| makingmusic476 said: Well, even in context Dan Houser's words certainly don't paint a pretty picture. From 1UP: UP: Let's talk about the hardware issues. Back when GTA4 was delayed, PS3 technical hurdles were cited as a contributing factor. I take it those have been ironed out. SH: I don't know what anybody's said on that stuff. I didn't say anything, and I stay out of it.... Both machines are absolutely fantastic, but they both come with strengths and weaknesses. The strength of the 360 is a very, very accessible, familiar, effective environment to work in. You're making the game from the get-go, everyone understands its PC environment -- boom, off we go. It's pretty good. One of the problems with the 360, and it affects games like Grand Theft Auto if you think about how much content we put in the actual machine, is the fact that they don't have a significantly larger storage medium than the previous systems. It's a slightly bigger DVD disc. 1UP: Plus, you're not guaranteed a hard drive in every system. SH: That's a complicated one. I met with a bunch of the senior fellows from [Microsoft]. I said, that's kind of complicated.... The upshot of the technical challenges we've experienced on either the 360 or on the PS3 is [that] both companies stepped up to the plate and have supported us in a way that was beyond even my greedy expectations. They've been amazing. I think that the 360 is going to have to get 'round this issue we're talking about. I can think of various ways they can do it. Hopefully, they're going to adopt one of those in the next year or so, because it's going to become more of an issue. If we're filling up the disc right now, where are we going? It's not like our games are going to get any smaller. I think that issue's on the table with a bunch of games right now. I'm sure they'll come through with an intelligent solution. Also, the entire game is installed on the ps3? Are you serious? First, the ps3 simply does not have enough storage space to make full installs feasible. When data is installed on an HDD, it is decompressed, often fully (as decompressing on the fly would eat into CPU cycles, thus hindering game performance). As such, the 4gb of data installed on the ps3 would take up significantly less space on the actual disc than it does on the HDD, and any game of a reasonable size (5gbs and up on the disc) would significantly eat into the ps3's available storage space if they were fully installed. Installs are common on the ps3 version of multiplats simply because the ps3's Blu-Ray drive has a slightly lower read speed compared to the 360's DVD player. As such, the installs are done to help decrease loading. However, on ps3 exclusives developers can just have all the textures, etc. uncompressed straight on the disc, and allow them to be streamed directly from the disc when needed, ala Uncharted (stunning textures, no install, no loading whatsoever). Secondly, while a DVD-9 has 8.5gbs of available storage space (9.0 in a base-10 system), MS requires that a certain amount of space be partitioned off on a 360 disc for security reasons. Because of this, 360 discs only have around 6.8gbs of available space (7.2 in a base-10 system) for developers to use. The 360 version of GTAIV has already been pirated, and the ISO takes up 6.4gbs of space. That shows that 1. GTAIV is larger than 4gb, and 2. R* is in fact dangerously close to running out of space, as they themselves said. Third, are we even sure the data takes up 4GB of space? I seem to recall a mock GTAIV review being the first to mention that number. R* said the install only takes 5 minutes, while DMC4's 5 GB install took 25 minutes. |
Couple things here. What is this about the PS3 not having space? Worst case it has 20gb best case it has 80gb and you can put in any sized hard drive you want. Some clarification maybe? Because I'm confused. And yes the PS3 has a slower drive, but a blu ray lazer reads more data than a dvd lazer, so I believe the ps3 has a slightly faster read rate than a dvd drive at whatever speeds the 360 has.
