Xbox 360 Elite

[Murgos]

If my Wii made coffee, I'd still use my actual coffee maker too. 

Heh, I'd say that's an 8.5 on the unintentional comedy scale.

[Big Gulp]

When Blue Dragon comes out as 3 DVDs, it's going to be an annoyance that Sony found a solution for but will still be on DVD due to the platform.

And that only affects gamers who are into Japanese man-boy pedophilia.  The rest of us can happily chug along on regular old DVD.

I play games to play games, not to watch shitty anime cinematics that I wouldn't watch on regular television because I'm not a deviated prevert.

[schild]

What the fuck are you talking about? It's Uematsu, Sakaguchi, and Toriyama. Don't be a moron.

[Big Gulp]

What the fuck are you talking about? It's Uematsu, Sakaguchi, and Toriyama. Don't be a moron.

See, now you just sound like Charlie Brown's mother.  I know your lips are moving, but it's all bells and whistles to me.

[stray]

Until then, this is a bloatware tack on.  Sony's intent by selling Blu-Ray players at a higher price point than the damn PS3 is to get movie goers into gaming, and gamers into their movie standard so they can profit.  Good for Sony.  Not so good for me.  It's not even just the cost of the PS3; it's the cost of a HDTV, a PS3, cabling, and cable TV.  It's not there yet.  If it is for you that's fine, but don't say it's a "no brainer".  Quite a few people are just not interested at this point.

If you thought I was trying to persuade you in particular to get it, then don't. Far from it. I'm just making a case for BD in general.

[EDIT]

Also, I meant that it was a no brainer for how it benefits games. Not you. More storage is good, mmkay.

[Ironwood]

What the fuck are you talking about? It's Uematsu, Sakaguchi, and Toriyama. Don't be a moron.

See, now you just sound like Charlie Brown's mother.  I know your lips are moving, but it's all bells and whistles to me.

What an image.  :)

[Roac]

Also, I meant that it was a no brainer for how it benefits games. Not you. More storage is good, mmkay.

Sure, and Sony could've gone for 2x the storage.  Or 10x.  And the price would have in turn gone up 4x.  Or 50x.  Wouldn't that even be better?  Or just start shipping games on their own external USB drives, and size them however you like.  Not cheap, but because more is always a no brainer, Sony was a tard for not doing that. 

[stray]

Man, cut it out. Stick to your argument. You said it was only for movies. And now I cleared that up for you.

And you should know that there are examples of games already exceeding the DVD9 stage. Resistance is 14GB. R&C Future is turning out to be beyond that (same engine as Resistance, but now with texture streaming ala UE3). The upcoming MGS is already having problems squeezing into 25GB as well.

[EDIT]

To spell that out for you, texture streaming allows higher quality rendering even under RAM constraints. It's why, say, Gears of War looks so good for a 512MB system -- in a sense, it makes a machine pump out things it usually couldn't.

Problem is, using these high quality images requires even more disc space. You'll be hitting a gig per game level (and that's not even including other data, like audio, video, or whatever). Coupled with other data (compressed or not), you'll get 10 hours of gameplay or so -- Which is not good.

So on DVD, the experience is short, but really fucking sweet.

On BD however, it can be both long and sweet.

[Velorath]

On BD however, it can be both long and sweet.

Of course due to time constraints and development budgets, it will likely be short anyway.

[Sairon]

Also, I meant that it was a no brainer for how it benefits games. Not you. More storage is good, mmkay.

Sure, and Sony could've gone for 2x the storage.  Or 10x.  And the price would have in turn gone up 4x.  Or 50x.  Wouldn't that even be better?  Or just start shipping games on their own external USB drives, and size them however you like.  Not cheap, but because more is always a no brainer, Sony was a tard for not doing that. 

So if it was up to you we should simply stop the technological evolution and stay with the good old stuff, since it's cheaper? If they would make a disc with 50x the storage based on the DVD tech the size would be 50x, not really all that convenient. The USB example is ridiculous, which I bet you yourself understand as well. Perhaps you've forgotten, but DVD wasn't exactly cheap when it arrived either.

"But the companies have been able to squish shit into a DVD disc for years! Surely we don't need a new format!" is just stupid. The reason for why the games fits into a DVD is because they have to for economical reasons. Sure you can have more than 1 disc, but it cuts into profit and is not really doable for some games. Think of playing for example oblivion and everytime you go to a city you have to swap disc and wait for loading. So instead they compromised in other areas. As Stray said, next gen textures is a storage killer. The diffrence between a resolution of a 256x256 and a 512x512 texture is that the later takes 4x the memory

Was it smart of Sony to go for blu-ray? Perhaps not, in the short run it's definitely bad which can be seen on all the bitching about "I don't need a movie player" etc. However, in the long run, it's DEFINETLY a smart move on Sonys part. This will only show as the race goes on. As it is now though there's a chance that the PS3 ends up like the jaguar, even if I don't think it will.

