Ozymandias

Nice read at mark's

Good to see the internet being used for constructive arguments and discussions :)

Thats why I love this blog so much.

Not like Majors who just sugar coats everything, but honest views with arguments and not shy of opinions....

I don't have a problem with trying to free up developers from thinking about size of their games. What I have a problem with is, being used in a format war  for movies. And they don't even have the better product there. I just want to play video games. Take your war elsewhere.

I think the entire argument about capacity is moot. Look at the 3 current consoles - (Ps2, Cube, and Xbox) - Any game not exclusive to the system was written for the lowest common denominator.  I don't see this changing in this generation, a game coming out on the ps3 and 360 will be made to take advantage of the 360's more limited storage capacity.  No bonus for ps3 owners there.  I'd imagine the longer load times of the BD will also be coded around, and so 360 owners will benefit from even faster load times (curse you again Bethesda for the crappy way you used the cache).

It's very interesting that both the audio and video comments refer to prerendered cutscenes. If you render a cutscene in real time, you only need mono audio and the same textures and models you use in the rest of the game.

If the PS3 is going to have such awesome graphical capabilities, why do we need prerendered cutscenes anyway?

Oh and for the record, I think Mark is right most of the times.

I do think that the storage is needed and developers will be crippled by DVD9 during the active lifespan of the 360. It is a luxery that PS3 developers wont have to worry about that.

But I do understand it was the only choice possible. Microsoft needed to release the device when it did, and back then there wasn't another option besides DVD9.

Not to speak of the cost it would bring to the device.

And lets not forget Microsoft is right where it wants to be. The soft spot of the market. The 'middle man'. Not the cheapest, but certainly not the most expensive one.

And in the end, Microsoft just has to cope with the choices made and needs to think of a solution.

The solution in my opinion is buffering or 'installing' full discs on the soon to be larger harddrive. Copy disc 2 3 and 4 to the harddrive and only need disc 1 to play, or ofcourse you can choose to swap physical discs.

Would be sweet imo. and would further speed up games :) (Would also be cool for single disc games so the DVD drive is only used for security checks and running the executable)

Unless the argument against games spanning multiple discs is a cost/production issue, I don't see why it's being made such a big deal.

So what if a game ships on multiple discs? This has happened on every CD-ROM-based console. Titles that ship on multiple discs usually are split at a point which would not require the player to reinsert the previous disc to complete the game.

Even DVD movies, like the extended LOTR series, span multiple discs, but no one seems to care. TV seasons span multiple discs, and it's accepted. But for a 15-20 hour game (and most likely, the longer the game the more discs it spans), it's all of a sudden a problem?

Resistance ships with 21GB on one disc. If Halo 3 shipped as 30GB over four discs, I wouldn't care. The issue of disc capacity can always be discredited. It's the question whether a larger game means it's a better game, and that will never be proven to be true.

Think the main point is that it dissolves the created immersion.

Plus more discs = more chances of broken discs...

Ow and it is just a hassle.

One thing that seems to be overlooked in this argument is the additional development time and costs involved in filling an entire BD.

Oblivion fits on a DVD - do we really need games that are two, three, even four times the size/scale of Oblivion? A game that size will take more people, more resources, and take longer to produce, test, etc., and those additional costs WILL be passed on to gamers. Does the industry need games that cost $80? $90? $120?

itsgreen, I think some original xbox games did this to a degree, but I don't think Microsoft will allow this on the 360 because they want to give consumers the choice of owning a harddrive.  You can't develop a game to utilize an HDD that might not be there.  It makes development a bit of a challenge in that respect.  Although, all the consoles have their own challenges.  The PS3 and its parallel processing and dedicated memory management and the Wii with its latency and ergo considerations.

As for disc capacity, I don't think this is really an issue.  Seek time is far more important in my opinion as I am impatient and don't like loading screens.  Lets face it.  The only real reason the PS3 has the Blu-ray drive is the decision by corporate to push the format.

@XplosivDisorder, I hear this argument also from Microsoft. But do we really want to limit ourselfs to Oblivion, a PC game ported to the 360 which doesn't use more than a single core for it's true game functions? I hope not. I hope we will see way way way way better, more beautiful games then that. (Oblivion is great, don't get me wrong, but I think there is a lot of room for improvements over time)

@nopants, was thinking more like an option. People who do own harddrives can load discs to their harddrive, and only need disc 1 to play the game.

People without can always swap discs.

1 Dev I have talked to that has tested burning their game to a Blu-Ray game have had a stark awakening when it took 13 min for the game to load. They are going back and adding more compression because it is faster to load the compressed assets off the disk and decompress then it is to load the uncompressed assets off the disk.

To offset the developments costs they are deploying on a BD-9 disk. Yup Just a Plain red laser DVD9 disk using the Blu-Ray file format.

If multiple disks were a must, I would have nothing against having the single player and multiplayer sectors divided between 2 disks... (Here you go my friend, you can borrow my single player disk while I play multiplayer)

Call me naive, mostly 'cuz im 17 and dont work in the game industry (I would really like to - anyone have any job openings? :P) but most games I play on pc do not exceed 4 or 5gb. Call of duty 2 is ~4gb, and battle field 2 is ~3gb. I cannot really see this going up in size greater than 9gb in the next couple of years or so, let alone 30 or 50gb!

