (16x SL), is about 5x for the inner rim. Hence that statement you quoted is nonsense.

    Here's the drives available for the 360;

    [link url=http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_DVD_Drive_ Comparison.htm
    ]http://ww w.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_D...[/link]

    Now, you can look up the specs of those drives if you like, but we don't need to. The devs all say the 360's drive is faster and we see this for ourselves in multiplatform 360/PS3 games, where the 360 reads faster than the PS3, except when a PS3 game installs some of the data to the HDD, making it slightly faster than the 360.

  • Yaz #23 2 years ago

    @semitope who wrote "Bluray is necessary. We are already seeing 2 and more discs having to be used in 360 games and will likely see more and more of that as time progresses."

    Blu-ray is not necessary, and multi-discs on the 360 doesn't make it any more so. Yes it's capacity is desirable, but DVD has proven itself to be sufficient for this gen, even with the use of multiple discs. Of course, next gen will be different.

    How well the 360 can play Blu-ray movies is open for debate, although I don't see why it should be a problem, however it will not be used for 360 games for numerous reasons (the same which meant HD-DVD was used for movies only).

  • Yaz #24 2 years ago

    @SliderNL who wrote "The PS3 has Blu-Ray but the drive is very poor if you look at gaming. All the developers I talk to tell me the same thing".

    I have to completely disagree. Blu-ray is as 'poor' for gaming due to it's slower speed as DVD is 'poor' for gaming due to it's lower capacity. Neither format is perfect, each have their advantages and disadvantages, but it will be Blu-ray (or similar) which will take us into the next gen, not DVD.

  • Yaz #25 2 years ago

    @semitope who wrote "dvd has shown itself sufficient? You cant argue that because devs will adjust to the format they have at hand"

    Actually, yes I would argue that. Sure devs have to adjust to the format, but they also have to adjust to the memory available too. They have to adjust to the power of the CPU available. They have to adjust to the power of the GPU etc.

    I could just as easily say 512MB is not enough, it should be 1 GB or more. We could all argue that the CPU and GPU should be more powerful, but in the end, that's what devs have and that's what they learn to work with. DVD is no different.

  • zedzee #26 2 years ago

    All that money, and Mr Baldy still can't buy himself a lesson in eloquent talking. Oh, I'm sorry, I forgot. He is American, after all.

  • Les #27 2 years ago

    "And besides, Xbox 360 seems to be doing well enough without it."

    I agree adding Blu-Ray to the 360 wouldn't make much of a difference anymore.

    But the machine is doing shit (a.k.a. not making money- as is the PS3, to defuse the least rabid fanboys), so what exactly is meant by "well enough" eludes me...

  • Yaz #28 2 years ago

    svd_grasshopper "eurogamer say it themselves. ps3 crossplatform titles get stunted in favour of the lowest common denominator."

    Actually, Eurogamer don't say that at all, at least, not generally as you're suggesting (and certainly not in all those face-offs!).

    The lowest common denominator also has nothing to do with it (BOTH the PS3 and 360 are the lowest common denominator for certain areas!). For multiplatform games on 360, PS3 AND PC, the PC always manages to be the superior version, both in terms of graphics and performance. Hence if the performance was available for the PS3, then we WOULD see it, just as we do on the PC.

    What holds the PS3 back is a) the power difference between the 360 and PS3 is negligible for most cases, and b) the PS3 is far more complicated to program and hence more difficult to get great results.

    Hence it's the PS3 that holds itself back for mulltiplatform games, meaning it mostly shines for exclusive games where the devs can focus on it's strengths.

    Also, since when was this about 360 vs PS3 games? I thought this discussion was about Blu-ray and similar storage devices on the console. So please let's stick to the topic rather than drifting into yet another pointless console battle.

    (That's it, I'm done now, it's back to work for me :))
    Edited by 2 at 22/10/09 @ 14:24

  • mustardkid #29 2 years ago

    The competition exists entirely in the heads of the press and the fanboys and girls.

    ....bloody girls.

  • El-Dev #30 2 years ago

    Yawn. I'm beginning to think gamers have autism. Every thread ends up with same arguments over and over again.

  • SeesThroughAll #31 2 years ago

    "Blu-ray makes no sense for Xbox 360"

    Of course not. the XBox360 was designed from day one to run games from DVDs. Making changes to it just to accomodate to Blu-Ray would just bring needless headaches.

    I'm not even sure if MS would be interested in an add-on to play BD movies at this point, with both their push for HD streaming and cheap dedicated BD players available...

  • LilithsCurves #32 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    PC gets the best port available? Like GTA 4, does it now finally run with 30 frames at least on a quad core with a ati radeon 4870 and 4 gb ram? i don't know, possibly there is finally a patch. Oh wait, Batman AA has Anti-Aliasing and some filtering which was very well received. i would say that's the utmost minimum one can expect from a ported to the PC game but the landscape was looking so bleak that such things are actually praised.

    That brings me to the next point, the devilish difficult to program for PS3. I really don't think the hardware is the reason. sure if it were much more similar to the xbox360 then it would make their job a lot easier but, how arrogant would it be to demand from sony to make their ps3 more like the xbox architecture and probably also fatal in the long run. Bottom line, the amount of work they would have to invest to make a better PS3 version(or equal) is not something that is paying off for them. - or they invest their time in more lucrative things. Same with PC ports and vice versa by the way. It's because they don't invest in the other versions because it does not pay off for them(or so they reason).

    Bad PS3 architecture is a whipping boy. What they should say is, Oh well the PS3 is very different from the Xbox360 architecture so it would mean a lot of time and that's not worth it.

    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 15:08

  • Machiavellian #33 2 years ago

    Personally, I do not think this would be an Assessory from MS but instead from some approved third party like Toshiba, Samsung etc. What you could see next year is approved hardware manufactures like Toshiba or Samsung sell their own brand of 360 but with extra hardware features like Blu-ray, WIFI, bigger HD. MS has mentioned before that they would like to license out the 360 hardware to manufactures and this could be the opening for content provides that was also mentioned a while ago. MS has talked about this type of format before and there were rumors floating around about something like this happening last year.

  • funkateer #34 2 years ago

    "It's true, the 360 simply does not need blu-ray. It's not needed for games and ..."

    ID Software's John Carmack disagrees:
    http://ww w.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ca...

  • Apologie #35 2 years ago

    @Xerx3s

    "And so far MS has been right. It's nice to say that you have the storage capacity to hold much more detailed artwork but the tech to display it just isn't there yet this generation"

    --------------------------------------

    lol dude stop being narrowminded... U2, Killzone 2, MGS4 just to name a few, all use bly ray to its maximum... and we can all agree on the result, spectacular.

  • Machiavellian #36 2 years ago

    I have to agree with Donnie that with HD becoming so big that the Next console cycle probably will not require BD for game play. Already the 360 and PS3 do game installs so it's more likely that the next console cycle will have big HDs and games will be installed on the machines. Then there are technologies like Procedural Synthesis,tessellation and a host of other tech that allows you to use less physical resources to produce high end results. I believe Blu-ray will become remain a video format than a storage solution for the next consoles.

  • chessboxer #37 2 years ago

    @ donnie080208

    That would make the "next gen xbox" a... PC.

    You also need a hefty PC to play Crysis on max detail at a high resolution (£300 PC isn't going to cut it), which also brings up another point. If the next generation of consoles are to be able to produce similar graphics, how much do you think they will cost?

    So many people moaned at the £425 price tag of the PS3, could the next generation of consoles release any cheaper than that if we are expecting such great visuals?

  • LilithsCurves #38 2 years ago

    @ "crysis unpacks to the pc hard drive at 12GB." WHY cant this be acheived on the next gen xbox then?

    but but isn't mandatory install boohoo bad? not every xbox360 owner has one with an hard drive and crysis is by the way how old? 2 years? it looks great because of lightning effects use of an abundance of shaders and other things a modern fast 200 watt huge, hot, in a small console hardware melting graphics card can produce. If you want to improve the graphics on the consoles you have to improvise and find other ways. A possibility could be "megatextures" like proposed by id software but that needs huge amounts of data space. Which by the way, i think the xbox 360 can do as well, just release the game on 3 dvds and install all 3 and use for verification the first disc, problem solved, at least for the hd xbox360.

  • zippie151 #39 2 years ago

    rofl the way this country's going it'll be years before get side spread decent speed internet (ie 20mbs min). this digital download crap is not what i want, give me a case and disc any day! And for those stating blu-ray is not needed I think some of the sony exclusives have shown for themselves it is certainly a great benefit.

  • Les #40 2 years ago

    "The success of the Microsoft console has defined the size of almost all cross-platform games this generation"

    Exactly. Game developers have to accommodate for the lowest common denominator (so in this case the 360 with its DVD drive) and that effectively holds back HD gaming and thus the PS3.

    The fact that 360 games still tend to look 'good' (which basically only means that they look better than the past gen) doesn't tell us much as we'll never know how much better they would have looked (and sounded) had the 360 used a proper storage format. Hence the boring fanboy arguments about the irrelevance of storage space will continue. It's hard to prove something that doesn't exist after all (as the religious know all to well).

    If anything, it shows the lack of their imagination...

  • djm99 #41 2 years ago

    i couldn't care less about blu-ray,or indeed HD DVD or even standard DVD.I have an XBOX and a Ps3 and have only watched Casino royale on blu ray when it came with the machine.I buy my games machine to play games.

    I install all my xbox games to the hard drive ,it takes about 15 minutes, the games load quicker and keeps the console quiet.I think you'll find practically everyone does if they have the space.
    Edited by 2 at 22/10/09 @ 18:33

  • des #42 2 years ago

    People still believe that you need £300 PC to run Crysis on high?!...hahaha
    Delusions ,Delusions
    It was playable,(30 fps-amazing thing for consoles), on high,two years ago on an average machine,i don't think you could sell it for more that 100 euros now.
    And it was running circles around 2009 console games like Uncharted 2 which Sony fanboys are desperately trying to proclaim as best looking game ever...£300 PC,i can't believe that people are still stuck in the past...

    This comment section is like it has time-warped to 2007...amazing
    Somebody should mention RROD for the circle to be complete.

  • LilithsCurves #43 2 years ago

    @ donnie080208

    my misunderstanding, with the next gen xbox not being xbox360.

    i don't know who steven is, boyzone seems to be your territory. and don't fuck on me with idiot and clampit, will ya? :) GREAT!

  • Machiavellian #44 2 years ago

    svd_grasshopper --@Machiavellian- theres a 1TB and a 5TB blu-ray disc in development... dont talk crap. thats more than enough, many times over.

    But that would totally be overkill for games and when this technology comes out it would be on the expensive end while HDD tech is dropping constantly. Just because they build it doesn't mean its viable.

    Anyway the storage medium probably will be Holographic storage, where you can have your storage and retrieval faster than a HDD and Blu-ray put together.

  • old_skool #45 2 years ago

    While DVD is good eough for gaming in this gen for publishers having multiple discs means extra licensing costs, therefore having a larger capacity disk isn't just a matter of convenience.
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 19:38

  • ealva #46 2 years ago

    I believe Microsoft's issues is not with Blu-ray itself, but with Java (BD-J):
    http://en .wikipedia.org/wiki/High_defini...

  • Felwyn #47 2 years ago

    funkateer Wins!

    "ID Software's John Carmack disagrees:
    http://ww w.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ca...

  • antinazi #48 2 years ago

    Xbox360 hardware can't handle BluRay decoding, period! lololol
    Edited by 1 at 22/10/09 @ 20:30

  • Erebu #49 2 years ago

    The X360 doesn't need one. But what about the X720? It will need one and there is no way denying it.

  • Diomedes #50 2 years ago

    Blu Ray 25 and 50Gb limit superfluous?

    Thats if you dont count games as Uncharted 2 ,Gran Turismo 5 ,Star Ocean IV International ,Final Fantasy XIII ,Resistence 2 ,God of War 3 ,Ratchet and Clank 2 and so on.Oh wait ,those are most exclusive ......probably developers cant use the 50gb because the 50gb limit has been rendered superfluous by the 360........You are so wrong DF.

    Guess having FM3 ,Lost Oddysey ,Star Ocean ,Final Fantasy XIII,Rage and many other cross-plattform games in multiple discs is the same for you as having them in one single unscratchable BD.

  • Kaminari #51 2 years ago

    @ SliderNL

    Obviously, your reasoning is seriously biased and ill-informed. Many PS3 games entirely stream their content directly from the BD, with no installation whatsoever. Best examples to date are the Uncharted games, which pull out MASSIVE amount of data from the disc without a sweat.

    Next time please, get your facts straight.

  • hahayou #52 2 years ago

    Don't forget that the most popular console this gen uses DVDs for storage but can't actually play a DVD film. If they're trying to keep the Xbox 3 cheap they could go the same route with blu-ray discs, featuring a video download store instead of blu-ray playback.

  • Diomedes #53 2 years ago

    Just to clarify the BD speed issue.

    The 360 DVD has 12x speed in the outer ring and 6x in the inner ring.The BD has 2x speed (but 2x speed for BD is like 8x speed for DVD more or less) for the whole disc.

    The 12x speed is faster that the BD2x drive ,but the BD is faster that the 6x speed of the 360 for the inner rings.

    Thing is ,for launching games you can put the code on the outer ring in the DVD and achieve some marginal difference in speed in your favour.For games designed with DVD as the base ,developers have to make a decision with the PS3 version ....A)We dont change anything and have the first load,menu screens etc to take more time B)We do some install and we make things as fast or faster than the DVD version ....at the cost of some GB of use for the user that is.

    Developers are choosing option B ,hence the installs.

    But ,theres an option C indeed.Exclusive games as Uncharted ,Uncharted 2 ,Killzone 2 ,Infamous etc dont use mandatory installs AT ALL.Some of these are the very best and more capable technically games on the console.

    How do they do that?Easy ,speed aside the BD has some advantages over the DVD.One of them is that it can constantly stream data to the console even if CPU and GPU are doing other things.Other is that the BD disc is a single track and its superior tech makes possible to load anything at any moment without worrying about "finding track X".Couple that with a HDD that each PS3 have and you have a way to constantly stream data to the HDD ,charge textures faster,allow a memory-heavy texture and memory work in your games and everything withour installs and loading times whatsoever or nearly negligible at the worst.

    Thing is ,you have to code having in count all that to profit for this superior tech and possibilities.The code must have written accordingly.And ,as you cant use this approach with the inferior tech of the 360 and PC drives (with the PC you can also install) you then code for the DVD geography ....and that brings us again to A and B.

  • Loghorn #54 2 years ago

    Will MS be prepared to give some revenue to Sony though? They could resurrect HD-DVD just for gaming, the technology exists already anyway.

    Sony doesn't exactly own Blu-Ray, they just support it. Even though when it comes to next gen, MS wouldn't have to worry about paying much to the BDA to have support for their next X-Box console, as Blu-Ray is already starting to become much cheaper.

    Microsoft is right for one thing, that Blu-Ray isn't even needed for this gen, as a lot of multiplats have proved that. But that may change for next gen, though. Especially when Blu-Ray is already becoming more & more popular. They did the smart thing by not making HD-DVD standard. Speaking of HD-DVD, that wouldn't make any sense at all for them to be using it for their next X-Box console.

  • man.the.king #55 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "What holds the PS3 back is a) the power difference between the 360 and PS3 is negligible for most cases, and b) the PS3 is far more complicated to program and hence more difficult to get great results."

