How much space does MGS4 really use on the BluRay Disk?

[Spankey]

bobobologna said:

Nidan said:

For those that don't remember, Originally the devs were hating on BluRay because the speed of the drive was too slow. I believe the MGS developers decided to place the same data in many different places on the BluRay disks to counter this (which in some way defeats the purpose of a larger media format).

So in light of many comments talking about the number of disks that would be needed if it was ever on XBOX, i would like to know does anyone know what the "real size" of the game really is?

Secondly does anyone know what size (or length in time) the video component of this game is now? (I am assuming that the video component is highly uncompressed due to the bluray specs and could be compressed if put onto DVD?)

 

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No, they wouldn't need to repeat data because all the game data is copied to the HDD. I believe the entire game, minus the audio is copied to the HDD. That's why the game requires an install for each act. They couldn't fit the entire game into the 5 GB limit Sony has imposed. The disc is used to stream audio. One layer on the bluray disc contains the game data, which is copied to the HDD. The second layer contains the audio data which gets streamed to the console.

I would expect the game, ported to the XBox360, to be 3 discs.

Approximately 10 GB of game data (minus the audio). 5 GB initial install, with approximately a 1.5 GB install for acts 2-5 (assuming same data transfer rate as the initial install). Granted, the game could be uncompressed to the HDD, but I believe this isn't the case. Otherwise they should have just compressed the game data to fit into the 5 GB limit and not have installs for each act.

Then there's the prerendered cutscenes. I would believe that these would be streamed from the disc. I can't fathom why you would want to or have to copy them to the HDD. Maybe another gig for the prerendered cutscenes? Other than the big cutscene at the end of Act 3 (the 40 minute one), I can't really think of what other prerendered cutscenes there were, so I may be over- or under-estimating.

If the game really is 33 GB, then that leaves about 20 GB of uncompressed audio. Using a loseless codec would cut that in half. Maybe less. Using lossy compression may cut that by much more, maybe to 10% of the original? I'm not really sure how good compression techniques are at this stuff, so I'm really just guessing. So another 2 GB of audio data.

13-14 GB of data for the game using lossy audio compression. Taking into account the 6.8 (?) GB of data available on XBox360 game DVDs and the need to repeat some of the data, I would expect a 3 game disc. Maybe 4 discs.

Of course, my whole analysis could be flawed, but that's what I've got to offer on how "big" MGS4 is.

MS is not keen on mandatory HDD installs.