makingmusic476 said:
First off, single-layered BD-Roms hold 25GB of data, not 23. Also, only ~7GB of space is available to 360 developers on a DVD9 due to restrictions from MS (i'm not sure what they are). They do not have access to the full 8.5GB. Assuming that the 4th disc is roughly half full, you'd have 3.5 x 7GB = 24.5GB. 24.5GB is less than 25GB. Even if the total data did surpass the 25GB mark, they could just go dual-layer like you said. Kojima already plans to do this with MGS4. As far as the expense of Blu-Ray discs, large runs of single-layered BD-Roms came to about 37 cents per disc, compared to ~10 cents per DVD, so a 4 disc DVD game would actually cost publishers more than a Blu-Ray disc game. I'm sure a dual-layered BD-rom wouldn't cost much more than a single layer, as they are already being mass produced for movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, so the cost difference is negligible. About high end pc games, on the EA store it was recently listed that Crysis would need 16GB of HDD space. However, these specs were quickly taken down and Crytek scame out saying that the specs are not final yet. It could end up being a little bit more or a little bit less, but it's a safe bet that the final number will be roughly 16GB. Also, Medieval II: Total War shipped on two DVD9s way back in Nov. '06. To repeat my initial statement, how many discs will 360 games require in another 2 years? |
Likely one to two discs, with 2 or more reserved for large and/or AAA titles. The fallacy of your examples is you are assuming games like Crysis and Medieval II are typical titles, instead of major titles, where a lot of content is called for due to their scale and ambitions. So most 360 games will be one disc, with the major titles meriting the content needing more than one disc.
Yet if the majority of major titles are more than one disc, so what? Can you prove that's a bad thing? Something like sales showing games selling worse than average due to more than one disc?
A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.
Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs