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volrath50 on 17 June 2009
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International Douche said:
rafichamp said:

 Global PlayStation chief Kazuo Hirai has claimed that Sony was left with ‘no other choice’ than to outfit the PlayStation 3 with Blu-ray functionality.

Speaking to The Guardian at E3 last week, Hirai stated, “Purely from a gaming standpoint there was no other choice for us,” adding, “Why? The capacity of the disc. Last year’s Metal Gear Solid 4 was pushing 50GB as it was. If it was on DVD it would have been a 6 disc set.”

Unsurprisingly, the executive dismissed the possibility of having multiple discs, describing it as ‘hugely inconvenient’ for punters: “The packaging and cost would have been prohibitive and it would have been hugely inconvenient to consumers,” he explained.

“So from a gaming standpoint there was really no choice if you wanted a high definition gaming experience.”

Article Link-------> http://www.psu.com/Hirai--Sony-had-no-choice-but-to-include-Blu-ray-in-PS3-News--a007529-p0.php

Tell me what you guys think. In your opinion, was adding the Blu-Ray drive smart?


Well he's a liar.

MGS4 did not fill a 50GB bluray, it was around 30GB of data. Of which many GB was wasted on umcompressed audio. They could easily have used lossless compression with no sideffects or audio deterioration and it fit on a 25GB bluray.

Yeah, they seemed to imply they filled 50GB up, and Hirai probably assumed as much from those quotes, but in reality, the BD shows they didn't. I suppose they could have meant that they filled up a single layer, for the first time, but I honestly don't really remember all the quotes about filling up the BD.

 

Additionally, as you mentioned, there's uncompressed audio, which, while nice, can be compressed for massive space savings, and AFAIK, they also put lots of data (textures and such) on the disc multiple times, to decrease loading times. I wouldn't be surprised if there was dummy data as well (ie, a whole lot of 0s written, just to manipulate data location on a disc) as that is a common practise to speed loading when you've got more space than you use.

 

Either way, putting the BD-ROM drive in the PS3 wasn't for gaming reasons. It's nice for gaming, with bigger textures, uncompressed (or lossless) audio, and no disc swapping, but it wasn't put in for gaming reasons. DVD is still very adequate for gaming. Putting the BD drive in may have been a good move on Sony's part for the company as a whole,  but it was a terrible decision for their gaming division. The BD drive was one of the largest reasons, if not the largest reason itself, for the PS3 costing a silly-high amount at launch ($699 Canadian, IIRC). The price was the main reason (though not the only one) that Sony dropped from first to third in sales. Had they gone with a standard DVD drive, things may have turned out much different, if they could have shaved a few hundred dollars off the MSRP.

 

That being said, I'm quite happy they did put a BD-Drive in, my PS3 has been funtioning in that capacity remarkably well, and I now have a library of just over 50 BD movies. That and knowing they can shove gigantic-ass textures on a disc is always nice. :) Unfortunately, what is good for gamers and good for games is not always what is profitable, or good for the company.