    What does hold the PS3 back is that most multi-platform devs find it easier to not take the time to adopt a development strategy which also takes into account the strengths & weaknesses of the PS3, and instead go with what they are comfortable (or what they find easier) - i.e. 360 & PC. That is the reason why we see weaker multiplatform ports on the PS3.

    As far as the "negligible" power difference is concerned (we are back where we started :) ), I'll believe that when I see Uncharted/Uncharted 2/R&C/Killzone2/MGS4 level graphics on the 360. I'm not saying 360 graphics are bad (they are good), but I have yet to see performance levels on 360 games that match that of some of the best PS3 exclusives.
    Edited by 7 at 23/10/09 @ 02:28

  • anonim1979 #56 2 years ago

    @Trejser

    Stop spreading FUD.


    Blu-ray is slower than DVD in X360
    [link url=http://www.emedialive.com/articles/readarticl e.aspx?articleid=11404
    ]http://ww w.emedialive.com/articles/reada...[/link]

    BRx2 is ~ 6.5x DVD speed.

    But the most important:
    Bluray has VERY SLOW access time

    DVD ~110ms
    2xBlu-ray >350ms

    The DVD in X360 reads DL DVD at 12x speed.
    It is 16xDVD DRIVE capable of reading SL at 16x and DL at 12x with firmware lock down 12x to keep noise down.

    Of course you can use modded firmware to slow it even more - to PS3 levels :))) if you dont like the spinning sound:

    "With the ixtreme Rev2 you have the option to choose a custom drive read speed. Most people use fast 12X because its fast loading(12X is the default speed for unmodded drives) and sound levels stay the same. The 8X setting is also nice if your drive is too loud for you or your having trouble reading dvd+r dl verbatim media."

    http://ww w.teamxmods.com/new-benq-ixtrem...

  • Yaz #57 2 years ago

    @man.the.king who wrote "and instead go with what they are comfortable (or what they find easier) - i.e. 360 & PC. That is the reason why we see weaker multiplatform ports on the PS3".

    Except for devs who did start on the PS3 first and ported to 360, the results were still mostly equal. Where devs put different teams to work on each version seperately to get the best out of both consoles, the results were still more or less the same. In other words, even the exceptions to the 360/PC centric rule results in roughly equal performance between 360 and PS3, with a slightly better PS3 version at best, and a slightly poorer PS3 version at worse.

    I don't believe CryEngine 3 is 360/PC centric and wouldn't push the PS3's hardware (results so far looks extremely impressive), since from the start, the goal of the devs was to get the most of out of both consoles. And yet, I would expect similar performance between the 360 and PS3 for games using that engine, where areas which are GPU heavy may perform a little better on the 360, and areas which are CPU heavy may perform a little better on the PS3.

    "I'll believe that when I see Uncharted/Uncharted 2/R&C/Killzone2/MGS4 level graphics on the 360"

    And I'll wait until a developer with the reputation of a team like Naughty Dog for pushing hardware, creates a game on the 360 with a budget (and time) comparable to those PS3 exclusives. :)

    Anyway, getting back to the topic... (well, bed first for me)
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/09 @ 03:53

  • man.the.king #58 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "Except for devs who did start on the PS3 first and ported to 360, the results were still mostly equal. Where devs put different teams to work on each version seperately to get the best out of both consoles, the results were still more or less the same. In other words, even the exceptions to the 360/PC centric rule results in roughly equal performance between 360 and PS3, with a slightly better PS3 version at best, and a slightly poorer PS3 version at worse. .....I would expect similar performance between the 360 and PS3 for games using that engine, where areas which are GPU heavy may perform a little better on the 360, and areas which are CPU heavy may perform a little better on the PS3. "

    That doesn't prove that they tried taking the PS3's technological strengths and weaknesses into account. We can't prove this either way, but I think, where possible, most of the multiplatform developers have taken the path of least resistance with regard to PS3 development. And your explanation fails to expound on why some of these PS3 exclusives are so good, where no multi-platform game manages to match these. I find it very hard to believe that, somehow, magically, all the best talent has chosen to remain Sony exclusive while the "lesser" talent has gone 360 exclusive or multi-platform.

    Sometimes, I think it's a pity MGS4 wasn't ported to the 360 - at least then there would be concrete proof either way.

    "And I'll wait until a developer with the reputation of a team like Naughty Dog for pushing hardware, creates a game on the 360 with a budget (and time) comparable to those PS3 exclusives. :) "

    Well, you are of course welcome to wait as long as your "benchmark" is achieved. However, to the best of my knowledge, none of the following - Uncharted, Uncharted 2, Ratchet and Clank, LBP, Heavenly Sword - took as long as KZ2. Insomniac have been churning out games year after year. And still R&C technical quality is excellent. Also, ND is not the only team making PS3 exclusives which have offered stellar technical performance. And, in my eyes, no 360 game, either exclusive or multiplatform, has so far managed to match these PS3 exclusives (I haven't played Mass Effect yet, but I hear there were technical issues during some sections - but as I haven't seen it, I can't really say anything).

    Anyway, good night... :)

  • Les #59 2 years ago

    "Microsoft is right for one thing, that Blu-Ray isn't even needed for this gen, as a lot of multiplats have proved that."

    Of course Blu-Ray isn't 'needed' for this gen, nor are the powerful CPUs of 360 and PS3. But without a doubt, had all systems used a HD storage medium this gen, games would have been better than they are now. DVD is holding this gen back, simple as.

  • 3william56 #60 2 years ago

    So what happened to that much vaunted "choice" that MS pushed as a criticism of the PS3?

  • womble #61 2 years ago

    It's not going to happen. Major Nelson has just been used to tell the world that Blu-Ray on the 360 is a no-go.

  • memeroot #62 2 years ago

    This gen has failed to deliver and I think ill stick with pc for next gen.

  • funkateer #63 2 years ago

    "I believe Microsoft's issues is not with Blu-ray itself, but with Java (BD-J): "

    They will probably leave out java or cripple it and then call it 'Extended BluRay.NET' or something
    That's what they usually do with standards ;-)

  • Les #64 2 years ago

    Wow, I see a lot of mentally challenged people marked my argument down. So you clowns think that storage space isn't a constraint for game development?! Or are you just upset and think that someone put your dear plastic box down?!

    Saying that DVD technology puts a constraint on current gen game development is a fact. Lifting constraints (a.k.a. generational shifts) leads to better games (in the technological sense, the only one that matters to the fanboys). Ergo, had 360 also made use of an HD storage medium, PS3 and 360 games both would have been better. Like they both would have been better if each console came with double the memory or faster GPUs.

    Why is it so hard to grasp or acknowledge that simple fact? It doesn't make the games you currently enjoy any worse. But if it gives you any consolation, you can gloat over the fact that the better (and more expensive) technology in your plastic box' rival is pretty much wasted because developers have to adapt towards the lowest common denominator.

  • funkateer #65 2 years ago

    I just can't believe people still mention the HD-DVD with a straight face.
    Look, it's really simple: HD-DVD is a failed standard, nobody wants it and nobody produces it anymore. BR is where it's at now.

    MS's choice for 'good-ole' DVD gave them a head start and a price advantage over Sony. That turned out to be a smart move, even if DVD imposes a bit of a constraint for a few games.

  • AusFreelancer #66 2 years ago

    DF you were on a roll with the great articles.....what happened?

  • Geordiemp #67 2 years ago

    Good comments on here. M$ must know that Sony first party devs are now starting to pump out games with a graphics spec, animations and the like which are a step above.

    They are a big company, they will have a strategy to combat this, as if Sony keep a technical lead in games it wont be long before the Xbox 360 starts to look inferior.

    If I was M$ I would buy Cryengine and start pumping out some M$ first party exclusives to match...

    Puzzling, at the momment they seem to be putting their faith in Natal....

  • Alkeno #68 2 years ago

    Sony and Microsoft made the best choices they could at their time.

