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Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs 334

Posted by Zonk from the really-pretty-games dept.
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.'"
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Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs More

Games Already Filling Blu-Ray Discs

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  • Wow...25 Gigs of content! (Score:4, Funny)

    by sgant ( 178166 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:32AM (#16467337) Homepage Journal
    Though look at it this way, 25 gigs of crap is still crap.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Canthros ( 5769 )
      Yes, but now it's 25 gigs of crap that takes all afternoon to load!
      • That's my biggest fear as far as the PS3 is concerned. Nintendo opted out of optical media on the N64 because at that point optical media wasn't ready, and they didn't want their customers to have 2 minute loading times on games. With the GC, loading times were really good on most titles, and almost non-existent most of the games I've tried. However, whenever i've played PS2, I get really frustrated at the load times. I'm not sure how much faster Blu-Ray is than DVD in read speeds, but I've head that the

    • Re:Something's law (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Bastian ( 66383 )
      Is there a name yet for "The enjoyability of the game is inversely proportional to its graphic design and art budget"?

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Necreia ( 954727 )
      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 gre
    • Nah, they'll make it up with volume.

  • Interesting.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tont0r ( 868535 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:33AM (#16467371)
    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.
    • True, and it happens quite often. When you build new roads, you don't reduce congestion (except in the short term), you just encouarge more people to live along those roads, until you're back where you started. I've always thought it would make more sense to toll the roads at peak hours until congestion isn't much higher than off peak hours. That -- the hit to the pocketbook -- would do what petty little "tax credits to buses" or what not, haven't done, which is to get people to use more efficient forms
      • But back to the topic of BluRay: this seems to me like they're just not even trying to use better compression algorithms.


        That's the whole point! Instead of icky, downsampled, compressed images and sound we'll finally have high-quality stuff.
        • But back to the topic of BluRay: this seems to me like they're just not even trying to use better compression algorithms.
          That's the whole point! Instead of icky, downsampled, compressed images and sound we'll finally have high-quality stuff.

          He said "better", not more lossy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by jandrese ( 485 )
        I've always thought that "building bigger roads just causes more people to move there" argument was flawed myself. Those people didn't appear out of nowhere, they were going to have to live somewhere, the fact that they filled in the area just as the road expanded probably doesn't mean that much either, since road expansions are often correlated with new housing developments anyway.

        It drives me nuts when the anti-suburban-sprawl types try to argue that everybody should live in the city along the mass tra

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 )
          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 wonde

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jandrese ( 485 )
            All I want is to be able to live in a large city, affordably, without an extremely long, stressful commute across overcrowed roads.
            And a pony.
            • Normally, I'd ignore crap like this until you actually make an argument, but since you'll probably get modded up and I know what you're getting at anyway, I'll respond.

              I understand that there are tradeoffs between those goods, but my point was you can satisfy those specific constraints by sacrificing elsewhere -- specifically, the free peak-hour roads. If roads were priced in accordance with demand (i.e., such that peak hour is only a little worse than off peak), housing would still be cheaper (can pack p

          • Would it be that bad if tolls made it so you could take a private bus to work in 1/3 of the time

            Considering that public transport doesn't (and never has), served my route to work at the times I work, all tolls would do would cost me even more money. There are already busses, but no-one uses them because they're slow, never go where you want them to go, and are full of criminals.

            I'm not saying people "should" ride buses, or that they should be forced into it specifically, or that there should be some petty s

            • Considering that public transport doesn't (and never has), served my route to work at the times I work, all tolls would do would cost me even more money. There are already busses, but no-one uses them because they're slow, never go where you want them to go, and are full of criminals.

              Would you kindly consider the impacts of a large portion of the population suddenly wanting to travel by bus? Is it that hard to believe that, with real, middle-class people actually using buses now, that private companies wou
      • I don't think that people would not drive on the roads if they tolled them on peak hours. People need to get to work when they need to get to work. I'm sure that cutting your travel time in half would be enough incentive to travel during off-peak hours. If people didn't have to travel during peak hours, than they wouldn't.
        • don't think that people would not drive on the roads if they tolled them on peak hours.

