| Aielyn said:
Once again I'm going to point out that I'm not talking about using them now. I'm talking about the point that SDHC and SDXC prices are constantly decreasing (so that you can now get a 16 GB SDHC card for the price that you could get a 1 GB SD card for in 2006), whereas BluRay disc prices haven't really decreased by that much - maybe halved in price, if that. The reason for this is that BluRay discs aren't in any way subject to Moore's Law and its related effects - there's really no way to "refine" the pressing of a BluRay disc, beyond perhaps making the process a bit faster or a bit more energy efficient. On the other hand, SD-type cards are strongly subject to Moore's Law and its related effects. What this means is that, while it is true that, right now, an SDHC of 32 GB is more expensive than a BluRay of 25 GB, this is not going to remain true. And the point I'm making is that using SDHC or SDXC based cards (I wouldn't actually use SDHC/SDXC itself - I'd go with a proprietary variation of it) would allow card sizes to grow with time without requiring new hardware or new firmware. What's more, they would be significantly more compact and less subject to accidental damage. Consider that even the DS has some games that are as big as 512 MB, now. Indeed, when the DS launched, the largest you saw was 64 MB, up to 128 MB in 2005. By the end of 2010, it was up to 512 MB. Meanwhile, neither DVD nor BluRay discs have increased in size since 2006 (not counting those requiring new firmware/hardware). Card sizes can increase pretty much without limit, whereas discs are practically locked to certain sizes. So if a developer wants to make a game requiring, say, 256 GB of data, they can do it, and it's not going to require more than 5 BluRay discs. It just ends up somewhat more expensive to produce... but then if you're making a game that big, presumably you've already thought through the costs involved. In short, it pretty much future-proofs the game delivery mechanism (no, downloadable games don't do this, because you can be sure that all potential customers will have storage attached big enough for the game). |
well technically you do need new hardware for bigger cards SDHC maxes out at 32GB and SDXC was only introduced in 2009. And I can't see the PS4 supporting anything less than 100GB BDXL dics which really would be more than enough for the next 10 years unless devs start using 4k cutscenes or something. I actually see pre rendering cutscenes becoming less common next gen as ingame graphics reach such high levels it really shouldn't be needed unless they skimp on RAM and they still need them to cover loading. And really without HD video games bigger than even 50GB would cost an astronomical amount to make especially with modern compression and procedural ellements. Especially as digital distrobution becomes more prevelent even on high speed broadband downloading 50GB+ games is not really practical any time soon for most of the world.
There are advantages to flash media, but I just don't see it being cost effective for next generation. And as modern consoles are now media hubs and I think that blu-ray playback will be a big enough reason to go with that in adition to the cheaper media.
Anyway I'm bored so unless you have something amazing to say this is my last reply, I think we will just be repeating ourselves. Have a good day : )
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