    Sony copied what worked for PS2 (included a new format) and won the hd-war against hd-dvd, but payed a price (an expensive console and delayed launch). Sony knew the risks, but had a good name in gaming and came from a monopolistic PS2, so they took the chance and weren't killed trying (although for some months they were very frightened).

    Microsoft didn't have such a name and the first Xbox hadn't been a success, so there was no choice for them: Hit first, hit hard. Had they waited a year for BD or HD-DVD and launched at the same price level as the PS3 and the console wars would have lasted for one week or so. Or even less. Adding BD now seems a rather waste of time and money.

    And, please, stop arguing over if gamer are better due to BD. Storage is not a key factor in making good games (and has never been). Most games in this generation aren't even near the DVD limit (code occupies nothing and making 6,8GB of good assets is quite a remarkable feat to any game maker today, even with 300+ employees over 2 years).

    Of course, you could fill a BD with uncompressed audio on 5 languages and 1080p FMV. Right. Cool. What for? Of course, 1080p video looks gorgeous and Dolby 7.1 TrueHD sound must be impressive if you have the money, a big house, a good AV, some good speaker setup and if your wife/girlfriend allows for bringing mayhem to the whole county every time you fancy kicking some ass. For 99,5% of the people that just doesn't happen and Dolby Digital is more than good enough. If you belong to the 0,5% of gamers, woh, may the luck remain with you!!!

    What would have happened had the 360 a Bluray Drive from day one? Most games would have come up exactly the same, first party and third party, exclusive and multiplatform. They might have weighted 14GB as devs wouldn't have bothered to compress textures and audio, but games would be the same. Making assets is expensive and time consuming, they remind us every single day. Having a larger drive wouldn't have made Assasins Creed look better or more varied.

    DVD is good enough for this generation. BD does allow for some cool features (films) and game conveniences (only one disc, no need for "second disc install ala Forza 3";) but that is just it. And yes, Uncharted 2 is awesome and looks better than any exclusive on the 360. You can say it's because of the great developer skills, you can defend the Cell, you can understand the game has a huge budget... but please, don't say that it's because an big optical drive.

    By the way, thanks to those that remind us that John Carmack was having issues fitting Rage into DVDs. Allow me to remind you that the same guy has been also quite vocal about how PS3 was underperforming heavily against 360 and that a lot of extra work was required just to make it reach playable framerates. But who cares? At the end the game will fit on DVDs and will perform great on both consoles, compromises will be made to accommodate the game on both machines.

    We should really stop this war soon or tomorrow's theme will be "Is the non-unified memory architecture of PS3 limiting multiplatform games on the 360?" and arguments will be things like "of course, only 256MB can be used for assets on PS3 so devs opt for the minimun denominator" against "nonsense! BD and HDD makes for streaming on PS3 the 360 can't handle, so the limiting factor is the 360" until God just ends up so fucked up with us that makes all ours machines RRoD and YLOD.

  • Yaz #69 2 years ago

    @man.the.king "I find it very hard to believe that, somehow, magically, all the best talent has chosen to remain Sony exclusive while the "lesser" talent has gone 360 exclusive or multi-platform."

    Nice way to distort the argument :). I'm talking about devs whose goal is to get more out of the hardware than anyone else, and hence make that one of their main priorities. Who does that on the 360? Who did that on the XBox? Please name the 360 exclusive developer who, like ND on PS2 and PS3, has a reputation for pushing the hardware beyond the level reached by their peers. Name the Xbox/360 exclusive developer that YOU would put on par with ND, Kojima's team at Konami, and Polyphony for pushing any hardware they work on to it's absolute limits, often pushing it further than anyone else.

    And going back to this comment from you "That doesn't prove that they tried taking the PS3's technological strengths and weaknesses into account. We can't prove this either way". Correct, we can't prove this either way, but my argument is that with no PS3 multiformat game showing any significant improvement over it's 360 counterpart, then that shows there's little difference between the two. That's no different than your argument that no 360 exclusive matching the achievements of the best PS3 exclusives is all down to the superiority of the PS3's hardware rather than the ability of the devs involved. Again, we can't prove either way, it's just down to opinion!

    I could take your same tone and say I find it hard to believe that somehow, magically, ALL the devs are unable to push the PS3 beyond the 360 for multiformat games. Some perhaps, even most, but ALL? Hmmm. ;)

    So, have your say (as I'm sure you will) and please let's get back on topic.

  • Alkeno #70 2 years ago

    @semitope

    What he might be trying to say is that I tried to make a point (Carmack has issues with both platforms) and then I said "But who cares?". You just searched for yet another Carmack-against-360 comment and plainly ignored the meaning of my message.

    You are free to do so, of course, and I don't mind as long as we keep the conversation polite. You are also free to check your facts about the non-unified PS3 memory ;-)
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/09 @ 18:03

  • Machiavellian #71 2 years ago

    Its non-unified but it doesn't = inaccessible. It doesnt mean rsx can't use cell memory or vice versa.
    Performance cost, splitting task and memory. Flexibility with how you utilize memory retrieval etc. No, it doesn't mean that the rsx cannot use the memory, its just not efficient and can have lead to performance issues.

  • man.the.king #72 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "So, have your say (as I'm sure you will) and please let's get back on topic."

    I will, just like you did (and always do). Here goes:

    "Nice way to distort the argument :)."

    I'm not. But, maybe because it did not agree with your argument, you perceive it as distortion or "changing the issue".

    "Who does that on the 360? Who did that on the XBox? Please name the 360 exclusive developer who, like ND on PS2 and PS3, has a reputation for pushing the hardware beyond the level reached by their peers."

    I don't know. No one? Everyone? How do you know that they don't? Because you haven't seen anything better than GeOW2 on the 360? Everybody is suddenly saying ND has always had that reputation as they pushed the technology for Uncharted and the sequel. Did they say that for Jak and Daxter as well? And what about Insomniac and R&C? As far as I remember, Kojima's works have appeared on the XBox as well. As I see it, you choose to believe that 360 has "all the potential in the world (using a little exaggeration as a figure of speech here, and not sarcasm, so don't get mad)", but there are just no console-pushing devs on the 360 as you haven't seen a 360 exclusive with the level of performance yet seen on some of the PS3 exclusives. I find that to be a self-fulfilling argument which does not happen to need any basis in fact.

    "That's no different than your argument that no 360 exclusive matching the achievements of the best PS3 exclusives is all down to the superiority of the PS3's hardware rather than the ability of the devs involved."

    That is not my argument. What I am saying is that I don't agree with your (apparent) opinion that these PS3-exclusive devs seem to be succeeding IN SPITE OF the PS3 hardware. I think that they succeed because they accept the idiosyncrasies of the PS3 architecture instead of hoping that somehow, tried-and-tested methods that have worked on other consoles, will work here as well, and being satisfied with mediocre results.

    Anyway, now that I've "had my say", let's go back to the topic in the article (unless you want to stay on this one, of course).
    Edited by 1 at 23/10/09 @ 21:12

  • Alkeno #73 2 years ago

    man.the.king and Yaz, please don't go back to the main topic...

    When many of us (Yaz and me among others) claim that some developers on PS3 are pushing the hardware more than any 360 developer we are walking on thin ice, as you say, we have nothing to prove our point. And many times it's difficult to spot the difference between gut instinct and plain bias.

    Altough I cannot prove it, it seems as if Sony has had the need to demonstrate their machine is better all along. The boasted that PS3 would trounce the 360 for years, but Microsoft's machine was released and blew most people away. When PS3 was launched the reaction from the public was "is that it?". Poor PS3 had promised Killzone's render and delivered Resistance 1 (which was nicely obliterated by Gears of War).

    Since then Sony has been trying like mad to catch up, that is the feeling most people perceived. Killzone 2 had to look like the render target no matter what. They finally made it, but how long did it take? The infamous render was from E3'05, the game was launched 4 years later. I cannot think of any exclusive game on the 360 taking that long to be developed, not even the long awaited Halo 3 (which took 3 years and never aimed at winning any beauty contest).