          Sorry if I wasn't clear: the idea was that they would *use* the roads, but not necessarily as drivers, i.e., they would use transportation methods that cause less traffic per person, such as buses and vanpools.
      • I've always thought it would make more sense to toll the roads at peak hours until congestion isn't much higher than off peak hours.


        Yeah, financially punish people for going to work. Brilliant. Just so the rich in their SUVs have more room on the roads on the way to the golf course^W^Wboard room.
        • I don't see how this "punishes people for going to work" any more than it "punishes people for going to work" that they have to pay for any good. With roads, demand is well exceeding supply.

          Nor do I think you understand the dynamics of it all: yes, you pay a monetary cost. You also have significantly less commute time. Same work hours, more opporunity to earn or have free time. That's why I say people aren't considering the alternatives appropriately: instead of paying peak-hour prices, you prefer the l
    • How many nerds remember getting their first 1-gigabyte hard disk, and being amazed at ever having to use so much space? Or finally being able to burn your own 700 meg CD-roms? How many older nerds remember enthusiastically upgrading to a 40 meg hard drive after a lifetime of using floppies? As the tech grows, the platform supports more infrastructure (data) to drive it, which eventually outgrows the platform and forces the tech to grow further, and so on.

  • No real surprise (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cjmnews ( 672731 )
    HD-DVD movies are filling their disks, without the extras, already too.

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

    Let's just hope the game play is good enough to justify all that additional sound and 1080p graphics.

    • Re:No real surprise (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:36AM (#16468547) Homepage
      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.
    • I usually hear the law expressed as "Data expands to fill its container", sort of like air.

  • You know... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Kirin Fenrir ( 1001780 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:36AM (#16467415)
    People piss and moan about Blu-Ray, "You don't need it!" or "Most people don't have HDTV's!" Well, some of us do. And if you don't, I'd hope that you'd prefer a format that will upgrade with you should you ever choose to get a 7.1 audio system or HDTV. When you're posting your Sony flames, just think of the irony in Slashdot posters arguing that we don't need a new technology.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by MeanderingMind ( 884641 )
      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

    • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:02AM (#16467877)
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MBCook ( 132727 )

        That's a tangent to the conversation. Blu-ray may end up flopping for movies (I doubt it, but it may).

        We are talking about a GAME CONSOLE FORMAT. Your comments don't make much sense in that context. What you are saying is basically...

        I bought a Dreamcast from Sega but the GD-ROM format flopped and no movies were released for it.

        What does it matter if they are releasing things on Blu-ray, DVD, Hard Drive, HD-DVD, or punch cards? The point of the article is that next-gen games are already taking up 25 gigs

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by MBCook ( 132727 )
            Just because cut-scenes are the most obvious way to use space that's mentioned does not mean that's all that they are being used for. Think of playing a FF game where EVERYONE talks. Every throw away line, not just the important conversation. Also, with all that new geometry (which takes space) you also have all the high-rez textures so things look good when you're NOT 10 feet away.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
          "The point of the article is that next-gen games are already taking up 25 gigs so Sony's move to not use DVDs (like MS did) seems like it was a very smart on"

          You're assuming that the games would be spanning 25 GB even if BluRay weren't used. From what I've seen, code (especially from game companies) is like a gas: it always fills up and takes the shape of the container it's in.

          (And, running with that metaphor, with such a large container, the near-vacuum within will leave gamers gasping for true content.)

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by wuie ( 884711 )
          What does it matter if they are releasing things on Blu-ray, DVD, Hard Drive, HD-DVD, or punch cards?

