Blu-ray discs, do we really need that much space?

Gabe3

2[H]4U
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I'm not bashing a PS3, all I own is a PS3. I'm just wondering for gaming, how are we getting near filling a 25 or even 50 gb disc? If I'm not mistaken warhawk is like 950mb and GTA4 is like 7gb. And sony says that they need this 50gb disk for gaming because they are already reaching its total amount.

I would imagine blu-ray is going to be around for many years. Considering it will be awhile till a game even reaches the size of a single sided blu-ray 25gb disc.
 
I'm not bashing a PS3, all I own is a PS3. I'm just wondering for gaming, how are we getting near filling a 25 or even 50 gb disc? If I'm not mistaken warhawk is like 950mb and GTA4 is like 7gb. And sony says that they need this 50gb disk for gaming because they are already reaching its total amount.

I would imagine blu-ray is going to be around for many years. Considering it will be awhile till a game even reaches the size of a single sided blu-ray 25gb disc.

Resistance, a launch PS3 game was 22gb i believe. MGS4 could have used more than the 50GB kojima has stated.

Rockstar said they could have easily done more than 7GB on GTAIV but were limited due to the 360 development(which they said actually was part of the delay as well. They had to shrink the game to fit on the 360.)

Im sure there are lots of other examples of games that make good use of 25gb discs at a minimum.
 
Games not using up the full amount on a Blu-ray disc could be because games are developed for both the 360 and PS3. Now I am not bashing the 360, but developers do not want to write one game for the 360 and another for the PS3 so unless it is an exclusive we won't see any difference.
 
I think the game that would benefit from BD is GT5.. 700+ cars, a buncha tracks, hopefully upwards to 200+ engine sounds, music. Ijust wish some developers would add extra content for the PS3 because it does have more space.. maybe not gameplay but like commentary or making of videos.
 
Some of that space can be taken up by uncompressed or HD audio streams. Those files are pretty massive.
Are most games using that much space? Not really...but there are games that are on multiple DVD's on the 360. That could be avoided.
It's not really a requirement at the moment, but think of it as expanding a highway to 4 lanes rather than just adding a 3rd lane and knowing you'll have to add a 4th later.
 
So 360 is sorta holding back the industry.

sort of. Remember that the 360 came out a year earlier and $100 (or $200 if you're talking about the 60gb ps3) cheaper. I never did understand why they made the hdd optional on the 360, though. When I heard that, I thought it was a joke. I guess the joke was on us.
 
Resistance, a launch PS3 game was 22gb i believe.

Hasn't it been established that Resistance, and some other games that use tons of gigs of space, actually have data repeated throughout the disk, in different spots, to speed up loading times?

As far as the original question goes, do we really need this much space? I don't think it's absolutely necessary at this point, but it's certainly nice.

I never did understand why they made the hdd optional on the 360, though. When I heard that, I thought it was a joke. I guess the joke was on us.

That was one of my biggest gripes with the console, prior to launch, and up to this day (asside from the poor hardware quality). I really enjoy my 360, but they really should have included a hard drive with EVERY system. I don't think they'll make that mistake again, come the next-gen.
 
sort of. Remember that the 360 came out a year earlier and $100 (or $200 if you're talking about the 60gb ps3) cheaper. I never did understand why they made the hdd optional on the 360, though. When I heard that, I thought it was a joke. I guess the joke was on us.

I agree. High definition discs weren't necessary, but a hard drive was. It's a step backwards from the original Xbox.
 
If anything I'd love to have a Blu Ray player on my 360 just to shut the friggin drive up. The DVD drive on my 360 is a noisy piece of crap compared to the PS3.
 
the space isn't needed, because there is always compression. But that's the point. All of that extra space allows for Uncompressed Audio, High bitrate HD videos (usually MPEG), and less texture compression if the GPU can handle it. Many games do not take up ALL of the space, sure. but, it allows the use of uncompressed assets. The games that use the most space are those with tons of spoken dialogue. I really don't understand why people are still having this discussion. More space is always better. Compression looks and sounds worse
 
With gaming aside, I would love a 50Gb disk to back up my system or a network! Life would be so much better.
 
the space isn't needed, because there is always compression. But that's the point. All of that extra space allows for Uncompressed Audio, High bitrate HD videos (usually MPEG), and less texture compression if the GPU can handle it. Many games do not take up ALL of the space, sure. but, it allows the use of uncompressed assets. The games that use the most space are those with tons of spoken dialogue. I really don't understand why people are still having this discussion. More space is always better. Compression looks and sounds worse

Right and...