    The point is that it seems as if getting hugely good looking games has only been on Sony's agenda (something like "make the games look better than anything else, make them forget that bloody cheap 360";). By the way, I've always felt that the best indicator to show this theory is rather solid is the fact that the best looking 360 games, those benchmark-setting games, have been Epic's Gears of War 1 and 2. That is a third party using a multiplatform engine.

    Must leave... post... unfinished. I'll be back.

  • chessboxer #74 2 years ago

    Alan Wake (E3 2005) although up until the Summer it was going to be a multiplatform game, however it seems to be exclusive now (unknown if it's only a timed exclusive though).

  • EvilBob_leeds #75 2 years ago

    On the ram debate, it's also worth pointing out that the bus on the 360 is split because of the shared RAM, whereas the PS3 has distinct buses - it's swings and roundabouts.... that is off topic though. Personally I'd say that MS can't really consider blu-ray as a medium for deploying games, since it would render some customers effectively second class citizens. For the same reason Sony can't upgrade the speed of the Blu-ray player in PS3s.

    However I wouldn't rule out Blu Ray completely for the lifetime of the 360; as others have said, MS and Sony may posture, but if there's money on the table, they'll sell to each other regardless. More importantly, both MS (recent Sky deal in the UK, Netflix in the US, WMC connectivity) and Sony (iPlayer in the UK, Blu Ray, Play TV) clearly have aspirations for their consoles to be media centers too...

    ...which I for one am in favour of. Personally speaking, consoles being able to stream my missus's crappy music off of iTunes into the lounge has made their place under the telly quite easy to justify. Now if I could only get them to reject anything by fucking Maroon 5 or that poxy bastard Ting Tings album....

  • Lord_Gremlin #76 2 years ago

    "In a sense, the Xbox 360's reliance on DVD has defined the storage threshold for this generation."
    That's why I hate Microsoft.

  • man.the.king #77 2 years ago

    @Alkeno

    "I cannot think of any exclusive game on the 360 taking that long to be developed"

    While I'm not aware of the timelines for other 360 exclusives, I think Alan Wake has taken a timeline similar to KZ2. Actually, it seems to be taking longer than KZ2. And that's being developed exclusively for the 360. Let's see how that turns out.

    Other than KZ2, which other Sony games have taken such outrageous timelines? Insomniac are like a factory - they churn out PS3 games almost every single year - yet look at R&C quality. What about MM, Ninja Theory (for Heavenly Sword), and Kojima? And the Uncharted series, I don't think either have taken more than 2 years to develop, which (I think) is probably in the same budget ballpark as most 360 exclusives.

    What seems to be a chief bullet point for people arguing PS3's (supposed) inferiority is the timeline for KZ2, while conveniently forgetting all the other, equally accomplished, PS3 exclusives which have taken NOWHERE that long.

    "The point is that it seems as if getting hugely good looking games has only been on Sony's agenda"

    And are you saying it's not, for MS? Let's not forget that Microsoft were the ones who had a HD resolution restriction (I think 720p minimum) defined for all developers creating games for their platform. I don't think that's a very compelling argument you have there. Furthermore, I find it hard to believe Insomniac or ND, or PD or Kojima are under any pressure from Sony to achieve that "at any cost".

    "And many times it's difficult to spot the difference between gut instinct and plain bias."

    I agree. I do have a preference for the PS3; however, I like to believe that I don't let that blind me to the advantages to having a 360 (I have one, have had it since Feb 2006, and proud to say, no failures :) ). I like my gadgets :), and while others may not be considering it, I am already on board for getting both the Sony motion controller and Natal (whatever their names may be when they come out).

    "we have nothing to prove our point"

    I know that (not taking a crack at you or anybody else here, just stating a fact as I see it, so please don't take offense). I can understand what Yaz (and you) are trying to say, but what I feel is that Yaz's approach to 360 potential to "do anything the PS3 can" is more along the lines of "guilty until proven innocent" as current 360 exclusives stand, that is to say, he believes the 360 can match "everything the PS3 has to offer, and then some" and will wait until proven RIGHT. If you see my point, it's the manner in which his claim is stated, even though there is no concrete proof, he makes it impossible for anyone to disprove his assumption, as he requires a proof based on negatives, i.e. how do you prove that the 360 may have problems matching these games? As far as I can see, the only way to even remotely prove his belief wrong, is by waiting until this generation of consoles ends, and even then he can just say "360's potential was never tapped" if still there is nothing to match these games. I think his is a stance that does not countenance being wrong.

    As for me, I'm perfectly willing to accept that I'm wrong as soon as I see something on the 360 that (technically) bests these games I'm talking about.

    "I'll be back"

    Sure. So will I. Waiting for your reply...
    Edited by 1 at 24/10/09 @ 21:51

  • Les #78 2 years ago

    "Now if I could only get them to reject anything by fucking Maroon 5 or that poxy bastard Ting Tings album...."

    Hear you on Maroon 5 but the Tin Tings are quite good (in small doses)... ;)

  • Yaz #79 2 years ago

    [ Dam, I lost the first reply I typed out, so I'm starting again :( ]

    @man.the.king who said about me "that is to say, he believes the 360 can match "everything the PS3 has to offer, and then some" and will wait until proven RIGHT".

    Excuse me? "AND THEN SOME"? Well now, for that to be true, wouldn't the 360 have to be more powerful than the PS3? So care to point out where and when I've ever made such a claim? So please don't make false claims, you know full well I have never said, or even implied, that the 360 was more powerful than the PS3. My argument has always been that the two consoles are VERY similar in terms of power, far closer than gamers like yourself appear to believe, and that whilst the PS3 is slightly more powerful overall, that little extra is not the key factor behind the impressive exclusives we currently see on Sony's console (and that's were we disagree).

    "I don't know. No one? Everyone? How do you know that they don't? Because you haven't seen anything better than GeOW2 on the 360?"

    And that's interesting isn't it? You mention GeOW2. The most impressive looking 360 exclusive. And yet you seem to ignore the fact that it's running on a multi-format game engine. Now correct me if I'm wrong but, ALL the impressive PS3 exclusives you mention are running on game engines built from the ground up for the PS3! I would think that almost everyone would agree that to get the most out of any console, the game engine has to be built from the ground up for that hardware, and in the hands of the right developers, the results can be spectacular. We've seen that happen for the PS3, but we haven't for the 360, since we haven't seen any custom built game engines for the 360 that are better than the multi-format UE3....yet.

    When we do see custom built 360 game engines that are better than UE3 (and I suspect this could be the case for Halo Reach and a few others), then we should really see the 360 shine (hopefully), just as certain devs have managed to do so already on the PS3. Yes I know it's a case of wait and see, but that's the way it is.

    "Everybody is suddenly saying ND has always had that reputation as they pushed the technology for Uncharted and the sequel. Did they say that for Jak and Daxter as well?"

    Suddenly? It is not suddenly because of Uncharted. I've been following console gaming tech closely since the Playstation/Saturn battle, and the PS2 was so difficult to program that it took years for most devs to finally get to grips with it, and even then, it was devs like Konami, Polyphony and yes, ND, who proved what the PS2 could really do.

    You mention Jak and Daxter, well here's an interview with ND from way back, Dec 2001 to be exact;

    [link url=http://www. psxextreme.com/feature/45.html
    ]http://www. psxextreme.com/feature/45.html
    [/link]

    "Q: Jak and Daxter's visuals are some of the most impressive, diverse and lush on any console right now. How did Naughty Dog manage to develop a graphics engine that features absolutely no pop-up, draw-in, loading times, and manage to retain a perfect frame rate of 60, and feature some very high-resolution textures?