          Oh hell no. By the time that I'd load San Andreas from punch cards, I could have stolen a car, gone to jail, and been released.
    • I have a very nice 1080i plasma and a 7.1 audio sytem. Care to venture a guess as to what console I have on pre-order? Wii will be happy to give you an answer. To be honest, I love my discoveryHD and my upconverting DVD player. I watch movies/tv and a huge part of that is the visuals, but I rarely even notice a games graphics. I suppose the other half of my reasoning is that I'm tired of re-purchasing media. Why is it so difficult for them to understand that I want to be able to download media and kee

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Guppy06 ( 410832 )
      "Well, some of us do."

      I'm sure they do. However, the question is ultimately whether or not that "some" can support a console to the point of making it mainstream. Because unless these 25 GB games are anthologies of PS or PS2 games stamped on one disk, that "some" is all that these new games are aiming for, the ones that can actually utilize that new content.

      I have yet to see any reason to believe that the PlayStation 3 is aiming for anybody but the old NeoGeo market.

      "I'd hope that you'd prefer a format th
    • By the time most people have HDTVs, we'll be three or four console generations further along anyway. Not only do the prices have to come down massively, but a lot more content has to be produced in HDTV to make it viable, and they have to make smaller versions (believe it or not but most people don't even have the room for a 50" TV).
    • "When you're posting your Sony flames, just think of the irony in Slashdot posters arguing that we don't need a new technology."

      That's a nice little over-simplification. Let me clarify that for you: "I don't need to spend $600 for that new technology."

      The bitching about Blu-Ray is over the price. I'm not anti-Sony, I'm just not impressed with what $500-$600 buys me.
  • partially it'll be down to gameplay benefits as well - more levels, more detail, richer experiences
    For a $500 system with $60 games, the extra space should be COMPLETELY for the gameplay benefits. Nobody cares about a cut-scene in 1080p and 7.1, really nobody.
    • I know a lot of people who would disagree with you. They think cut scenes and graphics are very important.

      Personally I think they could probably save a fuck load of space (money and time) if they just did the cut scenes in real time RE4 (Gamecube) style.

    • Re:Gameplay (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SpeedyDX ( 1014595 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <xineohpydeeps>> on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:08AM (#16467977)
      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.
    • Nobody cares about a cut-scene in 1080p and 7.1, really nobody.

      The reality is that the next-gen consoles are competing in the market for HD content:

      The NFL on cable or satellite. The video rental from Netflix.

      Once you make the commitment to wide screen, large screen, HD projection and theatrical quality digital sound you don't look back. No more than the PC gamer looks back to the MIDI soundtracks and 320x240 graphics of Doom.

  • In other words...just like every other generation? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RichardMarks ( 1011125 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:38AM (#16467461)
    New generation of console hardware arrives with more storage. Developers use the space.

    Shocking.

  • cutscenes (Score:2, Insightful)

    by name*censored* ( 884880 )
    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!"

    • Re:cutscenes (Score:4, Interesting)

      by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:24AM (#16468283) Homepage
      Prerended cutscenes are so 90s. I though the PS3 was powerful enough to give us high quality in game rendered cut scenes.
      Besides that it's always nicer to stay within the game's world representation instead of getting a completely different view during the game.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by crswanny ( 949449 )
      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!
    • On the crummy HD-ready TVs people have bought - I sure won't be thinking "what quality".

      The HD-ready logo used here is not very helpful - all it tells you is that if you stick in a HD signal, you get a picture. So many of the models being sold here for 1000 and more are crummy low-res sets, that don't even handle normal TV (not good on the interlaced PAL) and rescale *both* 720p and 1080i. For some, the only way you would get native res is to feed it with a low-res signal from your PC.

      Samsung have a nice CR

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by The-Bus ( 138060 )
        Your post is unfortunate. You're judging technology based on store demos and people who have no idea how to take advantage of the technology. Being in PAL land doesn't make it any easier.

        In the US, you can get a decent TV for $1000 or less and if you know what you're doing, set it up so the picture is absolutely phenomenal.

