Ever since the game industry switched from cartridges to disks, game designers have been trying to speed up load times, one of the ways to do this is to make sure nothing on the disk is compressed, which means the new formats, although the reading speed is slow, may load as fast as DVDs. Also the contest is pretty much over as Blu-Ray has won, like shown in the http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/ link. In reference to Holographic disks: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1759907,00.asp "And in the case of InPhase, the company already has a variety of vendors interested in its technology. First out of the gate is Sony Corp., which already has demonstrated a holographic ROM technology using InPhase's Tapestry media that enables backward read compatibility with DVD and CD formats." So Sony is already developing this, so chances are, this will be in a PS4, or like with Microsoft, have an add-on to play them. Also the talk of DVDs being adquate is basically wrong. I have C & C generals and BF1942 which use up four disks, and unlike on the computer, you cannot install the game to avoid using more than one disk-except maybe? with the PS3. Also R:FOM used up about 14 gigs (http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=65579 [think what you will about the other arguements presented there]) as (and I quote) "Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc." So if you have games on Blu-Ray, chances are you're going to get a lot of time out of it, even without replaying it, instead of DVDs.
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Uhm that makes no sense. To cut down loading times you need to compress data as much as you can. The current limitation (since the PS1) on loading time is not the CPU/GPU but the data transfer rate of mechanical drives. Ever notice that the longest loading times always coincide with the spinning of a drive? Its because the drive is where the bottleneck is and the more scratched the media the worse the performance. In order to cut down loading time you would want to compress data to minimize the use of a mechanical drive. Whoever said they are leaving it uncompressed to cut down loading time doesnt know a thing about the subject or is simply trying to cover their own ass for not doing it right to begin with.
3D storage will be a breath of fresh air but I think we are still about 5-10 years away from it becoming affordable and mainstream.
As far as this theoretical super scratch coat goes... I am not familiar with the details for the new HD or BR discs but from an engineering stand point I am skeptical about the scratch resistance claims made regarding writable discs but that remains largly irrelevent. What do PC users use them for? The only possible use once again, is a DVR type setup but not everyone has or wants that. I dont think the PC will push either format forward especially not until writable drives come within the $100 range (mainstream).
I think this current "format wars" is nothing but a ruse. Look, if you want to call it a war, you have to compare HD & BR sale to normal DVD sales. Back when we moved from VHS to DVD almost no one was buying VHS tapes about 1 year after DVD players became mainstream. There may be a "war" between HD and BR but I dont think they are scratching the standard DVD sales yet and I dont think DVD sales are sliding one bit but I honestly cannot find any charts to verify this (I am just speaking from what I see happing around me with friends and family). If anyone has any definitive sources for DVD vs HD vs BR sales by numbers that would be great.