One thing I wonder about multiple disks is, wont you have to duplicate a lot of data, as the console no longer has access to it as it was on the previous disk? Even so, I dont really see why more than 2 disks will ever be necessary.

"The solution in my opinion is buffering or 'installing' full discs on the soon to be larger harddrive. Copy disc 2 3 and 4 to the harddrive and only need disc 1 to play, or ofcourse you can choose to swap physical discs.

Would be sweet imo. and would further speed up games :) (Would also be cool for single disc games so the DVD drive is only used for security checks and running the executable)"

Is this possible Ozymandias? It sounds like a good idea.

While I do quite agree on what has ben posted by Ozzy regarding the DVD Vs BD war, I have really to disagree in something. Sorry, but it is very easy from the USA perspective to have each disc with just language since, most of the times, you will end up getting an english version (specially on the xbox due the lack of lots of japan-made titles), but this does not happen for other languages, forcing people to end up importing games and in those cases the multiple versions in the same disc does help. It may sound like a lame argument I know, but take for instance a well known title like Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence for PS2. It got its spanish version recently cancelled, however the USA version is built in with spanish language as well so you can guess what are a lot of fans of MGS doing here...

Awww. Violent agreement? Where's the fun in that!?

http://kpallist.blogspot.com/2006/08/fight-fight-fight.html

One comment to add:

>consumers are just going to hold off

I don't think the format war is the only reason. I just don't think consumers are going to thirst for HD video (& formats) in teh same way they did with teh move from VHS to DVD.

In teh long run, Sony may benefit from this, but not in the next year... or two... maybe even three. I think MS made the better call.

Mark makes some interesting comments, but he backs himself into a corner when it postulates that game data will be "4x, 16x, 3x, 6x multiplied by 2GB." (He's speaking about vertex data, texture data, audio data, and HD video data.)

If we sort of averaged all that out, and assumed that games are not all equal parts audio and video but mostly game content, we can come up with a roughly 7x increase in data set. Which jibes with his initial guess looking at the historical size increase of PS2 games:

"So across the lifespan of PS2 so far, games have spanned a range of nearly 700MB to just over 4.7GB, or somewhere around a 7x size increase."

So where does he get into trouble? Again, transfer rate. DVD spec is about 12 megabits for 1X DVD, and the PS2 has a 4X drive. That's 48 megabits per second, or 6 megabytes per second. When you're filling up 32MB of system RAM and 4MB of graphics RAM, that's not so bad. You could saturate the RAM in about 6 seconds, if you weren't doing any fancy decompression or other time-consuming stuff.

Blu-Ray's transfer rate is 36 megabits for 1X speed. The 2X BD-ROM in the PS3 is less than twice as fast[/i] as the 4X DVD in the PS2. 72 megabits per second, which is 9 megabytes per second, is awful. They have 256MB of main RAM to fill up and 256MB of graphics RAM. Saturating that 512MB of RAM, again assuming a straight copy with no fancy compression, would over 56 seconds!

So expect lots of games to cache lots of stuff on the PS3 hard drive semi-permanently, and expect brutal load times the first time you run a game.

Of course, the 360 has it's own challenges in this area, but it's not as bad. That less-expensive 12X DVD drive is at least about 18 megabytes per second, so it can saturate the 360's 512MB of RAM in less than 30 seconds.

(note that transfer speeds vary on different areas of the disc, and that games often don't have to "fill" RAM before starting. This is true on all platforms.)

Now, if Sony could have put a 4x BD-ROM in there, they'd have a good point. It would then match the speed of the 12X DVD-ROM in the 360.

Hi Jason,

I can't argue with that.  Optimally we'd like to see disc throughput go up as quickly as memory size.  So we'd be moving from 4x DVD on PS2 to 64x DVD on PS3, or around 20x BD. :-)  Alas!

One hopes that smart developers are using one of the SPUs on the PS3 to do decompression from a compressed form stored on disc.  That will definitely help the perceived load times.  Also, streaming is going to be SO much more important on PS3 versus PS2.  X360 as well, for that matter.  

Being able to rely on having the HD in the PS3 will help, as long as developers are using it to cache files.

And Ozy - those audio and video compression arguments are cheating.  Of course compression will improve. :)  But not THAT much.  You're picking at nits now!  Come on, admit it... capacity-wise, Blu-Ray is the right answer for Sony.  :)

Disc spanning: It's not always possible to split a game over (as many as five) DVDs, and as you can imagine it's not always desirable either.

Capacity isn't purely a convenience issue ('vs. disc spanning'), it's an issue of what it makes viable to create. Many games went from impossible/extremely impractical to viable on the move from cartridges to CDROM and CDROM to DVD, also.

Compression: I get the feeling this is going to become a 'magic word' in X360 PR. Has compression really become many times more efficient in the last few years? And what's stopping PS3 developers from using the same compression techniques to further widen the gap? I don't quite buy it.