        I do agree that waiting isn't a bad idea. If it seems to expensive or not good enough yet, wait a year or two. And no, there is no need to have a PC to have a 360. It can operate without

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Yvan256 ( 722131 )
      Shouldn't the cutscenes be rendered real-time with the game engine anyway? Isn't the PS3 supposed to have "near photo-realistic graphics"? That's not good enough for cutscenes?

  • W000t (Score:5, Funny)

    by xtracto ( 837672 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:40AM (#16467491) Journal
    W00t for the 3122131 maps of 8000x6000 sqr ft Doom 6!!! I for one cant wait to shoot-shoot-jump-shoot-jump-shoot-run-strafe-shoot -crouch-shoot-shoot-shoot-jump-shoot-jump-shoot-ru n-strafe-shoot-crouch-shoot-shoot-shoot-jump-shoot -jump-shoot-run-strafe-shoot-crouch-shoot-
    shoot-shoot-jump-shoot-jump-shoot-run-strafe-shoot -crouch-shoot-shoot-shoot-jump-shoot-jump-shoot-ru n-strafe-shoot-crouch-shoot-
    at 1620x1280 !!

    Seriously, is anyone still turned on by this??

    (sorry this is a not-so-old-man rant).

    I am waiting for my humble Wii =o)

  • My dissapointment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Taulin ( 569009 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:41AM (#16467509) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Ford Prefect ( 8777 )
      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.

      Truetype fonts for text and other graphical elements? That's so last-generation [valvesoftware.com]...

      Also, don't stab me in the eyes for this - but Flash could be an interesting addition for a game's controllable panels, interfaces and so on. Doom 3 was nearly there, but if you manage to get the game to run at a high resolution, you'll soon discover that it's all based around relat
  • '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...

    And yet, with all that, still no content. You can fit--how many Libraries of Congress?--onto that disc, and they're just pouring in huge textures and cinematics, higher resolution audio. Not that I'm saying that video games need to have a lot o

    • Sony's engineer's are touting how much they are giving the developers power to do what they want to.

      It comes down to this from the article:
      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.

      Having better hardware does not necessarily make the games less innovative. I don't see why people seem to think it's mutually exclusive. I see few drawbacks to more powerful hardware in the longterm that will come down i

  • Cut Scenes (Score:4, Insightful)

    by BenjyD ( 316700 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:43AM (#16467561)
    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: (Score:2, Informative)

      by j00r0m4nc3r ( 959816 )
      Why waste disk space on movie files when doing it with the game engine is smaller and better for immersion?

      Companies do this because it's easier/cheaper to farm out cutscenes to an animation studio than to program a good scripting system and pay people to program in the cutscenes.
    • Although, Max Payne's "cutscenes" did a lot for the feel and immersion of the story, I felt. But then they took even less space, so I guess that doesn't really refute the argument...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by British ( 51765 )
      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?

      If there were no cutscenes in games, what the heck would reviewers use for "screenshots"(and oh do I liberally use those quotes) in magazines and websites? What? UH, ACTUAL screenshots? NO way!

  • Alternate Explanation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mikeisme77 ( 938209 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @08:46AM (#16467603) Homepage Journal
    Maybe, due to the compression problems of the Blu-Ray disc (or PS3, I forget which and too early in the morning for me to look it up) the discs are being filled because they simply aren't compressing the data as much as something that they would put on a DVD. Alternatively, maybe they are filling the discs by not compressing them simply for propaganda such as this... I don't doubt that Blu-Ray/HD-DVD discs will, indeed, eventually be necessary and very beneficial to games (short of everything being downloaded to the HDD)--especially for full 1080P. I just doubt that any game currently being made REALLY fills the entire thing using the same level of compression as a DVD (especially since I was under the [mis]understanding) that few, if any, of the launch titles would actually be full 1080p.
    • Or maybe, just maybe, there is no vast conspiracy to fill disks with needless fluff and instead they are actually using the space for game content.

      Don't forget they may in fact be reducing compression to free the CPU for other work like AI...

      To paraphrase another poster, it's hilarious to see all the "A DVD of space outg to be enough of anyone" style quotes going around Slashdot. You'd think the site was devoted to Amish techophobes whenever we see a Sony story.