So wouldn't it make sense to just use the PS3 as a development platform with uncompressed audio/video, compress and/or hack out what doesn't fit for 360, and release the rest as free DLC in a patch? This is basically what happened with Burnout Paradise.
 
I would believe it if sony wasnt pushing the BD media down everyones throat since day 1. But now looking at games like gta 4, and these other massive games, i believe its not necessary for this gen. The magic of compression makes everything necessary to fit on a dvd9. If im right, isnt games like crysis are still on a dvd. Hell, isnt every pc game still on dvd, oblivion to name another?

We’re running the same game for both platforms but if we made a PS3-only game, for example, you could double the amount of objects on screen that you’re seeing.

Oh my god, i just read the article. Thats bullshit. Every game isnt limited by the disc space, its the ram. Both has a total of 512mb(not even considering how its split between video and memory), so as far as on screen shit at once, please try not to make us look stupid. He is just blowin sonys horn because he is a sony employee. and that 7 versus three shit is too old and incorrect itself, as i recall, the three processors can handle two threads at a time. This is old news he's tryin to spew out with wrong info.
If he knew that ghostbusters would be so great, wouldnt it be an exclusive (sony pictures product)? They knew to maximize their profits for a game that will most likely flop (because all movie games does) they had better put it out on the 360.
lastly:Besides the difference in architecture, developers don't have access to all seven PS3 processors.
 
If all 360's had hard drives it wouldn't be an issue. Outside of the RROD problem I think this was M$ biggest failure. Extra disc space would have been nice for games where swapping disc wouldn't be an option. If they had a hard drive they could have just include an install DVD and a game DVD. This is why modern PC games don't need blu-ray. They have super compressed files on the DVD which decompress and install on the HD and then only need to check a few files on the disc to verify its there when you play.

I agree with Charlie though the article is BS. PS3 doesn't have enough video memory to increase on screen objects. Neither console really has enough power to really do "FULL HD" as Sony would say.
 
I would believe it if sony wasnt pushing the BD media down everyones throat since day 1. But now looking at games like gta 4, and these other massive games, i believe its not necessary for this gen. The magic of compression makes everything necessary to fit on a dvd9. If im right, isnt games like crysis are still on a dvd. Hell, isnt every pc game still on dvd, oblivion to name another?



Oh my god, i just read the article. Thats bullshit. Every game isnt limited by the disc space, its the ram. Both has a total of 512mb(not even considering how its split between video and memory), so as far as on screen shit at once, please try not to make us look stupid. He is just blowin sonys horn because he is a sony employee. and that 7 versus three shit is too old and incorrect itself, as i recall, the three processors can handle two threads at a time. This is old news he's tryin to spew out with wrong info.
If he knew that ghostbusters would be so great, wouldnt it be an exclusive (sony pictures product)? They knew to maximize their profits for a game that will most likely flop (because all movie games does) they had better put it out on the 360.
lastly:Besides the difference in architecture, developers don't have access to all seven PS3 processors.

I think you're confusing the different ways in which compression is used. Crysis for example is compressed on the DVD and then installed to the hard drive. Odds are the compression used for Crysis is far too high to be decompressed on the fly during gameplay. If the 360 had a built in hard drive then the issue would not exist, like you are stating. I'd be surprised if developers really began making 360 hard drive exclusive titles. I don't think Microsoft would be real happy about that.

The other form of compression being referred to in this thread is compressed textures, audio, video, etc which result in a degradation of display quality.
 
Why use mutiple CD's when you have the option to use 1?

DVDs weren't a viable option in 1997 since they had just come out. That's why.

Even still, more discs does not mean "holding back the industry." It means "you might have to get off your butt and switch discs like twice."

Yes, it is nice, but not the most important thing in the world.
 
that article sounds like such a cop out and a kiss up at the same time.

at what point do more objects make a game more fun? sure they're nice to have, but i'd love to see developers worry about story and gameplay instead pining about the limitations of technology. as if having 17 gazillion objects moving around would all of a sudden make his game good (i'll put money on ghostbusters sucking a big fat one)

anyone remember that one game that was good, what was it called? oh yeah final fantasy 7? ok, sure some of you think its overrated, that its not that good, fine. the vast majority of gamers and polls on [H] seem to agree w/ me that its one of the best rpg's ever. i never minded that it was on 3 cds.

i appreciate that more technology means more innovation, and i appreciate that the PS3 has superior hardware. i just wish that developers who want to use it, use it, and bitch about how their cross platform craptastic game is going to suck because of the limitations of a machine.
 
uncompressed audio and cut scene's 50G then becomes nothing.