BD transfer speed: Yeesh, this sounds pretty bad. I'd have really expected all three of the next-gen consoles to have done away with loading times at least as well as the gamecube did. I'd be interested to know if it's possible, with these fancy multicore processors, to stream stuff from disc without pausing the game? That might cushion the blow somewhat.

nopants:

There are already at least two Xbox360 games that have a mandatory hard drive requirement (a soccer management game in the Euro zone and the Final Fantasy MMO).

re: streaming:

Oblivion uses a lot of streaming data.  When that game was first released, I think we can all recall just how frequently the game would pause to load in data while you were in the wilderness or even in a city (and god forbid it decided to rain).  However, the patch made nearly all of that streaming transparent (you will occasionally get pauses, but typically in forested areas while riding a horse, when you are coming up on an encounter).

I'm sure that the GTG had their finger in the resolution of that issue, and that information is being disseminated throughout the development community and in any of the more recent dev kits.

Even the Xbox used a lot of streaming.  Games like Splinter Cell wouldn't have been possible without it.

I agree that games will not require the large capacity of BD for a long, long time.  The game Crysis , which is supposed to be too advanced to run on either console will be released on DVD.  I think the bundled BD drive on the PS3 will only attract those looking for HD video.  Given Sony’s success rate on formats (Betamax, ACC, MD, Memory Stick), early comparisons of HD and BD movies giving the edge to HD, and the larger cost of producing BD compared to HD, I’m not confident BD will come out on top.   If that is the case, Sony’s strategy to ride the success of the PS brand to dominate the HD video market could really hurt them and the PS3.

Re Mark's comment: "And Ozy - those audio and video compression arguments are cheating.  Of course compression will improve. :)  But not THAT much.  You're picking at nits now!  Come on, admit it... capacity-wise, Blu-Ray is the right answer for Sony.  :)"

I've never argued Blu-ray wasn't the right decision for Sony. Whether it's the right decision for a game console is another matter. ;)

We'll thumb-wrestle over the issue next time we grab a drink. :)

Mark,

You could say that capacity-wise Blu-ray is the right choice for the PS3, but that's examining hardware traits in a vaccuum, I feel. Especially with consoles, the judgement has to include "how much will this cost, and how will the cost curve change over time?"

At some point you have to say, look, what's the best we can really budget in and have this thing cost a reasonable amount? I think Sony really botched that equation (on more than just the BD-ROM drive).

One could easily look at the size of downloadable demos, music libraries, and video libraries, and conclude that making the 100GB hard drive standard on ALL PS3 models would be "the right choice for Sony, capacity-wise." Right?

As for multi-disc games: You know, it's not hard to look at the way-back machine and remember when it was promoted as a great thing that Final Fantasy 7 spanned multiple discs. ;)

If there is to be put any "high quality material" on the extra space of a BD disc, then it ought to take more time to develop.

At the same time, the competition is different for the PS3 now than it was back with the PS1 and PS2, so a developer may want to look for the lowest common denominator on both Xbox 360 and PS3 to quickly get the game out and then develop downloadable content for it.

Likewise, movie companies may want to sell movies on both HD DVD and blu-ray to make the most profit, since the market is split.

So, for now, I don't see how the PS3 can deliver more "beauty" than the Xbox 360... unless we're talking about CG, which is not what I had in mind for games ;)

A lower capacity medium like DVD has the option of using more discs to give "more" space.

You can't use less than one disc if you're not using all the space on a Blu-Ray/HD-DVD.

In any case "more data on the disc" is not the same as "more fun to play". You can bet Metal Gear Solid will use as much of the available capacity as it can, just so they can brag about it. Nevermind how much of that usage is the unplayable cutscenes. ;)

A 12x CAV drive like the one in the 360 will be 12x speed for around 15% of the outer disc, that figure is peak performance. The closer to the inner ring it gets the slower accesses get (5x speed on the inner ring) - probable average: around 8x speed.  Another interesting thing seems to escape everyone is that the 12x DVD drive in the 360 only reads dual layer discs at a maximum of 8x speed.  As it was in single layer, the 8x speed is peak performance.  The 2x speed BD drive performs quite well in this case: a BD25 on PS3 fares better than a DVD9 on the 360.  The great majority of 360 games are and will be pressed on DVD9s.  Another interesting point with existing CLV BD drives is that they do not have the dual layer penalization with DVD dics. If a BD drive is rated to read DVDs at 8x, it will read dual layer DVDs at 8x as well. This is why Sony is comfortable with its choice and knows it will hold its own against MS's choice in the DVD format.

Caching thankfully minimizes either DVD or BD's shortcomings, and careful authoring on either format will help minimize speed issues.  These technicalities shouldn't matter to a true gamer and any advantages in either format will in all likelyhood go unnoticed in any regard to the untrained.

Blu-ray was the right decision capacity wise. Not price wise. Apparently, the PS3 is coming without an HDMI cable. $50 extra. With tax, the price for a console with an HDMI connection will exceed $680 US in some places. Of course, the Xbox 360 doesn't even give people the option of using an HDMI cable, so props to Sony for at least giving people a choice.