    A: (EW) It certainly wasn't easy! Naughty Dog has the most talented team of programmers in the industry hands down. They worked for years writing and rewriting the Jak and Daxter graphics engine. There are at least ten different specific renderers to create the various background elements, characters and effects. Each of these renderers went through several rewrites and optimizations to squeeze as much power out of PlayStation 2 as possible."

    Sounds VERY familiar doesn't it? And that was 8 years ago! There are MANY interviews and articles like that about ND over the years. So it's not just "suddenly", I'm not saying it just for the sake of arguing, I'm saying it because it's true. I've followed their work for years, I've read many interviews and seen many articles for almost a decade about ND. So to answer your question...YES, they DID say that about Jax and Daxter! :)

    As for Kojima's work on the XBox, actually it was a seperate team at Konami who were responsible for porting MGS2 from the PS2 to the XBox (with mixed results, as is often the case with ports).

    MGS2 was the FIRST game to show what the PS2 could really do (via the realtime demo first shown at E3 2000), at a time when the quality of most of the PS2 releases were rather poor, and this poor quality continued until Apr-Jul 2001 when GT3 A-Spec became the first released game to make the PS2 'shine', followed by MGS2 in November 2001, and Jax and Daxter in December 2001, resulting in the by far the best looking PS2 games by the end of that year (oh wait, isn't that Polyphony, Kojima's MGS2 team and Naughty Dog again? Hmmm).

    [ Ok, I'm done for the moment, I made other points before, but, I'm not going to bother re-typing them again ]
    Edited by 1 at 27/10/09 @ 19:20

  • frazzl #80 2 years ago

    Why waste all this time arguing about what is essentially simply opinion? There are so many posters here whose idea of hardware and software expertise is using Google. The fact remains that there is really no gold standard when it comes to evaluating graphics or in fact game quality. These things are entirely subjective; different strokes for different folks as they say. I for one was far from impressed with Killzone 2 (I personally thing Resistance 2 looks better and plays a lot better). I also think Gears of War 2 is graphically superior to Uncharted 2 (which I find to be the best looking PS3 title). However all that is simply my opinion. There is absolutely no way I can "prove" what I've just said, and there is no way some one who disagrees with my opinion can disprove it. These tech articles are simply (effective) fanboy flame bait. And for all of you who have brought up Carmack, why don't you take a look at what Gabe Newell has to say about the PS3. Game developers have their preferences too. Using their preferences to back up fanboy arguments is simply retarded.

  • man.the.king #81 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "So please don't make false claims, you know full well I have never said, or even implied, that the 360 was more powerful than the PS3"

    Fair enough - you've never said that 360 is more powerful than PS3, although you've certainly implied it (in my opinion) by your innumerable claims that PS3 ports can't match the 360's in terms of technological prowess, even though, by your own admission, porting has "mixed results, as is often the case with ports". My point in that case is that, multiplatform developers happen to see the audiovisual quality of their efforts on one platform (360), and form the opinion that more effort to learn the ins-and-outs of the PS3 platform is not worth it, and do the best they can in the (possibly somewhat) limited time, which imo, is usually the case with multi-platform games (budget & resources, I mean).

    "GeOW2. The most impressive looking 360 exclusive. And yet you seem to ignore the fact that it's running on a multi-format game engine"

    You are talking as if GeOW2 was itself a multiplatform game. In my opinion, the UE3 works with Windows and 360 architecture better than with PS3's. For example, can you name one PS3 game running on UE3 that runs better or equally as good as on 360? If UE3 were to jive well with the 360 and not the PS3, that bit about GeOW2 running well on a multiplatform engine might be somewhat of a straw man.

    I haven't followed gaming history as far back as you claim to have, but common sense tells me that all the best developers can't just have decided to stay exclusive to the Sony platform, leaving Microsoft's (just as impressive) platform with lesser talent.

    Yes I know it's a case of wait and see, but that's the way it is"

    That's right. You are willing to wait, and until I see something that proves you right, I think I'll stick with my belief. As for what you want to believe, it's your prerogative.
    Edited by 1 at 29/10/09 @ 02:47

  • Yaz #82 2 years ago

    @man.the.king who wrote "Fair enough - you've never said that 360 is more powerful than PS3, although you've certainly implied it (in my opinion) by your innumerable claims that PS3 ports can't match the 360's in terms of technological prowess, even though, by your own admission, porting has "mixed results, as is often the case with ports".

    I think you probably interpret it that way because you came from a background of believing the PS3 was 'much more powerful' than the 360 (which you've shifted away from since then). In our many discussions, I've given reasons why PS3 versions often don't turn out quite as good as the 360 version, and those reasons have not been about power but about the issues we all know about, such as the difficulty coding the PS3 compared to the 360. Whenever we discussed the power of the consoles themselves, we both agreed the PS3 was more powerful overall, but where we disagreed was on the SCALE of that difference (and probably still do, but not as much as before).

    "You are talking as if GeOW2 was itself a multiplatform game. In my opinion, the UE3 works with Windows and 360 architecture better than with PS3's. For example, can you name one PS3 game running on UE3 that runs better or equally as good as on 360?"

    Unreal Tournament 3! That was released for the PC and PS3 first, followed by the 360 version about 6 months later. As expected, the PC version was the best, with the PS3 and 360 equally as good as each other (except the 360 version doesn't have mod support due to XBL restrictions).

    So we can argue all day about how much better (or not) UE3 runs on the 360 compared to the PS3, but it's still not a game engine built from the ground up for the 360, and hence it cannot squeeze as much out of the hardware as a custom built engine *potentially* can on the console.

    "...common sense tells me that all the best developers can't just have decided to stay exclusive to the Sony platform, leaving Microsoft's (just as impressive) platform with lesser talent."

    Sony has built up their 'talent' since the introduction of the Playstation back in Dec 1994, 15 years ago! They dominated that generation selling over 100 million Playstations, and then dominated the next gen with the PS2, selling more than even the Playstation, despite the launch of the GC and XBox in 2001 (the PS2 has sold 140 milliion consoles to date!).

    So for 11 years, to say that Sony dominated the console market is almost an understatement, hence they were a magnet for a lot of the best talent within the industry. Even the fact that the PS2 was extremely difficult to program didn't stop Sony's momentum, instead it resulted in devs like ND hiring the best people they could find to get the most out of the difficult hardware.

    Of course, with Sony owning ND since 2001, they are not going to be creating any 360 games, however the success of the 360 this gen has gradually made it more attractive to the devs not owned by Sony, hence we'll see some of that 'talent' finally producing games for the 360, like FFXIII and MGS Rising, yes not exclusive, but I expect enough to show that great results are possible even for multiformat games.

    Interestingly, Evan Wells from ND recently said what I've been saying to you all along (a shift from their previous comments about Uncharted on the 360);

    [link url= http://www.vg247.com/2009/10/16/uncharted-2s-wells-on-ps3-ov er-360-motion-controls-the-next-drake-game-and-more/
    ]http://ww w.vg247.com/2009/10/16/uncharte...[/link]

    "Q. You’ve mentioned that the Xbox 360 could never handle Uncharted 2. Do you think we’ve hit the point where the PS3 will start pulling ahead of the Xbox 360 in terms of graphical fidelity and overall performance? Do you think there will be a noticeable difference in the two platforms’ games from here on out?

    Evan Wells: I THINK THE DIFFERENCES THAT YOU SEE BETWEEN ANY TWO GAMES HAS *MUCH MORE TO DO WITH THE DEVELOPER* THAN WHETHER IT'S ON THE XBOX OR PS3. GREAT PROGRAMMERS AND GREAT ARTISTS ARE GOING TO MAKE A GREAT GAME. Naughty Dog will continue to push the PlayStation hardware as far as we can. We’re fortunate that we get to work on a system that has a hard drive and uses blu-ray for storage. Without these things, Uncharted 2 would have been a very different game. What we were able to do with the Cell processor allowed us to achieve a density of polygons and a fidelity to our effects that would simply not be possible without it. But ultimately, if we didn’t have a team of very talented programmers and artists, we wouldn’t have been able to take advantage of the hardware and achieve the results that we did."