  • typical (Score:3, Funny)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:00AM (#16467859)
    That seems like a typical response from Sony these days. When asked whether they're simply going to use the space for high-def cutscenes, they respond with, "No, we're going to synergistically leverage the high capacity and bandwidth of the new BluRay media format to deliver super high-resolution full motion video and multichannel surround audio."

  • Duplication... Seek Times (Score:5, Informative)

    by adam31 ( 817930 ) <<adam31> <at> <gmail.com>> on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:02AM (#16467891)
    One key piece here is the duplication of game data. See, while the disc capacity and the amount of RAM to be filled have increased 15x, the disc bandwidth and seek times have improved only ~2x. So there is this huge bottleneck getting data into the game.


    Now, you commonly have models that reference the same textures or normal maps, and these models might be very far away from each other in the game world. You could seek around scooping up all the shared resources, but that would be really slow and loading times would be attrocious. What you really want to do is load up a giant chunk of data pre-packaged, and the only way to do that is to duplicate the shared resource. With giant disc capacity, there really is no downside except that some data gets squished further toward the "slow-read" inner ring.

    Higher capacity helps gameplay by improving load times, allowing denser data to be loaded and flushed more frequently, and making the game world richer. As far as 25 gigs of pre-rendered movies goes, I don't think you'll see that. It's just not cost effective. Those cinematics cost an ass-full of money, and maybe a few games will go nuts with it. But it certainly won't be the state of the industry in 2 years or anything.

    • Re:Duplication... Seek Times (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @10:13AM (#16469285)
      You sound like a game dev who has actually had to work with streaming content on a console :) I have tried to explain this exact same thing to so many people, and they just don't understand. Like the other response to this message.

      In response to the other guy:

      Yes, the disc based media used by all consoles has a directory, but no sane developer who wants decent load times would even think of using it. You will notice that most games do not have a million little files in their directories. The files are packed into large archive files. Most of these archive files contain all of the assets needed for a certain level, or zone. The developer will usually have the console read the sector list once, cache it in memory, and then seek to the archive file they want to use. They then do a read of that entire archive file into memory. This is done because Seeks (the drive finding a specific sector) is orders of maginitude slower than doing a read. If you tried to seek across the disc for every little bit of data you needed, your load times would be total ass.

      In the PS2, sony went so far as to allow game data to be multiplexed into Cinematic sequences. This meant the game was loading while you were watching an intro. (The next time you find yourself complaining that you can't skip an FMV on the Ps2.. this is probably the reason why.)

      As for everyone else who seems to be posting today:

      I don't understand why people think that more space is useless. I know they don't like the cost of the PS3, and seem to attribute that to the bluray drive, but, as everyone has seen, optical drives are one of the fastest things to become commodity components. How cheap can you buy a DVD drive for now?

      Sony positions their consoles for a 10 year lifespan. They would be shooting themselves in the foot if they were not forward looking. Believe it or not, console software hits peak sales about 5-6 years after the consoles are introduced to the market. Will you have an HDTV in 5 years? Will you expect to have content that supports this? With Blue lasers being commodity at this point in time, would you pick up a PS3 for $150-$200? I'm sure millions will, and this is what sony is banking on. The console race is not about who can sell the most launch units. It's about who has the the consoles the casual buyer wants 5 years after launch. The first 5 years of a consoles lifetime is a time of building userbase, and a title library. Sony understands this. Microsoft chose (at least this generation) to stop driving XBOX sales. Sony will be making money on the PS2 for 5 more years, as they find their way to other consumers as hand me downs. (This is why older consoles have a much larger selection of children's titles)

      The anti-sony "me-too" sentiment on these boards really shocks me. Sony has been like a multi-headed hydra at times, true, with each division having different agendas. I assure you, SCEA, and Sony electronics had nothing to do with Rootkit DRM, and were probably not even aware of it. That was a brainchild of Sony Music/Columbia. SCEA has kept the entire corporation afloat for years.

