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Xbox 360 vs PS3 vs Wii (all discussion here please)
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Unfortunately Wikipedia's answer is a little too vague, MGS4 did ship with uncompressed audio which, if you're familiar with such things, is bloody huge.I_p_freely wrote: »Heres a quote from wikipedia...
"Guns of the Patriots is the first PS3 game that uses a full 50GB dual layer Blu-ray Disc, even after extensive efforts in data compression."
I_p_freely wrote: »So even MGS4 was heavily compressed. I also mentioned above that going forward the size of DVDs will limit game sizes. Doesnt mean that a game has to fill a whole BD. The budget may not allow that size of game for many years but going forward games are only going to get bigger in size so BD is a better option. Maybe xbox will bring out a Blu-ray player ad on but I think they would charge a lot for it considering that their wifi thing costs so much.
Indeed, however the argument was, and indeed still is, that BR technology is not really required for this generation. If one needs to use lossless audio to fill it up then this only proves the point. This is on top of the fact that, bar MGS4, no other PS3 title, exclusive or not, has come close to filling a BR disc.
This also nicely addresses your last point regarding MW2 - if a game really requires more space then it'll be spread across more discs as required. Therefore one can safely assume that MW2 didn't need more space so there was no point in making it bigger for the sake of it, especially when you consider the budget was already $40/50m.
Oh and Microsoft will not be bringing out a Bluray add-on for games.0 -
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Unfortunately Wikipedia's answer is a little too vague, MGS4 did ship with uncompressed audio which, if you're familiar with such things, is bloody huge.
Yes but I doesn't say whether it is just the uncompressed audio that filled most of the 50GBIndeed, however the argument was, and indeed still is, that BR technology is not really required for this generation. If one needs to use lossless audio to fill it up then this only proves the point. This is on top of the fact that, bar MGS4, no other PS3 title, exclusive or not, has come close to filling a BR disc.
How do you know other games havent come close to filling up a BD? I cant find details anywhere.
Others have said above that games for the Xbox have been compressed to fit a DVD... therefore wouldnt it be better to NOT compress files and put it on a BD? The games are the same price for Xbox and PS3. If games for the xbox are being compressed to fit on a DVD then is a larger medium not required?This also nicely addresses your last point regarding MW2 - if a game really requires more space then it'll be spread across more discs as required. Therefore one can safely assume that MW2 didn't need more space so there was no point in making it bigger for the sake of it, especially when you consider the budget was already $40/50m.
The only dissapointing thing about MW2 is that it was soooo short. 40-50m invested for 6 hours of gameplay? My point is that with more space they could have made it longer by making each level bigger, they got that investment back in the first few days anyway.Oh and Microsoft will not be bringing out a Bluray add-on for games.
Fully agree! and wouldn't buy it anyway... has a PS3 also0 -
But the fact of the matter is, about half way through its life-cycle the console only has one title which has pushed its storage capacity and even that was due to its use of uncompressed audio, a practice which is completely unnecessary.I agree with everything else you said, but surely all that is required for BR to be needed in the above scenarios is if the exclusives take up substantially more than a dual layered DVD.
Or they could just use two DVD9s and avoid the costly expense of including a Bluray drive in the console?I mean just because the exclusives didn't fill a 50GB BR doesn't mean BR wasn't needed - I mean what if they used up 10-20gb? Then the BR was needed, surely?
Ah, but you're assuming my source is Wikipedia, which it isn't. It is a well known fact (although I admit to not having a source link for this on hand) that the audio was uncompressed and given that there is a hell of a lot of it in the game, it is obvious that it took up a huge amount of space.I_p_freely wrote: »Yes but I doesn't say whether it is just the uncompressed audio that filled most of the 50GB
Because I'm quite aware of how big particular assets are and how they contribute to the size of the games on disc. To give you some general examples...I_p_freely wrote: »How do you know other games havent come close to filling up a BD? I cant find details anywhere.
GTAIV - as big as it was it still fit on one DVD9. Now, consider the sheer amount of content in that game, both visual and audio.
Dragon Age - again, a massive game with plenty of content which also fit on one DVD9.
Lost Odyssey and the forthcoming Mass Effect 2 - both span multiple discs.
Now, the main difference between these games is that the latter two use a considerable amount of FMV, which is something that, in my opinion at least, is comparable to MGS4s use of uncompressed audio in the "I don't need expensive hardware to accomplish this when I can just add more discs" stakes.