Only when a developer can't be bothered to compress anything.

The best 360 or PS3 game cannot approach the fidelity of the best PC game in anything but audio yet the biggest PC games are just now outgrowing DVD? Come on. It's lazy at work.
 
PC developers dont want to make 50gb games on the PC.. why? Imagine installing a 50gb game using a BR disc.. which is about the same speed as a DL DVD. Installing a game would take what.. a full day?
 
PC developers dont want to make 50gb games on the PC.. why? Imagine installing a 50gb game using a BR disc.. which is about the same speed as a DL DVD. Installing a game would take what.. a full day?

Brings me back to the days of installing programs off of a box of floppies :p
 
PC developers dont want to make 50gb games on the PC.. why? Imagine installing a 50gb game using a BR disc.. which is about the same speed as a DL DVD. Installing a game would take what.. a full day?
It would probably take about 30 min maybe less seeing as we are on 5x bluray drives now
 
Everyone comparing this to PC's really should take a look at your PC and make a note of how much space your game took up once it was uncompressed off of a DVD. Most of them take up *gasp* upwards of 2x the capacity of a DVD.
We might not need Blu-Ray disk yet if consoles were able to essentially copy the entire contents of a disk to their HD and uncompress it to take up 15GB.
 
DVDs weren't a viable option in 1997 since they had just come out. That's why.

Even still, more discs does not mean "holding back the industry." It means "you might have to get off your butt and switch discs like twice."

Yes, it is nice, but not the most important thing in the world.

When developers want to avoid this as much as possible (for good reason) then it's starting to hold back the industry. People don't mind switching out discs when first installing. They'll mind if they have to do it regularly while playing.
 
When developers want to avoid this as much as possible (for good reason) then it's starting to hold back the industry. People don't mind switching out discs when first installing. They'll mind if they have to do it regularly while playing.

I'd think developers would be more concerned about profits than if the player might have to get up to switch disks. Even four dvds cost substaintially less than a single blu-ray. Not saying four DVDs is better, and in the ideal world every console would be taking 1TB discs by now, but I don't consider it to be that big of an issue.

Name one game where you have to switch discs out regularly, and I'll give you a cookie. OK, maybe I should say two in case there is one weird game out there which actually does do that.

The only games which really have multiple DVDs (a.k.a., JRPGs) always do so such that you have to switch out disks two or three times over the course of the entire game. That's it. Three times. Thirty hours divided by three is ten, which means that with a standard 30-hour game, you have to get up off your couch every ten hours.

Not a big deal, if you ask me.

It would probably take about 30 min maybe less seeing as we are on 5x bluray drives now

Yes, and everyone has money to blow on something like that.

Everyone comparing this to PC's really should take a look at your PC and make a note of how much space your game took up once it was uncompressed off of a DVD. Most of them take up *gasp* upwards of 2x the capacity of a DVD.
We might not need Blu-Ray disk yet if consoles were able to essentially copy the entire contents of a disk to their HD and uncompress it to take up 15GB.

2x the capacity of a dual-layer DVD = 18GB.

Crysis, which I'm sure we both agree does not skimp on things such as textures, takes up only 6.2GB on my hard disk. On DVD, it is 5.4GB. So... I'm not sure where you're getting this "upwards of 2x the capacity of a DVD" yet. I mean, a whole install of Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit takes up 15GB, and that's not even double the capacity of a DVD.
 
I'd think developers would be more concerned about profits than if the player might have to get up to switch disks. Even four dvds cost substaintially less than a single blu-ray. Not saying four DVDs is better, and in the ideal world every console would be taking 1TB discs by now, but I don't consider it to be that big of an issue.

Then why do PS3 games almost all come out on blu-ray and not dvd? The PS3 is more than capable of reading DVDs. When given this space as an option, developers are choosing to use it. MGS4 would be an extreme example of this using all 50GB of blu-ray.

PWMK2 said:
Name one game where you have to switch discs out regularly, and I'll give you a cookie. OK, maybe I should say two in case there is one weird game out there which actually does do that.

None, which is my point. This would be an absolutely horrid design decision if there's a way to avoid it.

PWMK2 said:
2x the capacity of a dual-layer DVD = 18GB.