      I am just as excited as anyone else here about the wii. I am going to purchase one and enjoy it, and it will sit next to my XBOX360. The PS3 is a little expensive for me right now, so I am probably going to wait a few months before I get one. Does that mean that sony is doomed? Not at all. But 3 years from now, I do believe that the WII will be relinquished to the kids' room, where the only Standard Def TV in the house is. And the Xbox360 will have a whole lot of disc switching, or less content/quality due to size constraints. And the PS3 will be the only one left that really fills the needs of the millions of people who will be purchasing HDTVs because of SDTV's impending obsolesence.

      Just my 2 cents. Not that anyone will read this because i'm posting as an AC :P

  • .kkrieger, anyone? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Stormwatch ( 703920 ) <[moc.liamtoh] [ta] [oarigogirdor]> on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:12AM (#16468051) Homepage
    Check it here. [212.202.219.162] A fully modern-looking first person shooter, in 96kB. Procedural synthesis for teh win!
    • Procedurally-generated content is an amazing philosophy in gaming - whether for making fantastic textures fit on a pin-head (as in .kkrieger) or for making a game truly unique and customisable to the nth degree (as in Spore), the possibilities seem to be endless! It just means, sadly, decent programming and careful design from the start.

      Which, it seems, is certainly not the norm among games developers these days.

  • I read the title and the first thing I thought was shovelware [google.com]. Even if it's just one big title like a huge Final Fantasy Epic, it still smacks of "we have to add 1.2 GB more stuff, I don't care if it's pencil-sketched drug-induced paranoia-invoking laser light shows, just fill the frickin' disc."

  • Next-gen FPS's (Score:4, Funny)

    by rlp ( 11898 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:23AM (#16468277)
    Yes, your character may be moving through a dimly lit room where you can't see anything. But, your character is moving through a dimly lit room where you can't see anything at 1080p!!
  • I mean, I'm no game development expert, but 25GB of assets? I'm sure a good portion of that is video content just encoded at super high bitrate, but if by chance half of that is game assets, wouldn't that lead to horrid load times?

  • "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;"

    Translation: "Are we filling the disks up with cutscenes? Damn right we are!"

    Why else would reviewers be describing the SIXAXIS as "cheap" or
  • 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 c

    • I disagree. High res textures can be nice (providing the card gives a good FPS and the load times dont go crazy), but I wish games would have LESS audio than they do now.
      Heres a typical game of battlefield 2 in audio-only-o-vision

      "Get Ammo here!"
      "enemy infantry spotted"
      "ok"
      "thanks"
      "we are losing this battle! start fighting or ill find someone who can!"
      "enemy boat spotted"
      "i need a medic here"
      "thanks"
      "ok"
      "thanks"
      "get ammo here"
      "im bingo on ammo"

      elapsed time... maybe 10 seconds. If I wanted to endure constant

  • DS ROM's are a couple megabytes. Xbox 360 discs can hold .8GB. PSP ROM's can be up to 1.8GB. PS3 games can be up to 25GB. Are PS3 games 10,000 times more enjoyable than DS games? Are some DS games not more enjoyable than an average PS3 game?

    Larger ROM size allows the game creator more flexiblity, but there's not necessarily a correlation between ROM size and more enjoyable games.

  • How fast is it gonna read those movies... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by aapold ( 753705 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2006 @09:47AM (#16468779) Homepage Journal
    Already in something like Dead Rising, it is annoying to have to wait for the cutscenes to load. If these scenes are gonna be that much bigger in 1080p (and I have a 720p tv), are they going to take that much longer to queue up? I'm assuming the drive has to read movies fast enough to play them at your standard 29.97 fps (no, wait, progressive scan so I guess its 59.94 fps) when showing the movie, so I'd guess it is fast enough for that. Right?

    Say something nice about sony? okay... um... Sony-Ericcson makes good phones.

  • 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 t

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