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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Blu Ray the most important part of this generation

@ CapAmerica

 

Give me a comment from someone like EA

"Blu-ray offers the capacity, performance and high-speed internet connectivity to take us into the future of gaming."

"EA, a leading games developer and publisher, added that the delivery of high-definition games of the future was vital and Blu-ray had the capacity, functionality and interactivity needed for the kinds of projects it was planning."

But please understand while most XBox 360 developing companies may be complaining behind the scenes, most of them would like to remain anonymous to the general public. IMO the reason being XBox 360 fans, for instance if stating out loud the PS3 is superior in this or other regards some or many XBox 360 consumers may get upset, which may effect game sales for these companies eventually. Epic being a good example in this regard, not wanting to answer a question on which platform is more powerful in public.

Microsoft on the other hand will try to muddy the waters as much as possible, trying to focuss solely on the movie aspect of the format while claiming DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray would soon be obsolete as a movie format due to the internet (they know HD-DVD is currently losing the war, despite heavily pushed by Microsoft in the past), which is of course nonesense even in the US there is a large percentage of people not having internet access at home and Microsoft needs to do quite big server upgrades to deliver the content fast enough. I think most people for the forseeable future would prefer a disc in a nice case.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

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PS3 needs it, certainly, especially if they really are going to be doing FMV and HDaudio intensive 1080p games.  360 might need it down the road but can probably squeak by without it.  Wii obviously would not see much if any benefit from it.  It's just based on each platform's hardware philosophy.



@ RolStoppable

Games for PS3 are a huge risk for developers. Development becomes expensive due to the high detailed HD-graphics, blu-ray discs are more expensive to produce than dvds and the currently small userbase of the PS3 makes it nearly impossible to turn good profits from a game for 3rd parties. This is reason #1 for the 3rd party exodus now: money.

Although you add a strong point into this discussion, note that distributing games through the PSN is a very cheap alternative available to PS3 developers. WIth regard to the bigger projects, they have the resources.

Blu-Ray disc production costs are dropping quickly and with regard to movies is now generally cheaper than HD-DVD, as many / most HD-DVD movies use dual-layer discs and Blu-Ray movies are currently supplied on single layer discs.

Note that the average game is priced way above Blu-Ray movies, so with regard to games the added cost is less of a factor as compared to movies (percentage of the total revenue). 



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

Heres my philosphy on this issue.


Bluray is a nice thing to have, the capacity is huge and one disc games are great. But it a luxary, not a neccessity.

Multidisc aren't a problem.


Leo-j said: If a dvd for a pc game holds what? Crysis at 3000p or something, why in the world cant a blu-ray disc do the same?

ssj12 said: Player specific decoders are nothing more than specialized GPUs. Gran Turismo is the trust driving simulator of them all. 

"Why do they call it the xbox 360? Because when you see it, you'll turn 360 degrees and walk away" 

Gears of War had to take up the whole DVD it was supposed to have more and i remember it was supposed to be a launch game with the 360 but due to disc space problems the needed to "find" a way to fit what they were working on onto 1 disc (microsoft did NOT want to relese a multi-disc game so early) at one point i read that the infomation that game had could esily be put on 4-5 discs.microsoft would have looked like they droped the ball on the format they chose to use.so that was the huge delay on gears and why the game was still so short alot was missing from the original.I can't see that disc space will not be an issue in the future if was already an issue with what was supposed to be a Launch game



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@ NorthStar

IMO the single player aspect of Gears of War was way too short, I played the game through within just a couple of evenings. Also IMO the game didn't offer much varierty, the light gun tank section of the game wasn't fun for me at all and I would have preferred more freedom to wander around the environments, you can't jump down from a higher level to a level below, right at the start of the game I was impressed by the visuals the building was damaged wide open and the outside environment looked really good but I wasn't able to even jump outside and fall to my death like I wanted to do, just to see a little more of the environment.

IMO Gears of War is a good game, but heavily overrated if you look at the game as a whole and not just at the flashy graphics. The story telling is weak, the AI isn't really smart and the main characters not being very appealing. One thing I found really odd, was running faster while crouching, not very realistic, well maybe only I noticed as I am a Physical Therapist.



Naughty Dog: "At Naughty Dog, we're pretty sure we should be able to see leaps between games on the PS3 that are even bigger than they were on the PS2."

