Is Blu-Ray Really Necessary For Gaming?

[sieanr]

Musouka said:
Yes, more space is necessary given the bigger texture sizes and all the add-ons, which eventually enhance the game experience. Who would want to play a Metal Gear game when cut scenes are kept at a minimum. 

MS should have included a bigger capacity disc. They suffered from space shortages even in racing games ala PGR 4, and had to work their way around that problem by using lighting instead of different day/night textures.

 Actually a lot of people would.  Back to OT. The problem isn't space available, but cost of asset creation.  High res. textures, 7.1 sound and unique character models for every character cost lots of money at every point in design, from brainstorming to concept art to prototyping to final product. This is why we've seen game with budgets in the tens of millions coming from a team of over a hundred people be well under 10 hours. Uncharted may be using 91% of BR capacity, but that doesn't prevent it from being short as hell for the above reasons. And the thing is that many of the ways you can cut down on some of the above cost also help save disc space. If you have a high res brick texture, then it doesn't make that much sense to make a new one for a brick building later in the game, or a brick wall later in the same level - especially when you can alter the lighting to give them a different appearance. Furthermore, reusing textures helps cut down on the amount of RAM in use on a level, again beneficial. This has already been in use in games for ages, and modern games are only going to continue this for cost and performance reasons. Bluray is, in no way, going to curb this trend unless you see games with far, far larger budgets and dev times or very short SP.

TL,DR summary; Space isnt the main constraint this gen, its budget and time because of HD.