Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs

Eurogamer reports that according to Sony's Phil Harrison, PS3 launch titles are already getting close to the 25 GB limit on Blu-Ray discs. He views this as a positive thing, and suggests that the company will up the limit on the media format to 50 GB sometime next year. From the article: "Harrison also responded to questioning about the claim that the capacity of Blu-Ray will be used simply to provide more high definition movie sequences, effectively filling the discs - and games - with non-interactive content. 'It's not just about graphics,' he said. 'It's about 7.1 audio, it's about speech, it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game; it's high-res textures, it's animation, it's everything that goes into making a very rich and varied next-gen experience. Partly it's visual, partly it's sound, and partially it'll be down to gameplay benefits as well - more levels, more detail, richer experiences.'"

Interesting..

[tont0r]

It reminds of me when there is a road that is far too busy, then they spend 5+ years expanding the road, only to have it not be wide enough for the new amount of traffic.

In other words...just like every other generation?

[RichardMarks]

New generation of console hardware arrives with more storage. Developers use the space.

Shocking.

cutscenes

[name*censored*]

I don't see why they don't just downgrade the cutscene quality; barely anyone watches the cutscenes more than once anyway. I can't imagine sitting there thinking "WOW LQQK AT THE 1080i CUTSCENE!!!! WHAT QUALITY!!!!!!". I CAN, however, imagine sitting there thinking "come on, come on, get back to the game already!"

My dissapointment

[Taulin]

The one thing I was dissapointed with at the TGS was that the next gen titles still used old techniques. For example, instead of using true type fonts that use vectors, and would look nice at any resolution and scale, they still used plain old bitmaps. Even worse, proper physics are still not used in games like Virtua Fighter 5 and you still get a foot through the stomach. I would expect them to use some of that extra power to calculate and fix some of these artifacts of the elder systems. If not from these first gen titles, then from the next batch at least.

Cut Scenes

[BenjyD]

it's about having up to 1080p movies built into the game;

I was hoping that the power of the next-gen consoles would mean developers finally stop using cut-scene movies and do everything in the game engine. Why waste disk space on movie files when doing it with the game engine is smaller and better for immersion?

Re:You know...

[MeanderingMind]

There's a reason people piss and moan, and it isn't because Blu-Ray sucks. Blu-Ray isn't bad, but that doesn't make it desirable. DVDs have only very recently become truly ubiquitous, and many people have just finished assembling DVD collections. The idea of buying all of that again without any immediate benefit save "Someday when I get an HDTV this will benefit me" isn't very compelling. Even less so because of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray confusion.

I have an HDTV, and I'm sticking with regular DVDs until there's a clear winner for the next format and maybe even afterwards. The look great, maybe not fantastic, but good enough that rebuying my movie collection isn't appealing.

There isn't any irony in saying we don't need a new technology when we don't.

Re:Gameplay

[SpeedyDX]

Nice job on the bias/assumption. I, and a ton of people I know, play the game SOLELY for the cutscenes, storyline, voiceovers, etc. The gameplay is more of a bonus for us. It all comes down to preference. I play through FF games just to experience the story. We play games as a form of interactive movie, if you will. And if this will enhance our experience, good! Just because new technology doesn't enhance YOUR experience, it doesn't mean it doesn't enhance ANYONE'S experience.

Re:Something's law

[Bastian]

Is there a name yet for "The enjoyability of the game is inversely proportional to its graphic design and art budget"?

Re:cutscenes

[crswanny]

This is why I hate EA games. The inability to skip through the opening EA Logo splash screen, or when playing through a game numerous times and having to watch the same cutscenes over and over is such a pain in the butt. Sure, some I may want to watch additional times but for the love of everything holy, when I die on a level and need to attempt it again, don't make me watch the same opening video every f'ing time!

overall experience

[the dark hero]

You can say all you want about a lack of compelling content, but saying no one cares about 7.1 sound and 1080i cutscenes is a bit ironic because no one cares about your bitch rants.

The truth is, sound does enhance the overall experience as well as the visuals. Voice overs (if done well) can add dimension to characters. Yea sure, none of that really stands out if the game is crap, but that's not the point. I'm not such a technphile, but one reason i play games is for the immersion or the escapism. If added capacity on a disc will enhance my gaming experience, then i welcome the change.

Re:Something's law

[MindStalker]

That depends upon if nudity is involved in this budget..
Oh gameplay enjoyment... that kind of enjoyment.. I get you..

Re:No real surprise

[Ford Prefect]

It's kind of like a law, give them space, and it will be filled.

Yup. Take the original Halo for the Xbox as an example. Makes full use of the DVD storage - so much so that it almost fills a disc. Numerous gigabytes of content, with a fair amount duplicated between different maps.

Now compare with the PC version of Halo. Comes on a single CD - and contains more content too. Much less than a gigabyte, thanks to heavy compression, reuse of textures, sounds and models between maps, etc. Much more efficiently laid out, but requires a decent amount of processing grunt to decompress to a computer's hard disk. This could have been done with the Xbox version, but there simply wasn't the need. There was space available on the DVD, and there wasn't so much content to justify more aggressive compression...

