DVD was the key for the PS2? The Xbox had DVD, as well as some extra horsepower for technically impressive games. Didn't do shit for its success and cost MS billions. Is history repeating itself with Sony?

Unna

Right facts. Wrong time.

The DVD player made the PS2 in Japan as it was the cheapest unit available early in the system's life.

The same game is working a bit with the PS3 as it is the cheapest BR DVD player and the only one truly capable of Profile 2.0.

However, while the new DVD technology interested people -- the new high-def DVDs has only confused them. Many people still don't have HD TVs. Others can't see the difference that a 50 percent increase in the cost of a movie brings. And others feel upscaling gives them more bang for their buck.

Mike from Morgantown

But what is the feasible alternate for developers for storing their game contents once they start making games above 9 gigs or so (which may become norm in 1 or 2 years)? They are already crying for more space i.e. 50 gigs wasn't enough for MGS4!

Who is crying for more space, and last time I heard MGS4 was just over 25gig (a single layer BD wasn't enough).

SMG wasn't even on a double layer DVD, so I think there is more than enough space on a DVD for video games.

 50 gigs was more than enough for MGS 4. The space issue arose because they were trying to fit it on a 25 gig disc.

Anybody who makes a game over 9 gigs is insane and I hope they don't make their money back. It's such a waste of space, time, and money. I'd like to see one Blu-Ray game outsell Brain Training. The thing's 7 or 8 MegaBytes. MWAHAHAHAHA!!!

Plus MGS4 is so large not because of the actual game. It has more to do with the cut scenes and cinematic content.

The cutscenes are mostly rendered in-game graphics, so not too big a deal.

A lot of the sound is uncompressed, or whatever the most high-quality format is; Kojima insisted on high quality sound. So the sound takes up a TON of space. Guy from IGN (I think it was) played it and said that the sound is very very impressive.

Yep, audio is the big data eater for MGS4. Kojima had tons of uncompressed 7.1 audio added. They make lossless audio compression schemes for a reason.

 1. True in a way, but consumers won't necessarily buy just one or the other.  And as PS3 drops in price, (even as the huge games roll out), its value to people just explodes.  Regardless of the price of Wii, and even 360.

2.  I expect a large uptick in HDTV adoption given the all-digital-signal TV switch in Feb '09 and much, much lower prices on average than, say, we saw in '01-'05.

3. I kind of assume since it's SD, that somewhat limits it, in part because Nintendo will probably bring out a 720p-capable successor in a few years.  That machine (call it Wii2), also decently low-priced and fully backwards compatible and with a similar control scheme, would cut off Wii sales much more than the expensive PS3 cut off the cheap PS2's sales.  It will limit Wii sales on the back end, but don't get me wrong, that's not any kind of failing for Nintendo; it'll be a great business move.  Wii plus Wii2 sales over any period will be much higher than Wii sales alone.  (assumption here is that the next Nintendo machine comes out well before PS4, and cheaper.  Though PS4 will also be cheaper at launch than PS3 because Cell and Blu-Ray will be mature tech.)