Compression doesn't always mean bad however, it's about transparency with the source. If you can compress something so that it looks 95% as good as the original but only takes up 50% of the space then you'd be crazy not to do it.I_p_freely wrote: »Others have said above that games for the Xbox have been compressed to fit a DVD... therefore wouldnt it be better to NOT compress files and put it on a BD? The games are the same price for Xbox and PS3. If games for the xbox are being compressed to fit on a DVD then is a larger medium not required?
You mean with more time and hence money, they could have made each level bigger.I_p_freely wrote: »My point is that with more space they could have made it longer by making each level bigger
Please note that despite all the above, this isn't an attack on Bluray itself, far from it in fact. I merely think that it was introduced a generation too early and was another symptom of Sony trying to cram too much shiny hardware into the PS3 in order to beat the 360.0 -
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Ah, see this is where it gets interesting. I did in fact feel it was warranted then as, towards the end of the PS1 life cycle, we were seeing games ship on multiple CDs. Therefore it was clearly time to move onto a format with a higher capacity. However, as I outlined earlier, many expansive or technologically advanced games are still coming out on one DVD9 which implies that this generation may not have been the right time to introduce Bluray to consoles.More to the point though, were you as against the introduction of DVDs in the PS2 and XBOX? Did you advocated just including more discs then? Or do you simply feel it was warranted then and not now?
On a side note, there are several arguments you could make against this for the sake of Bluray adoption rates. For instance, it shipping in the PS3 helping end the horrible format war and emulating the successful takeup rate of the DVD when it shipped in the PS2. In the context of this debate, however, I'd regard that as irrelevant though.I_p_freely wrote: »...you make some good points but i think now the PS3 slim and Xbox 360 are similarly priced and that the Blu-ray player has more significance for a gaming point of view.I_p_freely wrote: »My point all along is that BD is good for future games as they grow and require more space.
Perhaps they are now but for the last 3 years the PS3 has floundered with its exorbitant price due the inclusion of this hardware which most developers are still struggling to get to grips with. It's all well and good saying it's great for future games but if for the first half of your consoles lifetime the games coming out aren't taking advantage of the hardware properly, be it processing power or storage capacity, then perhaps a re-evaluation of their approach to console design is needed. That being said, all of this is really a discussion on the merits of Sony's overall approach to this console generation which of course is far beyond the remit of this thread so perhaps it's best if we leave it at that.
Perhaps, but my point as stated above was that they could merely add another disc rather than require new hardware. Do note, the price of a blank DVD9 comes nowhere NEAR the price of a Bluray disc.I_p_freely wrote: »I would rather have a game not fill 50GB than be compressed onto ~10GB 0 -
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I wouldn't disagree with the figures, more their interpretation. The point I was making was that over the life cycle of the PS1 we saw a shift from 1CD to up to 4CD games, a normal progression given the lack of an alternate format in those years. Then with the release of the PS2 we saw a natural progression to DVDs, however, over it's life cycle we did not see any (or as many) multi-disc games, therefore we had clearly not reached a point where a shift to a new format was required. This is especially true when you consider that the vast majority of PS2 games came on DVD5 disks bar those small few which came on the larger capacity DVD9 ones which were either first party releases (oh look, there's MGS againI take your point that there were a few multi-disc games towards the end of the PS1 life cycle. However, I can really only think of the FF series, Command and Conquer and MGS. I am sure there were more but it is safe to put the % at something like <5% I feel (or would you disagree?).
) or those with significant FMV/audio components. This is of course not mentioning those PS2 games which came on CDs, including the awesome ICO.
And I would argue that the inclusion of a Bluray drive has hurt the PS3 up until this point as a gaming machine.It was simply progression - people would probably have argued DVD in consoles was a mistake if the PS2 had done badly and, conversly, I feel a more successful PS3 would have rendered the BR argument moot.
Again, given my point above I would counter that the validity of the progression is determined by the need for it.To sum that point up - the validity of the progression is determined by the success.
Completely agree with this but again, I (as well as many industry observers) feel that Sony marketed the PS3 incorrectly at first as some sort of all-in-one wonder machine and over time has retracted this back to it's true purpose - gaming machine with some bells and whistles such as Bluray.It is hard to keep the BR argument strictly to gaming since Sony obviously have a vested interest in the movie format and, to be frank, the BR player is an important aspect of a PS3 for the company's other divisions.