[Merusk]

Early adoption always has a cost associated, and a smaller market share.

Trying to roll those over onto your base sometimes pays off, and sometimes gets people to go "Fuck you, it's not worth it."   The PS3 crowd seems to be going the latter direction.

As to 'the line'  it's the line of people who obsess over a toy vs practical commitments.  Usually defined by younger, single males with few obligations vs those of who aren't.  Phrases like "if you're serious about gaming" are good indicators of where you're at. 

[stray]

I'm a Toys R Us kid, I admit. No kids, wives, or picket fences to bog me down. 

[stray]

On BD however, it can be both long and sweet.

Of course due to time constraints and development budgets, it will likely be short anyway.

Hmm? A lot of games are over 10-12 hours. Saying short games are the average now, as if exceeding beyond that is too much work, is a copout. Making a 20 hour or more game wouldn't take any longer than it already does.

In fact, it might even take less time. A game's resources, in their raw form, are already at high res and not slimmed down. If a target system has a storage medium that's capable of handling these things from the getgo, then developers can focus elsewhere. It means less time preparing data for compression or going over level maps and meticulously slimming this or that texture down (whilst trying to keep appearances). Taking that factor out speeds up workflow, if anything.

[Roac]

Man, cut it out. Stick to your argument. You said it was only for movies.

Maybe you didn't read what I said.

For practical purposes, it's not being used.
...
I doubt much of any of the exclusives are using so much content that they couldn't fit just as nicely on one or two DVDs.  Some day they probably will, and when that day comes, I'll consider this as a feature for gaming.

To which someone points out one game that is now on 3 DVDs.  Some day they're going to be really hurting for more disk space.  Today however, the PS3 is only 15% or so of the current gen console market.  Much less, if you consider the PS2 which is doing very well.  You have seen a number of dev shops that have complained about the continued increase in graphical requirements, and how they feel that creates negative pressure on overall innovation.  You have two of the three console vendors feeling that DVD is just fine.

So hear me again.  What I said that today and for the near term, Blu-Ray has no practical value for gaming.  Some day more space is going to be desired, but it's not here yet.  Meanwhile, Sony is asking for gamers to pay for something that doesn't do much for games.  No thank you.  However, I fully encourage other people to do so, because that will drive down costs and create demand which Sony will at some later date provide supply for.  I, however, will wait until there is a usable product before I buy it.  I'd rather not buy something I can't use.

[Roac]

The USB example is ridiculous, which I bet you yourself understand as well. Perhaps you've forgotten, but DVD wasn't exactly cheap when it arrived either.

Of course it was silly.  It was, however, on par with the comment I was referring to which is the idea that "more is always a no brainer".  If the PS3 cost $6000 instead of $600 you could make the same argument Stray is.  The same argument can also be made for the USB external bit.  It's a silly proposal, because it was a silly argument. 

As to DVDs, yes they were.  I also waited until a majority of new movies were in DVD format before purchasing a DVD player as well.  No point in buying a DVD player when many of the things I'd like to rent/buy are still VHS.  Look, I love technology.  I just have no desire to spend money on technology that doesn't do much for me but may at some vague future date.  There are more than enough other things which already do.

[HaemishM]

It's always funny watching the line this conversation occurs across.  I keep waiting for Schild or Stray to find themselves on the other side then say, "oh crap."

What other side would that be? Schild and I have pretty much been in full agreement about this subject. It's a no brainer -- there's nothing to suddenly find ourselves in disagreement about. Having mass storage media like Blu-Ray is good for games. Only in bizarro world is it bad. Last generation, developers were already struggling to fit game content on a DVD. Compress this, tone down that texture, get rid of that clip, remove that level, down res this, etc., etc.. This time around, they can stream high quality data at their hearts' content, and do a lot of it. It makes their lives easier, and makes things look, behave, last longer, and sound better for us.

No, it makes developers LAZY. They don't have to tone down the textures or compress it to run better, so why bother? They don't have to make hard decisions about what's really needed in the games, they just throw pixels at it until your eyes bleed.

EA's FIFA 07 is the PERFECT example of a developer getting too focused on the wrong thing. They focused on the gosh wow graphical bazoom of hi-def textures and polygons and pixels on the 360 version. As such, they could only fit about 7 leagues, 20 something stadiums and team uniforms on the disc. The regular X-Box version has about 3 times that amount of content, which is more important than all the pixel sweat in the world. Thus, the cheaper, last-gen version is the BETTER version because it didn't have all that graphical bullshit to worry about. And it still looked fantastic.