It'll be more interesting to see how a blockbuster PS3 title of, say, 2010 might fill that 25 or 50 gigabytes of space. Assuming, of course, that Sony hasn't collapsed into bankruptcy and the ColecoVision 3000 isn't ruling the roost with its authentic rat-neuron-powered parasympathetic whatsit-matic gameplay.

Re:Interesting..

[UbuntuDupe]

I don't know if you're calling me an "anti-suburban-sprawl type" who argues "that everybody should live in the city along the mass transit lines", but that would be an error. All I want is to be able to live in a large city, affordably, without an extremely long, stressful commute across overcrowed roads. I'm fortunate in that I found work in a smaller (though still internationally famous) city that doesn't have traffic problems, but it would be nice if I didn't have to live so far out to avoid it.

I wonder if people really consider their alternatives appropriately. For "free" roads into town, you get a long, stressful, ~2 hour/day commute. How much of your life are you missing because your commute is ~3 times longer that it has to be? Would it be that bad if tolls made it so you could take a private bus to work in 1/3 of the time (or drive alone if you could afford the tolls)? (NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO ALWAYS MISREAD MY POSTS: I'm not saying people "should" ride buses, or that they should be forced into it specifically, or that there should be some petty system of incentives to push them in that direction. I just expect that to be the emergent result of appropriate peak hour pricing.)

As for "more roads bring congestion", I don't see why it's hard to grasp. At the moment the roads are widened, the farther-out sites are more attractive: "Hey, cheaper land, farther from the rabble, same commute time." But then EVERYONE thinks this way, and the aggregate effect is that those wider roads are no longer so sparse. You can ask anyone involved in transportation engineering for 20 years, and they'll tell you the same thing.

And as for better city-living alternatives, the sprawl-hating power-trippers are part of the problem in wanting to micromanage every such development, even though developers would love to build nicer, denser, safer housing there.

Re:Wow...25 Gigs of content!

[Necreia]

Okay, what's the deal with this.
1- Game developers no longer have to struggle to stuff textures / data / whatnot into small packages and use customer extractors in order to not run out of space.
2- Pre-instantiated level data (ect) can be stored in the free space, cutting down in loading speed in some commonly repeated code blocks.

That's not all, but I am EXTREMELY excited about these in particular as a developer. This gives a lot more workroom to fight less with hardware restrictions in order to make a great game... meaning they can work more on a great game!

What's with /. lately? I know that bashing Sony is the 'cool' thing to do, especially when people karma whore-- but is that really worth rejecting expansions in technology?

Don't people remember "Nobody will ever need more than 640k RAM!" -- Bill Gates 1981?

Quality not quantity..

[mattpointblank]

Half-Life 2, surely a game most /.ers can agree was (one of?) the best in recent years, takes up only a few gigabytes on disk. Its graphics still look better than anything I've seen a console render, and its gameplay is a thousand times better than most games that rely on flashy FMV sequences to tell the story. What developers should be focusing on is not how many flashy videos that are not interactive they can cram onto a disc, but how good a game they can create with these wider limitations. If I wanted to see high-quality computer generated movies I'd watch Star Wars.

Re:Remember

[Maxwell]

Ah... Remember back in the day when games didn't worry about having THE flashiest graphics, but rather focused on being, oh i don't know, good games? I mean how much of that 25 gig do you think is actually playable content? How much of that game is actually good stuff?

Back in the day, games were ALWAYS worried about the flashiest graphics. Always. Every game had screen shots on the back of the box, usually picked from the best of many supported platforms, and bragged about their great graphics. I remember what a 'waste' VGA was and what an outcry there was about VGA games 'ruining the game with fancy graphics'. Who needs 256 colors! it's about the gameplay, and 16color EGA games are just more fun!! Besides a 386 with a VGA card was outrageously expensive.

Don't even get me started on CD ROM based games - what an outrage, 800MB of PURE UTTER CRAP how could they possibly need all that space? it must be junk!

etc, etc.

10 years from now, when BlueRay2 is out we will here the same old complaints...1Terabyte? why? oh why? I had tons of fun playing 4.3G DVD's..developers are just greedy and lazy.

Duh.

Duh.

JON

Re:Wow...25 Gigs of content!

[JohnSearle]

I'll agree with you to a certain degree... I was more defending Sony's system as a whole, and not just their increasing the storage capacity of the system. It seems to me that what Sony has done, or is doing, is increasing all of the aspects that are found in a traditional console system (aside from physical interface), whereas Nintendo has instead opted to focus on the physical interface. Both of these choices seem to me to be putting tools into the hands of the actual game makers. As others have said, the storage capacity could be used for more than just cinematics, but when you combine storage with sheer power, that seems to me to be where they are heading... towards immersion.

I'm sorry if you thought I was only talking merely about storage capacity, I was more focusing on the tactics of each company (replying to the parent thread), rather than the overall point of this whole article (storage capacity)...

- John

Re:Something's law

[WilliamSChips]

I had an order of magnitude more fun with Half-Life 2 than Half-Life 1. Guess which one had a bigger graphics budget. Sure, HL2 would still be fun even if it didn't have the awesome graphics(gravity guns for the win) but your statement rings of argumentatum ad foeditatem.(argument towards ugliness)

Re:Cut Scenes

[WilliamSChips]

I wish more games would do things the way the old Command and Conquer games(up to RA2) did things--with real actors. Tiberian Sun even had James Earl Jones.