So... xbox 360 getting long in the tooth due to no blu ray?

Ryan711 said:
This post makes no sense in relation to the quote it was responding to. Maybe you should holster you rolleyes and read the post thoroughly before you respond.
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Not picking sides, I think both offer valid points, but you actually need to trace back to your original quote and realize what he's referring to.

You make the comparison to the Wii, he then says you've obviously not played 'one' (in reference to the Natal, not the Wii, what an English major would call an unclear antecedent), this is further evidenced by his reference to it not being release yet in a later post.

Just a misunderstanding, kiss make up and move on.

But, there are a few articles stating that apparently MS isn't looking into next gen for a while. The only one from a moderately reliable source I can currently find is this one.

Granted, it's almost a year old and no dates or actual figures are given, but I think the 2011/2012 estimation that you both (I think) are making seems about right.

Regardless, it's going to take something more substantial then a gimmick like the Natal to truly drive sales in this market. Microsoft is on the record basically saying that 'core gamers' (i.e. a lot of readers on this forum) will buy things regardless and that Natal is being marketed at casual gamers.like here. Granted they are saying that they're shooting to still please the core gamers, but there's not going to be any easy way to capture the core and still enthrall the casual market.

Both markets are inherently different, the core gamer is more for the experience while the casual is more for the raw fun and merging them will necessitate cuts for one or the other. It comes down to which one has the deeper pockets and more people that are more willing to spend, which is with out a doubt the casual crowd.

If someone feels opposite, all they need to do is look at the new dashboard. I consider myself a core gamer. I play games, I don't give two sh*ts about whether my avatar looks like me and can wear a happy new years hat or a tacky christmas sweater. Microsoft is looking to take a chunk of the Wii-audience pie. First with the change of the appearance, then with the change of how it works (Natal).

I feel that, while Natal may be a really interesting idea and could perhaps offer something to the core gamer, Microsoft is probably going to pressure developers to sell the gimmick more than sell the 'core experience'. It makes more financial sense, which is really what it comes down to, both because it's good business and because of the harder economic times.

Even further, and back on topic, blu ray support is an interesting area. The number of gamers (especially those in the newly targeted casual field) with HD sets is remarkably low. While SD sets are not necessarily the norm in these parts of the internet, Hardforum is hardly an accurate representation of the gaming world. In terms of Blu Ray uses, movies and games are it. Obviously movie playback isn't even necessary for the core group (which is what the target is moving towards) which is shown by the Wii, which can't play DVD's for the normal person (homebrew aside).

It's already been pointed out that very few games actually take up the entirety of the disk space that a blu ray disk offers. I can think of two (Uncharted 2 and MGS4), and while my memory isn't the most accurate source of information, I'm pretty sure it's given knowledge that the majority of games aren't fully utilizing the ps3's disk capacity (even the exclusives). For the time being, the 360 is fine. Even for the next 2,3 or 4 years, the xbox is fine. Blu Ray isn't necessary just because there aren't enough people that can truly take advantage of it, especially in terms of the way that the gaming market is evolving.

We're entering a really interesting time, thanks both to the economy and the vast impact that the Wii has had (for better or worse) on the market. For the time being, I'm going to just enjoy the triple-A titles slotted for Q1 2010 and have some fun :)
 
Blu Ray for storage is great, but nearly no games need them. Most PS3 titles that claim they need all this space is just PR. MGS4 for example, had zero file compression, even on the audio.. something every game has. This was done to claim that Blu Ray was required for all this 'space'.

That said, DVD9 as a format is dead after this generation. The 360 will hold out fine, because over 95% of the games fit on 1 disc.. this whole 2 disc argument is pretty far and few between. I think next generation we 'may' see a Blu Ray player in the Xbox platform, that or another storage device (end of discs?). MS wouldn't have a problem paying royalties to Sony for Blu Ray, some of you may not know this, but Sony and MS (including pretty much most large businesses) pay out royalties to eachother on an annual basis. Hell, Sony pays MS when purchasing Windows OSs for their VAIO computer line.

If the bottom line here is to discuss storage, then yes DVD9 is out after this gen. I think we'll see more digital downloads next gen, even an emphasis on them. I bet we'll see the Xbox with Blu Ray simply because its becoming the next/last physical media for HD movies. Its starting to be adopted now and if MS doesn't include it, it would be like what Nintendo did by no including DVD playback on the Gamecube. One could argue Blu Ray is simply an enthusiast platform and that the average consumer will be streaming their movies in the near future rather than buying.. but thats for another thread I suppose.