So the 360 version ran out of space for content, but the Blu-Ray version wouldn't have. But in both hi-def versions, the focus wouldn't be on the game but on the graphics. It wouldn't be on optimizing, it would have been on overdosing on pixels. So as a gamer, I can either pay more for graphics, more + $100 for all the graphics plus the content, or I can pay more/5 for a the full game with pretty damn good (but not the highest def) graphics.

[Yegolev]

I am not a programmer, but I don't think things are compressed in order to improve performance.

[Trippy]

When Blue Dragon comes out as 3 DVDs, it's going to be an annoyance that Sony found a solution for but will still be on DVD due to the platform.

And that only affects gamers who are into Japanese man-boy pedophilia.  The rest of us can happily chug along on regular old DVD.

I play games to play games, not to watch shitty anime cinematics that I wouldn't watch on regular television because I'm not a deviated prevert.

Resistance is 16 GB (not including the funky padding stuff) so already there are PS3 titles that don't fit on a single DL DVD disc.

[stray]

Maybe you didn't read what I said.

I heard exactly what you said, addressed it, and now you're just changing your argument.


As for your new argument, I just pointed out that there's a game that takes advantage of Blu-Ray, and pointed out two others that are coming that do as well. One is third party, one is first (and I'm pretty sure there are more first party ones than that. That's just one that I know of).


But the real point is that it's simply there. That it's an option, and eliminates a problem developers have had to consider in the past.

Secondly, making it an "optional" feature or something to include later simply doesn't work. You can't build very many games around optional features. What you and Haemish are arguing for would make Blu-Ray completely superfluous -- something that has zero advantage to games at all -- either now, or in the longrun.

[Trippy]

I am not a programmer, but I don't think things are compressed in order to improve performance.

It depends on which is slower -- the read speed of the drive or the decompression speed of the CPU(s). E.g. to just make up some numbers let's say the drive can read at 5 MB/second (ignoring CAV vs CLV blah blah blah) and the CPU can decompress material that is compressed 4X at 2.5 MB/second. Reading 100 MB of uncompressed data off the disc would take 20 seconds but it would take 15 seconds total if compressed (5 seconds to read 25 MB of data, 10 seconds to decompress it). Of course there are other considerations to take into account such as extra CPU cycles being taken up while it's decompressing stuff but that's what multi-core CPUs are for.

Edit: typos

[Roac]

As for your new argument, I just pointed out that there's a game that takes advantage of Blu-Ray, and pointed out two others that are coming that do as well. One is third party, one is first (and I'm pretty sure there are more first party ones than that. That's just one that I know of).

It isn't a new argument.  My first argument was that I doubted that there were many that would need it; most (nearly all) are just fine on one or two DVDs.  That you can only come up with a handful that are using Blu-Ray validates my claim.

Secondly, making it an "optional" feature or something to include later simply doesn't work. You can't build very many games around optional features.

The 360 seems to be making good utilization of the "optional" harddrive. 

What you and Haemish are arguing for would make Blu-Ray completely superfluous -- something that has zero advantage to games at all -- either now, or in the longrun.

No, what Haemish and I are arguing for is that Blu-Ray is not mature enough to be mainstream.  Because... well, it isn't mainstream.  Even Sony is saying that they're looking for the PS3 to not be mainstream for several years (this being their response to "why are your sales so poor?").  And that's ok; in 2-3 years I'll revisit the PS3 and see if it's suitable.  Otherwise, what I'd have liked to have seen Sony do is to put a DVD in the PS3, offer a USB Blu-Ray, and the option for devs to publish games in Blu-Ray format.  In a few years, do a "slim" PS3 or some similar revision, where all new PS3s come with the Blu-Ray built in.  They didn't want to do that, and feel they have justifiable reasons to do so.  Again, ok.  But I don't want a part of that right now.  Most of the gaming community (the 85% of 7th gen gamers who DON'T have a PS3) agrees with me.

[HaemishM]

What you and Haemish are arguing for would make Blu-Ray completely superfluous

It already is. Disc-switching is not a game-breaking feature for me, merely an acceptable annoyance. Seriously, hit eject, get second disc, push close, continue playing. I'm not seeing the problem.

[stray]

If you're now willing to admit that there's a use for more space, then it's not superfluous.

Besides that, many games aren't so linear as to have you just switch a disc and truck along. There could be a lot of backstepping and things like that.

[stray]

That you can only come up with a handful that are using Blu-Ray validates my claim.

Uhh yeah. The machine just came out.

[EDIT] Also, you're claim was that there was NO practical use for Blu-Ray games. I listed three games for you. So don't go changing your argument again.


Anyways, what you guys should be doing is simply saying that it isn't the machine for you and leave it at that. Big deal. But don't try to speak for games in general, or blow off these features like they mean little. You're wrong.

