DF: Blu-ray makes no sense for Xbox 360 Comments by Richard Leadbetter

"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.

It's true, the 360 simply does not need blu-ray.

It's not needed for games and it's not needed as a movie player as you can get decent Blu-ray players for less than £100.

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.

"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 :)

"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.

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

@ 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.

Sony and MS work together in different ways anyway. They're not giving money to the games division if they're using Bluray, and Bluray is far more than a mere Sony device but a conglomerate of different companies. We see Sony Pictures releases on the XBL download service, for example.

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

@Peew971

"Will MS be prepared to give some revenue to Sony though?"

All the major corporations in the world regularly exchange royalty fees, for example Sony pay MS for one of the codecs used on Blu-ray movies. For all the PR posturing, in reality I very much doubt there is animosity in this manner between the megacorps.


"They could resurrect HD-DVD just for gaming, the technology exists already anyway :)"

I really don't think that would be a good idea. They will want to market the drive as a movie player and there's no way that format will be resurrected as a movie format.

Oh, I get downvoted for a fact now.

The retardation of some of the comments tards is beyond the pale.

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

@squarejawhero

"Oh, I get downvoted for a fact now.

The retardation of some of the comments tards is beyond the pale."

The karma system, nice idea though it was, really doesnt work. Better off sticking to using the ignore poster button on the retards and resigning yourself to the fact that sensible comments will most likely not be ranked sensibly.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

in regards to games blu ray has shown NO advantage over the 360s dvd this gen with it being more of a hinderance than anything else. The only use shown so far has been in cut scene heavy games like MGS4 etc.. but in most MPlat games the ps3 can not even produce 720p,even when its lead dev platform. you also have to remember how much it will cost to fill up BR 50gb of space, when devs are allready complaining about the cost of development. for e.g. the recent ghostbusters cost 15mil to make. anyway msoft are the 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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

"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?

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

Not bad, although I think Gray-ray might have the greatest marketing potential.

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"

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.

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.

"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."

The reason for that is not because the bddrive is crap, the reason is data optimization on the developers part. They master the dvd properly and dont place the data on the bluray properly. Thats why they needed installs in the early games and some still do. The bluray drive is just as fast as the dvd drive.

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. This is with compression going on. Imagine the 360 had a bluray drive in it, then those playing forza 3 without a hdd would not be missing out on a good size of the content. I am sure the same applies to other games. Its a great advantage you can't deny... AND its quiet. lol

Its funny, the article hints that the 360 would be sht at playing bluray for processing reasons.

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,

@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;

http://www.llamma.com/xbox360/Xbox_360_D...

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.

@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).

dvd has shown itself sufficient? You cant argue that because devs will adjust to the format they have at hand. Really if we were still using cartridges that is what their games would be made to use. The fact that we see benefits and differences between the 2 consoles based on the media they use is enough to show that bluray is not a waste of time this gen.

btw I have seen the calculations on the drive speeds and its true that the 2 are matched. Your argument obviously can't hold when you have huge games on the ps3 having no install at all. Dont you wonder what the difference between those games and multiplats are? The dvd discs have to be mastered to put certain information on the outer rim so why should something in that line not be necessary for bluray discs? The way devs put information on the disc thoroughly affects whether it needs an install or not.

@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.

DVD is so called sufficient. but im glad ps3 exclusives show BR is superior. uncharted 2 shows us this - the best looking game on any system.

and rockstar deciding to keep agent exclusive on the BR format will show us what GTA IV should have been - without expansion packs padding the games content. sony has offered them support and knowledge of all their studios. that means naughty dog and guerrilla games' tech know-how in rockstars next game with 50GB to play with.

if 360 had a BR to start with, this gen would have been very different. perhaps the 360 owners are satisfied with being "sufficient".

the rest of us are not.

@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.

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.

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


some people just cant take that.

"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...

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 :))

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

....bloody girls.

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

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.

Your arguments about CPU and RAM don't factor into this. You are linking hardware capabilities to storage space when the media used can affect parts of the game such as levels (number of different combinations and layouts that can be stored and loaded from disc), variation in enemies (number of stored models that can be loaded in each level), quality of sound and video and other things. Storage space can really allow devs to put more in their games

"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...

@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.

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.

"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://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/ca...

I agree that the 360 does not need BR. However the next xbox WILL need it, without a doubt.

It's one of thise things that were released one generation ahead of itself.

@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.

"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." rubbish why cant msoft use there own in house HD format next gen or better still use HDDVD as it will be only for games. the WII cant play dvd even, but its not stopped its sucess. plus by next gen Download movies will be easier to make available at rapid speed. BR is not needed next gen and will not be used by msoft