Crysis, which I'm sure we both agree does not skimp on things such as textures, takes up only 6.2GB on my hard disk. On DVD, it is 5.4GB. So... I'm not sure where you're getting this "upwards of 2x the capacity of a DVD" yet. I mean, a whole install of Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit takes up 15GB, and that's not even double the capacity of a DVD.

WoW is 8.5GB, Orange Box is 15GB, and CoD4 is 6.5GB installed. I think it's pretty clear we're nearing the peak of DVD space. I'm not saying we're at it. However, I'm saying before this console generation has run it's pace we will be. Not sure what else to say considering this is even reflected by Rockstar concerning their next gta.
 
WoW is 8.5GB, Orange Box is 15GB, and CoD4 is 6.5GB installed. I think it's pretty clear we're nearing the peak of DVD space. I'm not saying we're at it. However, I'm saying before this console generation has run it's pace we will be. Not sure what else to say considering this is even reflected by Rockstar concerning their next gta.

Bah... considering that this gen wasn't ready for Full HD, having problems reaching full 720p; then, using more than 1 DVD on my xbox 360 during the last year of its lifetime won't be that much of a problem.
 
Yes, I think we're running into the limits of DVDs, in more ways than just storage space.

I've actually been running into the space problem with Forza Motorsport 2. Yes, it looks gorgeous, but it doesn't feel as varied as Gran Turismo 4 did (more track repetitions). A quick look at the numbers confirms this feeling. Forza 2 has 310 cars and 47 tracks. In truth, there are only 12 "environments" and the rest is made up by variations. Gran Turismo 4, which does not have to display cars or tracks in HD, has more than 700 cars and 51 tracks. GT5, which has a ton more space to play with, is supposed to have upwards of 900 cars! I would also be very surprised if it had fewer tracks than GT4.

I don't envy the developers of the Forza series. The next installment is going to have to compete with a 900-pound gorilla named GT5 and one way or another, they're going to have to find more storage space to cram in more cars and tracks. Maybe they'll have an install disk and a play disk, because disk switching isn't going to work for a racing game. What happens if I decide to race with a car from disk 1 on a track from disk 2? I'm not swapping disks for every race!

Using optical media also causes problems for games that stream a lot of content, like GTA4 and Mass Effect. The drives aren't fast enough to load high-res textures and model details, which causes pop in in both the aforementioned games. Mass Effect dodged this a little by having players manually open doors and by having really slow elevators, but this problem is just going to get worse as games grow. The PS3 tackles this with installs since the BR drive in that is pretty slow, but the 360 doesn't really have that option. Of the two companies, Sony definitely has the more future-proof console and we'll see if Microsoft does anything to extend the 360's life. If they don't, you might see developers releasing bigger and better versions of games for the PS3...
 
Then why do PS3 games almost all come out on blu-ray and not dvd? The PS3 is more than capable of reading DVDs. When given this space as an option, developers are choosing to use it. MGS4 would be an extreme example of this using all 50GB of blu-ray.
Because Sony is requiring devs to use it. Oblivion for PS3 didn't even hit 5GB. It could have fit on a single-layer (never mind dual-layer) DVD, but Sony is requiring all devs to use blu-ray.
And it's more like MGS4 is using 40 GB of uncompressed audio with the rest of the disc being used for actual game content. Whether or not this is retarded is a different story.

None, which is my point. This would be an absolutely horrid design decision if there's a way to avoid it.
Well... awesome. The way to avoid it is to use discs sequentially, like everyone has been doing.

WoW is 8.5GB, Orange Box is 15GB, and CoD4 is 6.5GB installed. I think it's pretty clear we're nearing the peak of DVD space. I'm not saying we're at it. However, I'm saying before this console generation has run it's pace we will be. Not sure what else to say considering this is even reflected by Rockstar concerning their next gta.
I realize we're reaching the peak of DVD space. What I'm trying to say is that this is not an end of the world scenario. Multiple DVDs does not equal suckitude, and it hasn't even happened with most games yet. Yes, it would be nicer to have the largest disk space possible. But the 360 isn't "holding back the industry" like what was said earlier. If that's the case, then the industry was held back with PSX from 1997 to 2000, pretty much.
Also, of those games that you listed, the only one which doesn't fit entirely onto one DVD is the Orange Box, which was three different games anyway.
 
Not sure if its been mentioned but a 360 with a bluray drive built in was announced recently.
 
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