[HaemishM]

If you're now willing to admit that there's a use for more space, then it's not superfluous.

Besides that, many games aren't so linear as to have you just switch a disc and truck along. There could be a lot of backstepping and things like that.

There's uses for more space; but to say that more space on the disc is so mission critical that it requires the added expense of Blu-Ray is incorrect. If the system has a hard drive, there's no reason that a combination of disc switching and storing some of the game on the Hard drive can't work.

[stray]

Never said it was mission critical. I only addressed how it had it's uses for games and wasn't just for movies. I was responding to the particular critcisms here, not making some case of my own accord.

It's one approach to a problem (that has to be addressed one way or another), and one that has it's own perks (which would be convenience, the aforementioned movie playback, and a total capacity of 50GB).

[Sairon]

If you're now willing to admit that there's a use for more space, then it's not superfluous.

Besides that, many games aren't so linear as to have you just switch a disc and truck along. There could be a lot of backstepping and things like that.

There's uses for more space; but to say that more space on the disc is so mission critical that it requires the added expense of Blu-Ray is incorrect. If the system has a hard drive, there's no reason that a combination of disc switching and storing some of the game on the Hard drive can't work.

I don't recall what's the case with the Wii, but iirc devs can't be certain of a HD on the 360 and therefor can't have it as a requirement for their games.

[stray]

The Wii uses 512MB flash, which is just for channels, saved games, and vc titles. It can also use SD for the same purposes.


And yeah, that's a shame about the 360 (pertaining to HDD's). That's why I said earlier that they should have just done a Premium model (or a Premium model and this Eliite version).

[Roac]

Also, you're claim was that there was NO practical use for Blu-Ray games.

No. I said

For practical purposes, it's not being used.

Not the same.  Your statement says there is no use.  Mine says there is, but its use is limited to the point of being trivial.  You mention three games.  That's trivial.  Having something like 5% of the games utilizing of one of (if not the) most expensive component of the PS3 makes it very impractical for right now. 

[Nija]

Y'know, I've changed my mind. Forza can wait.

Dude. Forza 2.

[stray]

but its use is limited to the point of being trivial

How is it trivial? The one game that's using up that capacity is one of the three best games out right now (Resistance). And for the first couple of months, it was the only game that was more or less piggybacking the system. It's a good thing that it was developed with Blu-Ray in mind, solitary as it was. It's a good thing that it had 30 levels instead of 7.

The other two I listed, (R&C Future and MGS4) are system sellers in a big way. Maybe you're completely ignorant about games other than MMO's and Miyamoto, but they are not trivial in any way. This isn't Call of Duty 6 we're talking about here.

And again, name me one console launch that didn't have shovelware and ports from other systems. Games that didn't really take advantage of things. It's happened every time, I guarantee. You're being totally unfair to expect otherwise here.

Y'know, I've changed my mind. Forza can wait.

Dude. Forza 2.

Ugh. I know, I know. Looks hot. I'll probably give in. 

[Roac]

How is it trivial? The one game that's using up that capacity is one of the three best games out right now (Resistance). And for the first couple of months, it was the only game that was more or less piggybacking the system. It's a good thing that it was developed with Blu-Ray in mind, solitary as it was. It's a good thing that it had 30 levels instead of 7.

It's the only game to bust 1m on the PS3, and only just.  Gears of War is just shy of 4m.  Wii's Zelda is over 3m.  That's more than PS3 consoles sold.  Also, at 21.5GB it could have fit on 3 DVDs, with one or two being installed to the HD if you'd like to save swapping disks.  You wouldn't have to cut anything.

Maybe you're completely ignorant about games other than MMO's and Miyamoto, but they are not trivial in any way. This isn't Call of Duty 6 we're talking about here.

Now you're just resorting to insults because you can't hold an argument.  At the moment, my PS2 disks outnumber GC+Wii disks combined by a fair bit.  For that matter, I have gotten more PS2 games than Wii games since November. 

[Velorath]

I don't recall what's the case with the Wii, but iirc devs can't be certain of a HD on the 360 and therefor can't have it as a requirement for their games.

It can't be made a requirement, but it can still be utilized.  The 360 version of Oblivion for example is able to use the HDD to cut down on load times.  There's no real reason it couldn't be used to prevent disc swapping aside from developers deciding it's not worth implementing it if not everyone can use it.

[Strazos]

Disc swaps would have worked fine for Resistance. The game is totally Linear, correct?

[schild]

Who gives a fuck if they would have worked fine. You don't need to do them anymore.

It's like saying, hey, next year we're going back to wires on all controllers and you have to get up to turn the system on and off. A legion of gamers would kick the messengers ass on delivery of that. Right now, yes, disc swapping isn't as big a deal. But eventually, it will become more and more noticeable.