PS3 vs 360 sales

CapAmerica said:

Give me a comment from someone like EA, Ubisoft, Capcom, Rockstar, or even Square.

 I will not trust anything coming from Sony or a "3rd Party" company who only makes Sony games.

Of cource they are going to say Blu-Ray is needed, it they don't it makes them look stupid. Sony is going to do everything they can to make other developers and the industry think they need Blu-Ray when in fact we don't right now.

Even Phase5 tiptoed around the idea that Lair could go on a DVD. Do we really need 1080p HD video? and I bet that the textures would look just as good scaled down as they do in the current state. They won't say that cause then certen people would get pissed off at them cause they are trying to make something that will be used to prove to the world that Blu-Ray is needed. IF they were to say yes it can go on a DVD and look just as good then it makes them look dumb.

Phase5 They set out to make a game that would need a Blu-Ray disc. And hell we don't even know how good Lair will be it could turn out to be a pretty bad game when all they did was focus on trying to make it as big as they could get it.


So you can't trust the company that says we needed the PS3 and bluray for our game to get the full potential out of our game?But you will trust the Companies that are out just to make the most money from going cross platform.What the hell is EA going to say sure it could have been a better game but then we couldn't make as much money so we decided to make a Mediocre game."Do we really need 1080p video"...do we really need next gen graphics?Isn't the Idea of "next -gen"to be a step ahead ?Look at the N64 they didn't feel the need to switch from cartridges or the Dreamcast didn't feel the need to offer DVD.Lastly "we don't even know how good Lair will be it could turn out to be a pretty bad game"?Are you kidding me the game Looks amazing and you on a Effin Dragon.Of course it "could turn out to be" a bad game, it "Could turn out to be" the best game ever made or it "could turn out be "coming out for the system you own and you "could turn out be" saying how amazing this game looks and how you can't wait to play it ...or that "could turn out to be"me.Any game "coudl turn out to be" bad.In any case what is wrong with making a Big game that is(Could Be) great?



staticneuron said:
Louie said:

This is hard to answer... I think it is important - and it is not.

Look back to the N64 days: N64 cartidges had about 64mb storage while a CD was at 650mb which is about 10 times the space.

Still games like Zelda 64 were just as big as 32mb (!!) and they still looked gorgeus.

So Blu Ray is not necesary but it can make developement a lot easier if you´ve taken the hurdles of the PS3´s architecture.

 

(I guess this post was full of spelling mistakes... )


 Yes and you also have to remember what was one of the main driving force between developers exodus from the N64.

What advantages cd had over cartridge no onw knew at the time but the devs were convinced they could use it. And if anyone remembers the launch games from the PS1 they were far from impressive and did not outshine the competition.

 This is why when I hear develepors grumbling (like the enchant arms developer) and they say they would like to use more space I feel that the time for advancement has come. It seems with the introduction of the internet, there are plenty of brilliant and experienced AAA game devs that claim that DVD9 is big enough and they do not "need" any bigger.  I mean I assume they do this for a living right?.... why would they say otherwise?


 

Oh you misunderstood me: I still remember why the 3rd parties left Nintendo - I don´t consider Blu-Ray a mistake or something. I´m just somewehre in the middle: You don´t really "need" it (this would mean you can´t develope games without the Space of a Blu-Ray) but it can make developement a lot of easier and you don´t always have to watch if you´ve got enough space left to bring your games on one disk.

That´s what I said about cardridges too back in the PSX/N64 days: You could still make games on them but it was much easier to develope for a CD and you cut put all your cutscenes on a single CD - every N64 game developed by Nintendo was without pre rendered cutscenes cuz there was not enough space on a single cartdrige. that was pretty funny for me as a PSX owner



Louie said:
staticneuron said:
Louie said:

This is hard to answer... I think it is important - and it is not.

Look back to the N64 days: N64 cartidges had about 64mb storage while a CD was at 650mb which is about 10 times the space.

Still games like Zelda 64 were just as big as 32mb (!!) and they still looked gorgeus.

So Blu Ray is not necesary but it can make developement a lot easier if you´ve taken the hurdles of the PS3´s architecture.

 

(I guess this post was full of spelling mistakes... )


 Yes and you also have to remember what was one of the main driving force between developers exodus from the N64.