I dunno.. *shrug*, these are decisions made from the top.. business decisions, which often do not line themselves with the technical teams. Time will tell
 
Since we're not looking at increased frame resolutions next generation, we're not going to be seeing massively updated texture assets, at least not for the "high quality" assets. Well certainly see far fewer low-res textures, but the upper end won't be changing much. Less space costly areas, like polygon counts, shadow maps (although that carries similar storage costs as textures, a lot can be done to improve their appearance without dramatically higher map resolution), and anything that can be done procedurally, like dynamics calculations, maybe some textures, and obviously adaptive tessellation (improved asset quality with a very minimal storage cost...amounting to some extra code, and markers on the asset to direct tessellation).

So unless we move to stuff like MegaGeometry, or whatever Carmack decides to call his voxel octree world models, I don't think there's a real need for increased storage. Maybe we will see the move to some proprietary media, although somehow I doubt this move due to fixed asset costs, or we will see the move to Blu-Ray, unless somehow Sony has enough power - or desire to forgo profits - to block Microsoft on this. Optical discs will not disappear next round, although I imagine that by 2017 or so we'll start seeing some full titles be released ala Steam Cloud, with executable & supporting files stored locally, and other game data (cfgs, saves) stored remotely.
 
disuse_nc said:
Mass Effect 2 already stated that it will be a two disc game... I don't think MS is ready to expand to other mediums for disc distribution... Essentially they will let the larger games install to the hard drives, similar to what PS3 owners do now.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/105/1052167p1.html
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That's a possibility, but if data sets get large enough I'm not sure how happy publishers would be to have to print 4-5 DVD's for a top-of-the-scale game,which I'm assuming will max out a dual layer blu ray disc, same as this generation, and without high definition uncompressed video and audio like PS3 is using. We won't be going from using 14GB max to 50 like this generation, but maybe from 7GB avg to 14GB avg with the frequency of 21+ GB games be maybe triple what it is today (doubled assets plus another 7GB for uncompressed or just low-compression audio, fmv). Although for certain tech, like MegaGeometry, that number could be a lot higher, and maybe you start seeing 50GB games more frequently than expected. Bottom line is, Microsoft sticking with DVD next gen is very unlikely. I'm guessing that if Microsoft doesn't adopt Blu-Ray, Sony will push games >50GB for the attention. But that will be more or less a novelty, or the benefit of having bonus features packed-in on a single disc.
 
akotlar said:
That's a possibility, but if data sets get large enough I'm not sure how happy publishers would be to have to print 4-5 DVD's for a top-of-the-scale game,which I'm assuming will max out a dual layer blu ray disc, same as this generation, and without high definition uncompressed video and audio like PS3 is using. We won't be going from using 14GB max to 50 like this generation, but maybe from 7GB avg to 14GB avg with the frequency of 21+ GB games be maybe triple what it is today (doubled assets plus another 7GB for uncompressed or just low-compression audio, fmv). Although for certain tech, like MegaGeometry, that number could be a lot higher, and maybe you start seeing 50GB games more frequently than expected. Bottom line is, Microsoft sticking with DVD next gen is very unlikely. I'm guessing that if Microsoft doesn't adopt Blu-Ray, Sony will push games >50GB for the attention. But that will be more or less a novelty, or the benefit of having bonus features packed-in on a single disc.
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This seems most likely. Next generation I expect them to create their own or lease a competing disc technology for their games.


After all, even nintendo did that for their gamecube discs, larger capacity than cds but not quite as much as dvds. Granted it was on similar tech, but still.


My main worry in the current generation is that developers like squaresoft and others that make games with more depth and breadth than the typical shooter will change their layout to accommodate the space issues on the inferior storage medium of the xbox 360. (i.e. changing where the game breaks or when things can be accessed as opposed to a seamless world throughout).

They said this did not happen, but you never know, we ALREADY know from dragon age that the pc versions field more enemies at a time due to more resources compared to the console brethren, we KNOW the 360 looks worse than the ps3. A game like dragon age is longer with more textures, and fitting all that on a smaller medium could easily mean reducing the texture sizes and quality.


Disc size and storage is not nothing, and neither is the hardware it is playing on.
 
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