    So, he says the difference is mostly down to the talent of the developers, rather than whether it's the 360 or PS3! An interesting answer given that he was clearly asked if the PS3 will start to move ahead of the 360 in terms of graphics and performance. Hmmm.

    "That's right. You are willing to wait, and until I see something that proves you right, I think I'll stick with my belief. As for what you want to believe, it's your prerogative."

    By all means stick with your belief, and I'll stick with mine. We'll see what the future brings. :)

  • man.the.king #83 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "believing the PS3 was 'much more powerful' than the 360 (which you've shifted away from since then)"

    Correct. I've moved away from that. However, I believe you are just as wrong in imagining that the difference is "negligible".

    "Sony has built up their 'talent' since the introduction of the Playstation back in Dec 1994, 15 years ago"

    Yes - and since then, 99% of those very same developers are now either multi-platform, and some of them are 360-exclusive. So are you saying it's this remaining 1% that are the cream of the crop? Common sense tells me that's not logical.

    "So, he says the difference is mostly down to the talent of the developers, rather than whether it's the 360 or PS3! An interesting answer given that he was clearly asked if the PS3 will start to move ahead of the 360 in terms of graphics and performance. Hmmm."

    I suppose you will believe that, but you will choose not to believe this: ND 100% sure that U2 can't be done on the 360 (for the record, I believe ND was just posturing when they said "100% sure blah blah blah", just like I believe ND were giving a "safe" answer when they said what you posted above).

    "We'll see what the future brings"

    Agreed. I'm more than willing to accept I'm wrong if 360 shows me "the money" :). What are your criteria for accepting you might have been wrong? Or, forgive me for asking, do you have any, or do you believe you cannot possibly be wrong?

    Because that would be egomaniacal :).
    Edited by 11 at 31/10/09 @ 05:05

  • Les #84 2 years ago

    "however the success of the 360 this gen has gradually made it more attractive to the devs not owned by Sony"

    Wrong. Like the PS3, the 360 is a big failure. The fact that it was released a year earlier which gave it a headstart in installed base, combined with the ridiculous development cost of HD games, made it an economic necessity to develop for both consoles initially or go for MS's exclusivity money. But with both consoles' installed bases growing at a similar rate, the relative difference is becoming less and less relevant, making the 360 gradually less attractive versus the PS3.

  • Yaz #85 2 years ago

    @Les who wrote "Wrong. Like the PS3, the 360 is a big failure...making the 360 gradually less attractive versus the PS3."

    Wrong, both consoles are doing fine. And also I said the success of the 360 this gen made it more attractive TO devs not owned by Sony (as in, compared to last gen), I didn't say it made the 360 MORE attractive to devs COMPARED to the PS3.

  • Yaz #86 2 years ago

    (Recovered from the flu)

    @man.the.king who wrote "Correct. I've moved away from that. However, I believe you are just as wrong in imagining that the difference is "negligible".

    I guess that depends on what you and I consider as 'negligible' or 'slightly'. So let's not be pedantic over power any longer and just agree that we both believe the PS3 is more powerful overall, but disagree on the size of that power difference. :)

    "Yes - and since then, 99% of those very same developers are now either multi-platform, and some of them are 360-exclusive. "

    Er no, I'm not talking about ALL devs on the console. This has been about the tiny minority of devs who can get more out of the hardware than others, i.e. the best in that area. Do you consider the efforts of devs like ND and Polyphony to be nothing special and that most other devs are able to achieve equally great results? I would think not. But every time we've discussed this issue, you play down the abilities of devs like Naughty Dog, Konami's MGS team and Polyphony, effectively saying they're no more talented than other devs out there at pushing the hardware, including compared to those on the XBox/360 (and yet you can never list any exclusive XBox/360 dev team who is seen to be in the same league for pushing the hardware to the max).

    "I suppose you will believe that, but you will choose not to believe this: ND 100% sure that U2 can't be done on the 360 (for the record, I believe ND was just posturing when they said "100% sure blah blah blah", just like I believe ND were giving a "safe" answer when they said what you posted above)."

    I don't pick and choose what to believe mtk. I know for a fact that no dev can say with certainly what can or cannot be done on hardware that they've never developed for (and never will). Isn't THAT common sense? And a game designed so specifically for one console, pushing that console to the max, would be very difficult to port to another without major changes. Hence if (in a parallel universe) the 360 was a little more powerful that the PS3, it STILL would have been a problem to have Uncharted 2 running on the 360 *exactly* seen on the PS3! Changes would have to be made, making it worse in some areas and possibly better in others. Likewise, if the 360's architecture was in the hands of ND, their record suggests they would have pushed the hardware more than anyone else, resulting in the best looking 360 game by far, and a game which would be difficult to run on the PS3 without major changes.

    That 100% commment you mentioned came from ND's Christophe Balestra (who, as you said, was posturing), where he puts it down to filling up Blu-ray (ok, so multiple discs needed on the 360 then), having a HDD as standard (ok, so 360's with a HDD get better performance), and the quality of some of their effects, namely Depth of Field (ok, so you'll have a good, but perhaps not as nice DoF effect on the 360 instead, but still possible). So his comment about it being impossible on 360 is pure nonsense, since like ALL games, it can always be done, just with changes.

    As for Evan giving a "safe" answer, that may or may not be so (after all, he's not like Christophe), but it's still an answer that happens to agree with what I've been saying to you all along, and from the dev who arguably has pushed the PS3 more than anyone else. It's the same answer ND have been giving for years regarding why they seem to be able push the hardware more than everyone else.

    "Agreed. I'm more than willing to accept I'm wrong if 360 shows me "the money" :). What are your criteria for accepting you might have been wrong? Or, forgive me for asking, do you have any, or do you believe you cannot possibly be wrong?"

    So you believe I think I'm perfect do you? ;)

    I'm not always right, no-one is, but if I have an opinion based upon the facts available, then I will hold to that opinion until I'm proven wrong with facts and logical arguments.

    In discussions about console power over the years, I've seen too many examples of gamers' opinions changing with the wind, depending on which console currently has the best looking game. In otherwords, great/best looking game = bragging rights. So if tomorrow, a game is revealed for the 360 which blows away anything we've seen so far for the PS3 (yeah I know, very unlikely, but let's say it does happen), I guarantee that until a better looking game appears on the PS3, the internet would be full of gamers saying it proves the 360 is more powerful than the PS3, and that game X proves it.

    Would such a 360 game prove them right? No. Would you agree with them if that happened? No, I don't think you'd be so fickle, although it may adjust your opinion a little. Instead, I would like to think you'd expect results to come from the PS3 later that either matches or betters game X. Hence today, I'm not going to look at a game like Uncharted 2 and ignore or play down the main factors which led to it being such an incredible looking game.

    If in future, it seems that the 360/PS3 power difference is actually greater than I currently believe it to be, then yes, I'd be happy to adjust my views accordingly. :)

  • man.the.king #87 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "I don't pick and choose what to believe mtk....So his comment about it being impossible on 360 is pure nonsense...As for Evan giving a "safe" answer, that may or may not be so, but it's still an answer that happens to agree with what I've been saying to you all along

    You may not pick and choose what you believe, but here it appears as if you chose to believe Evan Wells without any inhibitions because he said something which kinda agreed with what you like to believe, while you allowed interpretation to take over for whatever Christophe Balestra said :).

    "And a game designed so specifically for one console, pushing that console to the max, would be very difficult to port to another without major changes"

    This, this bit here, is what I have been indicating all along when you refer to poor PS3 ports. In my opinion, it is the reluctance of the porting teams to take the time and incorporate the "major changes" (to suit the PS3 architecture) required for a proper port (for whatever reason - turnaround times, resources, etc) that is the chief reason for sub-par ports, especially, as, through it's exclusives, the PS3 has proved it's no slouch when it comes to giving technical performance when asked properly.