What advantages cd had over cartridge no onw knew at the time but the devs were convinced they could use it. And if anyone remembers the launch games from the PS1 they were far from impressive and did not outshine the competition.

 This is why when I hear develepors grumbling (like the enchant arms developer) and they say they would like to use more space I feel that the time for advancement has come. It seems with the introduction of the internet, there are plenty of brilliant and experienced AAA game devs that claim that DVD9 is big enough and they do not "need" any bigger.  I mean I assume they do this for a living right?.... why would they say otherwise?

 

 

Oh you misunderstood me: I still remember why the 3rd parties left Nintendo - I don´t consider Blu-Ray a mistake or something. I´m just somewehre in the middle: You don´t really "need" it (this would mean you can´t develope games without the Space of a Blu-Ray) but it can make developement a lot of easier and you don´t always have to watch if you´ve got enough space left to bring your games on one disk.

That´s what I said about cardridges too back in the PSX/N64 days: You could still make games on them but it was much easier to develope for a CD and you cut put all your cutscenes on a single CD - every N64 game developed by Nintendo was without pre rendered cutscenes cuz there was not enough space on a single cartdrige. that was pretty funny for me as a PSX owner


You do realize in N64 days we were talking about 16-32 (64 meg cartridge was used a couple times) megs versus 650, while now we are talking 9 gig versus 25 or 50.  Another thing about the n64 is it cost developers more money to use a bigger cartridge.  Part of the reason everyone wanted CD at the time was just because they wanted FMVs and prerendered backrounds which were so cool at the time (see FF7).  I know many people that thought PS had better graphics than N64 just because they were watching FMVs and prerendered backrounds. 



currently playing: Skyward Sword, Mario Sunshine, Xenoblade Chronicles X

RolStoppable said:

@static

The primary advantage of cd vs cartridge were producing costs. With cds developers didn't have to get huge sales of their games to become profitable, also if the game bombed the loss on it would be much less than on a cartridge based game. That's reason #1 for the 3rd party exodus 10 years ago: money.

Games for PS3 are a huge risk for developers. Development becomes expensive due to the high detailed HD-graphics, blu-ray discs are more expensive to produce than dvds and the currently small userbase of the PS3 makes it nearly impossible to turn good profits from a game for 3rd parties. This is reason #1 for the 3rd party exodus now: money.

3rd party publishers aren't interested in making the most beautiful or best games, they care for money and profits.

@capamerica

Lair is developed by Factor5.


DVD's cost close to $0.70 to replicate and you can add 15 or more cents per layer. The cost of media between the high def formats actually isn't that expensive. Probably the initial press but then again if you look at the amount that dvd's cost.... to fill a blu ray disc you would have to multiply that by three. Then multiply the replication cost by three. Then factor in the cost of localization (different discs pressed).

Please people, Quit looking out for the good of the industry because they were doing fine with their risks before this generation and your opinions came along. Seriously... it may cost more for them to make a game on blu ray but if it is an amazing game I am sure they will make their money back. I have seen people purchase systems and multiple copies of games because they liked a game that much. The cost of making a game on any of the next generation systems are still a choice. The assets, R&D, sound and the visuals are all up to design. I have heard peoples arguements about game companies competing and that still falls under choice. Comparisons are going to be made no matter what even if they do not make complete sense (zelda vs Sotc, Gears vs resistance, KOF vs streetfighter), and these comparisons are mainly made by the media or gamers themselves. I do not think the companies care as they are getting their money and have fullfiled their internal goals.

@Louie

I gotcha with what your saying. It isn't needed to make a great game but apparently for the ambitions of game developers, it is claimed that they need more space to play with. As mentioned here earlier gears is beautiful but it is really short. If this is the future then something is going to have to give. It is great for people to assume it would be easier to put games on multiple discs but no one is really asking whether or not it would hurt the consumer. It is about what is cheaper, easier and coherent to what the developers have in mind. You may not mind changing a disc but what if it irks the director to make concessions for disc changes?

I can yak on and on but I just hear on forums a bunch of people saying that "blu ray isn't needed, because it doesn't bother me" type sentiment and it really bothers me because it seems as if people think that devs have no knew techniques or creativeness to take advantage of the space.



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