Really, the version of the PS3 most comperable to the 360 premium is the lower priced $500 version. That still puts the PS3 at $100 more than the Xbox 360. Another thing, PS3 will probably have an even higher failure rate than the 360. This is the company that made the exploding batteries that have recently been recalled. (I'm kind of worried, I have a Dell with a Sony Japan battery that hasn't been recalled.) Although, to be fair, they used the better quality batteries for themselves and sold the lesser quality ones to other companies.

Is it true that Sony mandated BD for all games reguardless of size? Why not allow DVD-5 or DVD-9 for smaller games? I guess Sony gets a cut on all BD discs. Besides, you forget that the PS3 isn't a gaming console... "It's a COMPUTER!" and therefor can't be compared to any console formats :P

You're an idiot Ozy.

Assassin's Creed looks amazing on 360. Thanks for that Mark. You're a champion.

No space issues there without BD I'm assuming?

Will be interesting to see the two side by side and compare load times/renders

/rant bias=360

Game installation is something I've mentioned to MajorNelson already. But no-one mentioned the possibility of a HD-DVD/DVD disc in a multi-span release. Apparently some movies already do this.  

The MS video codec (AC-9 I think) for HD-DVD is about four times more effecient than the BD use of mpeg4 which makes the capacity issue for video/audio mute.

I'm sure MS is working on compression technology for their tools to get the most out of DVD9. Procedural techniques are a big space saver as well.

As a side note the Xbox360 has a triple core CPU and that PC's have recently gone dual core. If a company is developing a game for release in 2 years time it makes sense to develop on the 360. I suspect triple core PC's will emerge around that time.

I know for all intensive purposes MS seems to enter markets well after they have become mainstream rest assured they know about it years in advance, despite the appearance to the contrary.

HD-DVD is no exception.

Whilst everybody is concentrating on capacity, seek rates, etc, and it’s very interesting :) probably the most pertinent point is ‘Whether it's the right decision for a game console’. Are they just games consoles? How do the respective companies and more importantly the paying public perceive the 360 & PS3?

It was not uncommon last gen for people to buy all 3, but these new consoles are expensive, hardcore gamers will still probably buy all three but this group are irrelevant to the success of this generation of consoles as they move out of the spare/bedroom into the prim place in the living room.

IF the PS3 is just a games console then B-R is the wrong decision, however if it’s a multimedia hub…

Same goes for the 360.

(The multimedia link to MCE is the reason I bought 3 360s, I knew there wouldn’t be that much difference in the games)

The capacity isn't needed at this time, except as Andre (Ozy) already said, if developers opt to fill the entire disc with multilingual content or extras that would normally ship on a second disc ("Special edition" anyone?).

If the extra capacity turns out to be needed in 4 to 5 years Sony will still be stuck with their PS3 which they want people to keep using for 10 years and apparently don't plan on replacing in the "regular" 4 to 5 years (see http://news.com.com/Let+the+PS3+games+begin/2008-1043_3-6110352.html), while Microsoft will be releasing their Xbox 3 by then and it will have the necessary next-gen (either HD-DVD or BR) drive.

Someone earlier said it best, ultimately in the end all games are going to be developed according to the lowest common demoninator (which i doubt will be the Wii, but rather the 360).  That isnt a jab at the 360, but just the truth.  Unfortunately, for most Xbox owners it sucked that we had to play games on our Xbox that should have been much better but werent because that same game had to be able to run the PS2 (a much inferior piece of hardware at the time).  But, considering that save a few minor things here and there the 360 is about as powerful as the PS3, so thats a good thing.  But in the age of fewer and fewer exclusives (simply from a cost perspective, gotta get the most money out of your product, so why not make it work on more than 1 console), the games we play will look just as bad ass on either console.  

For all those doubting DVD9 format capacity, check out http://produkkt.abraxas-medien.de/faq - a 97 kb- yes kilobyte not megabyte- shooter.

I think 10 GB is enough, thank you very much.

I think the folks who keep going on about Blue Ray vs HD-DVD are folks who have HD TV's and are more hard core than the average console gamer. Last I check most people still have regular tv sets, which makes the issue of BR vs HD and for that matter storage requirements kind of a moot point, because most of the advantage of either High Def DVD's and higher storage capacity effects people with HD TV's. One day HD TV may be in every house but for now and the next couple years thats just not the case.

"Blu-ray was the right decision capacity wise. Not price wise. Apparently, the PS3 is coming without an HDMI cable. $50 extra. With tax, the price for a console with an HDMI connection will exceed $680 US in some places. Of course, the Xbox 360 doesn't even give people the option of using an HDMI cable, so props to Sony for at least giving people a choice."

Matt- I think if you do some online research on HDMI cable you will find that everything that is possible with HDMI (as far as video is concerned) is capable over component video.  In fact HDMI was designed mainly so that Hollywood could have their way with DRM solutions which doesnt sit well with me.  If you look at the AV sites they will tell you that the HDMI cable is overpriced bunk for the most part totally unecessary except to further the DRM issues.  