    "Do you consider the efforts of devs like ND and Polyphony to be nothing special and that most other devs are able to achieve equally great results?"

    Maybe. Maybe not. What I do believe is that if a developer accepts the idiosyncrasies of the PS3 architecture wholeheartedly (like, I think ND, Insomniac, Kojima, possibly Ninja Theory & Criterion have, and I guess PD - as far as GT5P goes) rather than sticking to tried-and-tested paradigms (for whatever reason, be it time, resources or management decisions), then they would achieve good results. In my opinion, ND, Insomniac and a few others have accepted the PS3 architecture for what it is rather than what they want it to be, which is why they have succeeded so spectacularly. As for playing down their achievements, ND probably has talent, sure, but in my opinion, what they also have is the pragmatism to accept the PS3 architecture for what it is, and that lack of pragmatism (on the part of the multiplat decision-makers/management) is something I believe multiplatform teams are hobbled by. Nothing to do with just these 3-4 devs (1%) being the cream of the crop, and the rest (99%) being sub-par.

    "If in future, it seems that the 360/PS3 power difference is actually greater than I currently believe it to be, then yes, I'd be happy to adjust my views accordingly"

    Happy to hear that - that statement keeps this a debate and, more importantly, keeps this from devolving into an argument.
    Edited by 5 at 04/11/09 @ 07:05

  • Les #88 2 years ago

    "Wrong, both consoles are doing fine.

    They don't make money for the companies that produce them nor will they ever (uptake is way too slow compared to the original investment). How can they possibly be doing fine?!

    "I didn't say it made the 360 MORE attractive to devs COMPARED to the PS3."

    OK, if that's not what you meant to imply, fine. But then it was a bit of a useless remark to make (growing installed base (= 'success') per definition makes a platform more attractive for developers/publishers over time).

  • Yaz #89 2 years ago

    man.the.king, I'll make this my last post to you here, and I'll try to make it as short as I can :)

    @man.the.king who wrote "it appears as if you chose to believe Evan Wells without any inhibitions because he said something which kinda agreed with what you like to believe, while you allowed interpretation to take over for whatever Christophe Balestra said :)"

    Nope, it's never black or white mtk. I'm sure you can find a director/programmer who echoes some of your views, but it doesn't mean you accept everything he says without question!

    As I've mentioned before, I've been doing this for generations of consoles, hence I've followed devs like ND very closely over many years, and Evan speaks in the way ND used to, like Jason Rubin in fact. Here's an interview with Jason last gen, again, take note of what he thinks seperates ND from other devs;

    [link url=h ttp://archive.gamespy.com/interviews/march03/jak2/
    ]http://ar chive.gamespy.com/interviews/ma...[/link]

    "Jason Rubin: The big advantage that Naughty Dog has is that Sony backs Naughty Dog with a huge amount of resources that we can spend on programming talent. We have a lot more programmers than most studios can afford; we have better programmers than a lot of studios can afford. It's not a level playing field in video games....."

    So you see, I wasn't saying Evan was right JUST because he happened to agree with the point I made, the fact is, ND and others have been making that point for years!

    In contrast, Christophe speaks like the devs ND used to criticise in the past (including his comments over percentage of system used).

    You said "In my opinion, it is the reluctance of the porting teams to take the time and incorporate the "major changes" (to suit the PS3 architecture)"

    But this has always been the case mtk. Go back last gen, go back further to the Playstation/Saturn/N64 days, go back to the SNES/Mega Drive era and you'll find gamers complaining about bad ports. The nature of a port means dev teams are highly unlikely to rewrite a game to make full use of the format they're porting to, they only want to get the game up and running on a new format with acceptable results, preferably as quickly as possible. Having a unique architecture and/or being difficult to program only adds to the porting problem, it doesn't create it.

    You also said "In my opinion, ND, Insomniac and a few others have accepted the PS3 architecture for what it is rather than what they want it to be".

    Because they can. That's the privilage available to those working *exclusively* on one console (and always has been). ALL their resources are focussed upon ONE format, not spread across multiple formats. Most developers working on multiformat games are not in a position to explore all the idiosyncrasies of the hardware, their goal is to create solutions which work across all the formats they're supporting.

    Finally, you said "Happy to hear that - that statement keeps this a debate and, more importantly, keeps this from devolving into an argument."

    Good to see we've ended this discussion on good terms.

    I'll leave you with the last word here, but I expect we'll be returning to this subject in the future. :)

  • Yaz #90 2 years ago

    @Les who wrote "They don't make money for the companies that produce them nor will they ever (uptake is way too slow compared to the original investment). How can they possibly be doing fine?!"

    With all due respect Les, that's one of your frequent claims here and it's one which has been argued over by you, me and others MANY times already. So I'm not going to play that game with you today. :)

    "OK, if that's not what you meant to imply, fine. But then it was a bit of a useless remark to make".

    When taken out of context, yes, but if you look back to where I made that comment, it was more than just being about increasing sales making the console more attractive to devs.

  • Les #91 2 years ago

    "So I'm not going to play that game with you today. :)"

    It has nothing to do with playing games, there just hasn't ever been a proper counter argument. Which isn't strange as there isn't one... ;)

    "When taken out of context, yes, but if you look back to where I made that comment, it was more than just being about increasing sales making the console more attractive to devs."

    In my first comment I tried to reverse engineer your reasoning around that argument but was apparently wrong, which can happen. But if your reasoning isn't that the 360 becomes gradually more attractive versus the PS3 due to its success, nor that a growing installed base makes it more attractive, what part of the 360's success does make the 360 gradually more attractive to developers? And how? :)

  • Yaz #92 2 years ago

    @Les "It has nothing to do with playing games, there just hasn't ever been a proper counter argument. Which isn't strange as there isn't one... ;)"

    Now that's a matter of opinion. :)

    And you wrote "what part of the 360's success does make the 360 gradually more attractive to developers? And how? :)"

    I was comparing this gen to last gen, not directly comparing the 360 to the PS3. My point was that some of the best dev teams who only supported Sony last gen for their most important IPs (besides the odd XBox port) will be producing at least one game for both Microsoft and Sony this gen, because compared to last gen, the 360 has a greater share of the market (i.e. more attractive). Without that improved market share, there probably would be no FFXIII or MGS Rising for the 360, two games which I expect to support my argument that developer talent, resources, time and budget are greater factors behind the quality of the best looking games than just console power alone.

    That's all it was. Can I go now? :)

  • man.the.king #93 2 years ago

    @Yaz

    "The nature of a port means dev teams are highly unlikely to rewrite a game to make full use of the format they're porting to, they only want to get the game up and running on a new format with acceptable results, preferably as quickly as possible. Having a unique architecture and/or being difficult to program only adds to the porting problem, it doesn't create it. "

    Exactly. So the discussions of ports shouldn't factor in when discussing PS3 vs 360 capabilities, because, as you said, developers will only shoot for acceptable results (and Devs sweating under a tight timeline will rarely worry about platform parity or quality results). And unfortunately, the market as it is at present is determining that the PS3 gets the short end of the stick in most multi-platform games.

    "That's the privilage available to those working *exclusively* on one console (and always has been). ALL their resources are focussed upon ONE format, not spread across multiple formats"

    Well, MS has certainly not spared any money (as far as I understand the moneyhatting by MS that I believe is going on) in securing exclusives. So why should these developers not have the luxury of being able to optimize their 360-exclusive game for the 360?

    "I expect we'll be returning to this subject in the future. :) "

    Well, this hasn't been resolved yet. So you can count on it :)
    Edited by 1 at 04/11/09 @ 22:40

  • Alkeno #94 2 years ago

    man.the.king and Yaz, please keep returning to the issue, you've had a pretty interesting debate :-D