Is Blu-Ray The PlayStation 3's Ultimate Determining "X Factor?"

[KBG29]

Now this is just me, but if PS3 would have lacked Blu-ray I would not have picked one up so early. PS2 was and is still kicking out amazing games, and it would have more than curbed my gaming needs. Unlike most consumers I chose to never support DVD. Right now I only own 9 DVD's, and that is because they are my absolute favorite movies.

To me DVD was always a joke of a format. By the time DVD came out we already had TV's supporting High definition, and to me it made no sense to get DVD's because they always looked like crap. I have basically been all about theaters, and watching movies over dinner at other peoples houses for the last 6 years. When Blu-ray and HD-DVD came around I felt it was really time to go ahead and start investing in a video format. They were 1080p and 1080p was just barley getting started. To me Blu-ray is a logical move for the industry while DVD was just a we need new revinues from movie makers.

On the gaming side of things I really like the idea of Blu-ray when it comes to First Party Sony games. Anyone that denies the advantages of Blu-ray in Sony publishes PS3 games either has not fully experianced it, or does not want it to be true. The problem with Blu-ray being PS3 only is third parties will rarely if ever take advantage of it. Sure RPG's and other FMV happy games will need the space, and in that case multi disc's on 360 is no big deal. What would be a game breaker is if EA took Madden to the next level and went multi disc with it. This would be a point were DVD on 360 would start feeling really dated. Since we will never see this happen it really makes Blu-ray errelivent to third parties.

So at the end of the day I love the idea of Blu-ray on PS3 for movies, and the games that take advantage of it. The biggest problem is the games have been few and far in between. So far only Metal Gear Solid 4, and Uncharted have really shown what Bluray brings to gaming. Next year I think we will finally see just what a differance it makes. Infamous, Killzone 2, and Heavy Rain are going to pack 40+ Gigs into 10 - 15 hour experiances. These games will rely heavly on streaming, and useing multiple differant assets that would not be possible without that kind of space. At this point no 360 game will be able to match these titles unless it is spread across 5 - 6 discs. That would mean switches every 2 hours or so, and IMO from a gamers point of view, that is a lot of switching.