Afterall if it were THAT important Sony would have included one on their lower end model of the PS3 but they aren't doing that.  So having the "choice" of a HDMI cable is merely the "choice" to spend more un-necessary money.  Not to mention the fact that unless you have an HDTV all of this is moot and last I checked HDTV market penetration is still very low.

And that my friends is just another reason why not forcing people to buy a blu ray or hd dvd drive in a game console is a good idea.

Any 'technical director' claiming frames per second have anything to do with the amount of storage should be looking for a new job...

Apparently the PS3 doesn't come with either HDMI or Component cables.  So we will have all these HD movies and games and still have to buy more cables for our $600 box.  Even my cable box from Cox came with Component cables.

Source: http://www.slashcry.com/blogs/main/archive/2006/09/01/1428.aspx

@imaginedbug

Why is it that a lot of people point at Sony's extended console support as a negative?  Because the PS2 is still going incredibly strong with the titles being released for it, I can easily stand by and wait for the dust to clear and/or prices to drop.  Also, "If the extra capacity turns out to be needed in 4 to 5 years," then Sony will be releasing the PS4, but the PS3 will still be a viable platform for another 2 or 3 years, as is the case with the PS2.

@Jason

"Someone earlier said it best, ultimately in the end all games are going to be developed according to the lowest common demoninator (which i doubt will be the Wii, but rather the 360)."

This isn't that big of a deal, IMHO.  The real reason someone decides on one console over another is the system-specific games(unless your a fanboy who just wants to blindly support their chosen company).  The only games that fall into the lowest common demoninator category are the amazingly mediocre EA games and the like(on the other end of the spectrum: Prince of Persia).  I wager most 360 owners made their purchase for Halo or Gears of War, or some other piece of 360-only software.  Definitely not for Madden 2010.

I allways love the fanboys that talk like they know wtf they are saying in reality you know JACK *** about this console it's not even out yet, every dam day I have to read about more anti ps3 bullshit if you don't like it dont buy it it's that simple, and to everybody doubting that the ps3 will have slow times they are going to have what 9 spe cores watch them dedicate like 1 or 2 of those cores to speed up the blueray seek time don't think it's possible I suggest you read up on the tech going into this system.

lol what's even more funny is you all say more disc capascity isn't nessary what games have you been playing one of the problems game developers have been having is lack of room to breath with on making games you all *** about the $60 price tag on the games when with the 360 you arnt getting out anymore then with the orginal xbox now with the ps3 they have a reason to make the game worth $60 you are getting more then your price is worth so get over it.

Buy it or don't im sick of seeing these storys every dam day.

Um, Darksoul, same arguement works back at you! If you don't want to read about it, then guess what: DON'T F*CKING READ IT, go and find something else to do with your time. Maybe try stamp collecting or something?

Darksoul, there's a couple of flaws in your argument there. First, seek time is pretty much a mechanical issue - it's the amount of time it takes to get the reading head/laser into position to read the correct sector of the disc. No amount of CPU in the world will change that, and in any case it'll be related to the drives that are used.

And 9 SPUs? Last I heard Sony were having trouble getting Cell chips with any more than 7 cores, and even at that they were having to junk 50% of them.

Maybe this was misreported, maybe not - but I don't trust Sony any more, their arrogance has led to a lot of mistakes. PS3 will no doubt sell loads no matter how bad it turns out to be, but in my mind Sony have already lost this generation of the console war, by pushing too hard. The Atari Jaguar, the Sega Dreamcast, quite a few other consoles over history - they've been more advanced (hell, the Dreamcast still beats the PS2 for power), but haven't captured the public interest enough.

Ok, that's all I have to say, no doubt I'll get PS3-lovers biting my ass for this one.

There is one major issue that you guys are missing....!!!

Ok you have 25Gb space for a game per disc...just imagine how long the game would take to create...it boggels the mind. Its time and money to fill up a game like that!!!

If the PS3 and the Xbox 360 are two different racing cars, then the PS3 might be a car with a greater top speed and larger fuel tank, while the the Xbox 360 is a car that has a smaller fuel tank but handles better into the corners.

Every game is then a different race track. For the PS3 to shine the Sony team would have to make an exclusive race track with lots of straights and little time for pit stops so that the Xbox 360 cannot match the PS3. For the Xbox 360 to shine the Microsoft team would have to make an exclusive race track with plenty of tight corners where the PS3 cannot match the Xbox 360.

The cars cannot drive by themselves, however, nor do they design each track.

The game developers are the ones who design the tracks and they are also the ones who need to take each car safely around each track from start to finish. So, the game developers decide which car should shine.

But, ultimately it will be the gamers who decide which car had the most thrilling ride.

How much fun is it to drive a drag-racing car on a go-kart track? Not a whole lot of fun.

How much fun is it to drive a go-kart on a 1-mile straight? Not a whole lot of fun.

The right car has to match the right track.

There is no way of telling which console will be the most fun, you have to match the right game with the right console.

