MikeB on 20 October 2008
@ souixan
In fact to my knowledge 50GB discs aren't used out of need but instead for duplicate info to reduce load times and for loss-less audio which is pretty much just a bullet point for the back of the game case(just like "hi-def graphics!") when games start pointing this out instead of the story or mechanics, I quit it's over.
That's not correct, 50 GB disc is used for MGS4 for allowing fewer quality related sacrifices.
Sure, there's some nice potential with regard to data duplication. If you have so much space it can make good sense to have data located on various spots on a disc to reduce seektimes. If you have the resources to do so, why not make use of this nomatter if there's only a small gain (IMO a gain is a gain nontheless)?
But in general (on average) a 50 GB Blu-Ray disc can be read faster than a 6.8 GB 360 dual layer DVD with better seektimes in combination with proper data placements (area 1 equals DVD 1, area 2 equals DVD 2, etc, if you design the game engine to swap from area 6 to area 1 then you may end up with greater seektimes, which could be solved through either data duplication or caching (or installing) the used data onto the harddrive.
One issue though is that some game file structures have been optimised for DVDs (mostly regards ports), the outer tracks are being read faster than the inner tracks, dumping such data without change on Blu-Ray disc may result into issues (which provides constant predictable reading speeds, which is potentially much better for potential optimisations from a technical perspective).
