DVD is increasingly showing a strain in providing HD content.

[MikeB]

Years ago I tried to explain the effects of the XBox 360 using 6.8 GB DVDs on multi-platform gaming a few times.

For example an old quote:

"1) You are talking about a linear game, for this 1 dual layer Blu-Ray disc potentially equals about 8-10 dual layer DVDs. An exact figure depends on the game design in question, data duplication will be done. Audio and graphics on the first and follow up discs need to be duplicated on discs when re-used. For example a streamed texture may be used in the first part of the game (disc 1), but also in further parts of the game and for comfort such data is then duplicated for follow up parts of the game to prevent disc swapping.

If talking about a non-linear game, where you are able to or even required to revisit previously cleared areas this complicates things a lot and far more disc swapping may be the result.

2) Due to additional costs (read recent ID Software comments for example) and game design requirements for developers/publishers, they will usually make sacrifices (for example GTA IV would have come with more content if they could fully rely on bigger storage media, also lowered quality audio and graphics and/or less data varierty / more re-usage of data)."

Already before the XBox 360 launched most games developers complained about the lack of space available on a 360 DVD. A huge amount of XBox 360 games are sporting 6.7 to 6.8 GB of data on the disc and that's a clear hint sacrifices are being made to suit to XBox 360 hardware. Sacrifices can be the game's size (varierty related, as you can reuse previously used assets for a virtually endless amount of levels in theory), extras (like providing more songs in GTA IV) or lowering texture quality.