Sony has claimed that you need blu-ray for "immersive gameplay". Well, have they tried to beat Oblivion before going to the bathroom? That game is on DVD and I doubt you can finish that game within 24 h.

vanTom, Very nice comparison to real life and these systems. I can agree with that.

I am a Sony Fanboy I love Sony and I'm absolutely right Sony will win this generation with amazing time proof next generation media blu-ray, better graphics powered by cell and the best franchises.

Darksoul, Is that the ostrich defense?  In other words put your head in a whole to hind(while the rest of your body is still showing).  That will stop that fox that is chasing you and about to bite your neck and kill you, from seeing you.  Riiiight?   Vantom, I like that illustration except I would not have not been so generous to give Sony the speed crown.  Just the tank size! Why?  Because it was ill gotten! Why do I say this?

l=lie

r=reality

1l Lies!

2l In 2005 they said they had 8 CPU's one a backup!

3l In 2005 they said they have a 4.0 ghz cure!

4l In 2005 & 2006 they said they have a 550 ghz GPU

Now lets check the reality part

1r, Microsoft called them out on 8 CPU's and said they have something else.  

2r, after several developers and sites agree they finally admitted it was SPE's Just like DSP's, not even good for 3d

3r, Oh wait what’s that?  it's only 3.2ghz just like Microsoft’s?  huh! imagine that(the jury is out on if it will stay even that high it may end up 2.8 like some of the developers hint at)

4r Oh wait the GPU just got down graded so not only is the clock speed the same but the bus is much smaller and they don’t have to 10meg with GPU time speed?

But in the mean time we have given them credit for being faster based on the lies they have issued(once again) just like ps1, just like ps2, just like PSP.  Have they changed and started to show us respect?  Nope!  And even now they  claim to cure cancer.   Tell me this, how is my ps3 going to help?  It will be connected to a high speed internet connection for heaven sake!  It will take much more (about 20 million times more time transmitting data than it will to process!)  I think bullsh*t to them! More super computer talk.  More Saddam using it for weapons of mass destruction!  More China is using it for there space program, and missiles (which is insulting to China last time I checked they rescued our space craft, and have nuclear missiles already)!  More real-time immersion!  More graphics synthesis!  More it’s a computer in Europe!  More PSP will be as powerful as a PS2!  Oh wait PSx  Oh nevermind!  Get my point!  

Oh wait I’m not done!   The PS2 will do 100million poygons a second!  Oh Wait it was 66 million, that was a number for when it improves!  Nope?  Not buying it?  What about 20 Million will you buy that?  Will look I already put it on the box!  So for the record we no it will do 20 million!

(or maybe 6)  Those developers that can’t get 3 million out of it are lying who you going to trust us or them?  Huh! who’s your player….I mean daddy!  Now buy it!

I don't think many people would argue agianst free extra space - there's always something you can do with it (more languages maybe, less compression).

The issue is more that this extra space is not free, it is not free in these terms;

> Data can only be read at a lower rate.

> Unproven technology, unlike PS2 Blue Ray has not been available for a substansial period of time and still has definate growing pains (i.e. the current lack of full size disc support).

> Supply; a clear issue with any new product/technology.  

> Cost, does the extra cost of the new tech match the benefit of being able to use lower compression or fit more languages (and hopefully more consumer based benefits; cinematics etc...). Will those benefits be as much as say spending another $100-150 on more powerful GPU/CPU or a built in network hub? This is what matters to gamers afterall.

Again extra space is in no way a bad thing but you have to make sure the costs (as given above) are outweighed by the benefit, and currently it seems it does not.

I really think that call for blu ray for games is marketing by SCE... I dont see why M$ needs HD DVD as they have Procedural Synthesis which keeps textures filesize much smaller

Theres game called .kkrieger or whatever that is which is ONLY 96Kb

If we're going to be stuck with a new format for the next 5+ years then the better specced the beter for all. PS2 defined the spec for the previous 5 and that spec in the PSP is now the new spec for portables for the next 5 years. PS3 will define the spec for the next 5 years and then PSP2 based on cell will be the  portable spec for the 5 years after that. Sony's business model is transparent predictable and sustainable and publishers like that consumers like it, a few hardcore gamers may fester over minor details but have lost all semblence of reality in the wider consumer world. Just deal with the fact that your comments and mine on this and other forums are insignificant and dont matter, mabee you should all find something more productive to do with your lives.

Bloody hell Ozzy, read some of your older post, seems those fun loving mature ps3 owners i look up to are touching up your posts.

Craig (#24) seems to be correct

Hitachi has some specs on one of the drives used in the 360.

http://www.hitachi.us/supportingdocs/support/manuals/gd7500,0.pdf#search=%22Hitachi%2012x%20dvd%20read%20speed%22

5-12x SL, 3.3-8x DL

(6.25-15 MB/s SL, 4.125-10 MB/s DL)

Where PS3 is 9 MB/s, constant, both SL and DL.

I can't believe that even people who work in this industry can be so naive.

First of all how many games for the 360, going forward, will ship on DVDs over DVD9s??