This is incorrect from a strictly development point of view. To put it quite simply, unless you fill a BR disc up with uncompressed video or audio you will not come close to filling it given today's budgets, both in terms of time and financials.Still though, I think the fact most game come on one DVD is simply a result of the 360's early dominance and the company's doing the economic thing. If the PS3 had been out first and 360 install rated has been lower etc I am sure we would see alot of games which would utitlise BR more.0 -
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People talking about games filling a BR disc should also remember that becasue of the BR's really slow disc read speed that there's a lot of data on the disc that stores nothing since it's used to increase disc access times. It was used all the time on last gen games. I'm pretty sure MGS4 used uncompressed textures as well and lossless 5.1 audio takes up a stupid amount of space. Considering how little game there was I wouldn't be surprised if it could have been fit on a DVD9 or at most 2 DVD 9s.
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With the story intact? What you think of the plot etc is one thing but I find it fairly pie in the sky talk to say that a game which came closest to filling up 50GB worth of space would fit on a single DVD, no matter how much lossless audio is on there.
Eh yeah I do believe it could be fit on 1-2 DVD9's considering there's no or very little HD video in the game. You'd be surprised by how much compression can reduce the size of massive uncompressed assets into a few megs and how far the technology has come. There's not a lot to MGS4. The game really is tiny so there's not a lot of texture and gameplay assets. Really all the storage is going towards audio which when uncompressed and in 5.1 takes up Gigs of space especially with the amount of it in MGS4. Audio compression has come a very long way and it could easily all be reduced to a gig or 2.
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Yes but not HD FMV, totally different ball game.I can't see your point here? FF games have lots of FMV, always have since optical disc became the standard. It is part of the game.
The DVD9 discs we're referring to here are 8.4GB.Again, lots of conjecture. Go find me what the breakdown is, I find it very hard to believe that MGS4 could be reduced to 5gb if the audio was not compressed. What is your definition of HD video? Simply that the game uses its own engine for the cutscenes rather than insert an actual video?
HD video wasn't the problem with MGS4, it was primarily the uncompressed 5.1 audio on the disc. Retr0gamer also mentioned uncompressed textures but I haven't seen any evidence of that myself.0 -
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Again, lots of conjecture. Go find me what the breakdown is, I find it very hard to believe that MGS4 could be reduced to 5gb if the audio was not compressed. What is your definition of HD video? Simply that the game uses its own engine for the cutscenes rather than insert an actual video?
Why are you always accusing me of conjecture? Okay lets throw out some evidence.
Kojima said that he had to cut material out of MGS4 because the 50Gb Blu-ray wasn't big enough. Kojima is also full of ****:
http://pocketnews.cocolog-nifty.com/pkns/images/2008/06/13/080613_01.png
http://www.n4g.com/up/30095/BlogPost-381030.aspx
MGS4 barely pushes 30Gb. Now since a DVD9 is 8.4Gb big even with uncompressed audio and the game engine and menues on each disc it would very easily fit on 4 DVD 9s. There would also be no need for the silly install times becasue the 360 is much better at streaming data due to it's faster optical drive.
Now if the audio is compressed which, making a very accurate educated guess, is 25Gb or more, the audio data could be compressed to 3 or 4 Gb, maybe less. You've then got a game that will fit on a single DVD9 with a little work.
I said the game might have uncompressed textures and I said this because other games like resistance used uncompressed assets. However thinking about how well MGS 4 looks and the fact that the PS3 only has a measly 256mb of video memory the textures are probably compressed.
The HD video I'm talking about is FMV video like in Final Fantasy games except at 720p/1080p. Even when compressed this takes up crazy amounts of space. MGS4 uses in game engine for it's cutscenes which take up a hell of a lot less.
I'm making that assumption that the game data for MGS4 is about 4Gb and I'm even exaggerating that a little. MGS 4 is a very small game. Each act only has about 6 areas in it that are incredibly small compared to levels in other games.
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Quite right, and it will do so with file sizes reduced to 50-60% of the originalEDIT: Actually it isn't is it? You are talking about a compression method which will "uncompress" the audio to exactly the same bit rate from the disc? Like in the article? I know nothing about lossless codeds.
Indeed, however these are also lossless codecs just like FLAC. This means that, once decoded, audio encoded with either of the above standards will sound the same as with FLAC.Then again, people swear by DTS-HD or HD DD in BR soundtracks.
So, why is FLAC not used instead of above? There are a few reasons for this ranging from hardware support to marketing budgets but they are mostly irrelevant in this context.0 -
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i remember when i used to be into the big console debate and all that back in teh day and such. but no offence to anyone posting in here, but i find the whole subject so utterly boring its become unreadable.
"Then again, people swear by DTS-HD or HD DD in BR soundtracks." the f**k is that?
"Indeed, however these are also lossless codecs just like FLAC" ????
at the end of the day, the only thing that will ever seperate the consoles for me is the games they have. and if i can get it on the pc then i wont care at all 0
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