Blu-ray Disc Capacity Irrelevant for Games?
Was catching up on mail and came across an interview Dean Takahashi (author of several “behind the scenes” Xbox books) did with Sony’s Kaz Hirai. Hirai is the president and chief executive of Sony Computer Entertainment of America (SCEA), and as such it’s always interesting to see how he’s spinning the latest messaging.
Overall, there isn’t that much of interest in the interview. The majority of it has Hirai staying on message and attempting to justify the PS3’s pricing and inclusion of the Blu-ray player. (To be fair, most interviews from all the major players just after E3 are the same – not picking on Sony/Hirai in particular here.) However, one quote sticks out, where Hirai answers a question about being concerned about having higher console costs than other manufacturers.
“This console is going to do much more. We have made sure this is a console for the long haul. If you look at the lack of Blu-ray on Microsoft, what do you do if the game requires 40 to 50 gigabytes? Put it on three disks? Let's look under the hood and see total value we are delivering to consumers. At five to 10 years, you see the lasting power of the PS2. If you go out there now, there is a lot of PS2 software out there. From a consumer's view, who got the better value? If you look at which console is giving the publishers more time to amortize their development costs, the answer is pretty obvious.”
The key assertion Hirai is attempting to make is that next-generation games will require 40 to 50 gigabytes, and hence won’t fit on a standard dual-layer DVD (which has a capacity of ~8.5 GB). I’m just not convinced of this.
Earlier this year Gamesfirst did a great survey of Xbox titles and found that the average size of Xbox games in 2001 was 1.81 gigabytes, rising to 3.2 gigabytes by 2005. In addition, they listed the size of four Xbox 360 launch titles:
- Condemned: 3.9 GB
- Madden 06 NFL: 3.3 GB
- Dead or Alive 4: 5 GB
- NBA 06: 4.5 GB
To quote the article (which is well worth a read):
“Over the course of its life, the size of the average Xbox title increased by 77%. If the Xbox 360 size increases at the same rate, and the four 360 titles are representative of the whole, we can expect the average Xbox 360 title in 4 or 5 years to be around 7.40 gigs, and to occupy about 87% of the disc's capacity. If the largest game deviation is the same as the Xbox, with the largest game being 3 gigabytes larger than the 2005 average, then games will be exceeding the upper limit of what the medium is capable of.
However, if the proportions hold true between systems, such limitations will only effect about 3% of games made for the Xbox 360. Additionally, we'd guess that if you look at those 26 titles that exceed average size on the Xbox, you'd find that size is not an indicator of quality, either in graphical quality or storyline. No one would accuse Doom 3 of being worse looking than Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but it's almost 3 gigabytes smaller (Terminator 3: 5.67 gigs; Doom 3: 2.957 gigs). Half-life 2, for example, is only 2 gigabytes.”
I’m willing to buy that there will be some games this generation that won’t fit on a standard 8.5 GB DVD-9. But I think we’re still a few years away from seeing many of them hit the market, and when I see games on the scale of Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls: Oblivion come out, I just don’t see the concern. Frankly, even if we look ahead to a future when there are some games that don’t fit on a single disc, I personally don’t see why it’s such a big deal to get up for one out of every twenty (fifty? hundred?) games and swap the disc once every few hours. We do this today every single time we watch a new movie, right?
So why, then, is Hirai pushing Blu-ray so hard? There are two reasons:
The first is that Blu-ray is really a “bet the company” strategy for Sony. I won’t go into too much detail here since this article from Forbes does it so well, but Sony’s best chance to escape their financial straits lies in the royalties they can potentially reap from Blu-ray (using the PS3 as a Trojan horse to try and drive adoption of the format).
Second, Blu-ray is now one of the only differentiating aspects between the Playstation 3 and the Xbox 360 (a hard drive in every box and HDMI on the high-end $600 PS3 SKU being the other two differences of note). Although Sony has tried to position the PS3 as a quantum-leap beyond the Xbox 360, it’s become pretty obvious (at least to core gamers) that the boxes basically have the same capabilities, with the exception that one is coming out a year later and costing more. (For what it’s worth, I’d really hate to be the PR/marketing guy trying to come up with the side-by-side comparison checklist at Sony… but I digress.)
So size doesn’t appear to matter right now (at least for games). Yet right now it appears Sony is on a path to burden both the PS3 and publishers with the extra cost of supporting Blu-ray. Duplicating a Blu-ray disc will cost more than duplicating a DVD. We can quibble about how much more, but no one is going to argue that it’s not more expensive to duplicate a new medium with new manufacturing hardware and processes (as well as dealing with lower volumes initially). And as we’ve established, the vast majority of games simply don’t need the space that Blu-ray affords right now. The most interesting thing is that it appears Sony (as one of the key stakeholders of the Blu-ray specification) knows it, too.
In an interview with Jim Cardwell, president of Warner’s home video arm, he makes the following interesting statement about the Blu-ray specification:
"We wanted the player to be capable of playing back a [9GB] high-definition red-laser disc, which we call BD-9," says Cardwell. "[The disc] would have a high enough capacity for our movies, and it would have a lower cost than the [25GB] BD-25. The advantage would be lower costs to manufacture the disc, because it could be manufactured on existing [DVD production] lines. Certainly, most of our movies will fit on a BD-9. The issue will be how much enhanced content will we put on there. For basic movies, most will fit on BD-9.
Although the Blu-ray Disc Association has not formally announced the format, Cardwell reports that it has "been proposed and accepted by the BDA."
So, a BD-9 disc is nothing more than a dual-layer DVD with roughly 9 GB of capacity, manufactured on the same processes, and read by a red laser… but still called a Blu-ray disc (thanks to using a different codec to decode the content). Capacity-wise, the disc is basically the same as a dual-layer DVD-9 (at 8.5 GB), but is cheaper to manufacture thanks to being made on a well-known and tested manufacturing process.
It’ll be very interesting to look back at the game discs from the PS3 launch and see just how many actually were “real” Blu-ray discs (25 GB+), and how many are BD-9 discs (~8.5-9 GB, or basically identical in size to dual-layer DVD-9). My guess is that we'll see a lot of BD-9s, allowing Sony to claim a huge Blu-ray launch, bolster the Blu-ray momentum message, and at the same time mollify publishers who aren’t willing to subsidize Blu-ray manufacturing costs. Even if the majority of discs are BD-25 and above, the key will be to look back after launch and see just how many of those games actually needed more than 8.5 GB. (Note that I’m talking about the core game, and not filler “making of” HD videos or movie trailers designed to push the game's "content" over 25 GB.)
My guess? None. And unfortunately, that means a lot of gamers will have to pay for an high-definition drive that they didn’t really need or care for. To be fair, some will enjoy it for HD movies, but I’d rather have the choice myself.