Now tell me how fast the 360's 12x DVD drive reads DVD9s at.

And saying DVD 8x is faster than 2x BD is a bit misinforming as DVD speeds are rated using the peak possible performance that the disc is only capabe of on the outermost edge of the disc. If you average out the speed at which a DVD is read at 8x you'll see the 2x Blu-ray, which read at a steady 8.57MB/s across the entie disc, is faster on average.

The amount of data you can fit in the part of a DVD9 that reads between 8.57MB/s and 11MB/s is not enough to account for all load times in most games.

So you are talking about a very minimal advantage that could become a disadvantge as more and more data is streamed into memory throughtout the entire game.

A second of all.. why is anyone kidding themselves that more disc space isn't something that will dramatically effect the quality of a game??

Of course the option of higher quality assets and more variety can have an actual effect on the quality of a game.

Forget rendering a Direct X 10 sky in realtime (which the 360 supposedly won't be able to do).. just look up at a sphere-mapped layered HD video stream in the sky on the PS3.

We are blessed at a time in the industry where we are getting such great hardware to play with on both sides here and yet there is so much insecurity and bashing coming from the Xbox camp that it almost makes me question what horrible weakness in the 360 architecture don't we yet know about?

Why can't anyone at MS just be proud of what the 360 DOES have instead of trying to skew people's perspective of the PS3 all the time?

What the *** are you talking about Bastard11?

This is a MS blog and yet half the commenters are Sony fanidiots running damage control. Who's the scared team again?

Who started this? Not MS but a bunch of Sony people claiming Xbox 360 sucks because of DVD-9 and the PS3 is so great because of Blu-Ray. Then when MS tries to defend themselves just a little bit you get mad at MS? That's real cute. Why doesn't Sony shut the *** up and stop saying 360 sucks because of DVD-9? What are they scared of? Why cant they just "be proud of what their system does" instead of attacking MS all the time, to use your words?

>>Forget rendering a Direct X 10 sky in realtime (which the 360 supposedly won't be able to do).. just look up at a sphere-mapped layered HD video stream in the sky on the PS3.>>

This shows your complete idiocy on all matter technical anyway. I'll just qoute it to laugh at you. You dont even know what Direct X 10 is (obviously, from your qoute) and if you did you'd know X360 comes a lot closer to being a mythical DX10 GPU in features than the PS3 does, even though it's still completely absurd the way you framed it (what, pray tell, is a DX10 sky?)

And the part about the sphere mapped (wtf?) HD video stream sky? Huh? Is that why Resistance looks so crappy? (I kid because I love)

Hmm .  Its interesting .

If you look at ps2 games to xbox games you will see that the size of the games went down .  That is because between the ps2 and xbox  new texture compresion  like dxtc  were included in the xbox .   Now we have newer compression  something like 32 diffrent kind in the xbox 360  and more to the point we have a large increase in processing power .

I simply don't see why we need more than 7.6 gigs of storage space  in most games  and why those that don't fit in 7.6 gigs wouldn't fit in  two discs

Large streaming worlds are going to come up to the system limitations  and not the disc limitations . GTA 3 didn't have poor textures and so many repeating textures because they ran out of storage , but because they simply couldn't load more than the ps2 had storage for .  The xbox 360 and the ps3 will both be using less than 512 megs of ram  and that would be the limitation  in a gta type game long before disc size .

I hardly see what Fall of man is doing with its extra storage space adn I'm sure that is there just as proof that its needed . However I know what the darkness is using the extra storage space for .

High res popeye shows .  However they admit that the xbox 360 will have the increased texture quality.  Most likely because of its better texture compresion (3Dc ) and the fact that its os takes up less space. I believe it fits in 32 megs while the p3 fits in 96 megs .

As for my personal opinions  , I don't care really . I played some Final fantasys switching between 4 discs .  Why would 2 or 3 bother me now ? On the flip side , if i don't have to change 2 or 3 discs who cares , its nice , but not a deal breaker. Its not a 2 hour movie where getting up to change it is annoying ,  it could be a 10 hour plus game and there I really don't care. At some point i'd have to get out of my chair anyway

Why don't you care about your business first? A lot of 360 games have horrid loading times. Burnout loads 5-10 seconds longer then the XBOX version, Prey loads incredibly long and often, Oblivion has problems with the streaming from the disc so that there are constant pauses in the game. You really need to work on these problems instead of making jokes how the PS3 will have longer loading times. Fanbois will object here, but that's what I think nevertheless...

There's some interesting stuff in this thread but back to the capacity issue I believe the extra is useful.

yes you can use compression but then you have to waste processor time uncompressing, or in some cases lose quality.

A lot of the graphics that are rendered and drawn could be prerendered for most situations and therefore save more processor time.

The point isn't really whether it's needed at the moment, but for a console with a 10 year life it give developers the most flexability to get the most out of a machine.

Say for instance you wanted to store the OS's premium UK mapping data in vector format for some new application you'd need 400GB - 4TB in uncompressed format, 35gb compressed. Who knows why you'd do this or what for but the point is you could.

No prizes for guessin what field I work in

Guys what more proof do you want?

the 360 will NOT be faster. Just read Chris and Techni post. He has PROFF

http://ozymandias.com/archive/2006/08/31/Mark-Deloura-Comments-on-Relevance-of-Blu-ray-_2800_Oddly_2C00_-We_2700_re-in-Violent-Agreement_2900_.aspx#52

I have no problem with giving the "top speed" crown to the PS3, neither the greater "fuel tank" crown, heck, I'll even give the "price tag" crown to the PS3. I'm fine with that because it's only on paper. And Sony wants to be superior on paper. Being superior on paper makes life easier for the salesmen, and so the salesmen become happier and so they'll happily promote Sony products.

The salesman can point at a paper and say:

"Look! The PS3 has higher Teraflops than the Xbox 360. So, it is better."

"Look! The blu-ray discs have higher capacity than DVDs. So, they are better."

"Look! The price of the PS3 is $600 and the price of the Xbox 360 is $300. So, the PS3 is twice as good, right?!"

This is all on paper. Remember the time before HD DVD and blu-ray was released for movies? Everybody said that blu-ray was going to be better than HD DVD, because it said so on paper. However, reality showed the opposite.

In fact, Microsoft has shown that HD DVD has no limitations in showing the true master in both video and audio quality of a movie. They have shown that by simply using only less than half of the bandwidth of HD DVD they can make a transparent transfer between the master and the HD DVD disc. The last step of the transfer is not limited by the technical aspects of HD DVD, but by the ears and eyes of the men and women at the studios who make sure that each movie is frame by frame transparent to the master.

Thus, there are virtually no limitations on HD DVD to show a movie that is truly transparent to its master.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that the only limitations on the quality that you will get from HD DVD is due to your own home-theater set-up. So, by buying an HD DVD player instead of a blu-ray player, you will save money that you can spend on better speakers, receiver, HD display etc.

So, why is it that the movie "Chicken Little" is coming on a 50GB blu-ray disc? Doesn't a 1 h and 21 min movie fit on an HD DVD 30GB disc? Why yes it does fit perfectly. In fact, HD DVD can fit a 4 h movie in 1080p, so there are no limitations here. Is it that a BD-50 disc give higher resolutions? No. HD DVD and blu-ray both give 1080p, and I have already shown above that HD DVD can make a true transparent transfer from the master both in terms of picture quality and lossless audio. The only reason Sony is pushing BD-50 discs is so that the salespersons can point at a paper and say "Look! Blu-ray has 50GB. So, it is better, right?!".

In terms of movies, blu-ray are winning on paper, but are losing in reality. They have claimed that they have greater movie studio support, but in reality HD DVD has the most movies and the better looking movies. Heck, even CEO of Disney Bob Iger himself has said that Disney probably will publish movies on HD DVD soon.

Now, here we are a few months before the release of the PS3, and Sony are claiming its superiority on paper. Still, it is the Xbox 360 that has delivered, and soon a new wave of games will be released for the Xbox 360. Sony has yet to show gameplay that surpasses the Xbox 360 - I doubt that they can.

Here are 3 reasons why Sony act the way they do:

1) Remember the slogan of the PS3? "This is living". If you throw about the words and add a few, you get the slogan for Sony: "This is how Sony makes a living (for the next 5 years or so)". Yup, for the next 5 years or so, Sony are going to make a living by selling blu-ray discs for either games or movies. However, I have already shown above that you do not need blu-ray for 1080p movies, HD DVD already delivers this true to the master.

2) Sony sells expensive products, and this makes retailers happy because they make more money by selling expensive merchandise. Also, Sony claims superiority on paper which also makes retailers happy because then the salespersons can simply point at a paper and show that the Sony products are superior (on paper), even if this is not the case in reality.

3) I'll let Peter Molyneux take this one: "Sony is lazy".

vanTom:

That only happened becouse early movies using Bluray used MPEG2 codec. Bluray accepts all codecs that HD-DVD has. Why they were using MPEG2? I have no idea, but it will change, and it already started changing, Warner Bros already stated they will be using VC1 in theyre next movies. Seeing as both formats can use the same codecs, Bluray has better audio codecs, and bluray has bigger storage, Bluray has everything to be better. Bigger size = Less compression = Better quality.

Metalmurphy...

You are still making arguments on paper. Microsoft has already shown that it is not the technical specifications of HD DVD that limits the quality, it is the ears and eyes of the movie studio staff. Are the ears and eyes better over at the blu-ray supporting movie companies?

I don't know why you think that blu-ray has better audio codecs, so far blu-ray has had worse on many titles using Dolby Digital while HD DVD has used Dolby Digital Plus. Already, HD DVD has even delivered titles with lossless audio that is true to the master audio, i.e. no need for uncompressed LPCM to deliver lossless sound. Blu-ray has yet to deliver this advanced audio codecs.

There is no reason to believe that blu-ray will be better (only equally good) since the difference between HD DVD and blu-ray will be a subjective one made by the guys and girls at the movie studios.

Also remember: More lossless audio compression = more room for better video quality.