| twesterm said: I read this over on Penny-Arcade and thought it was pretty interesting (NOTE-- whole post here): In the space of our play experience, we've already seen two separate installs. The game is still broken up into discrete areas, which I found odd, the assumption being that if we were taking time out to install shit it was because we were doing it to sustain a single world. You would have a hard time convincing me that multiple installs over the course of playing a videogame are worse than disc swapping. This has become some kind of theological question on forums, a kind of philosophical pinata, except no matter how many times you strike it no reward is forthcoming. Blu-Ray is only a convenience if it is actually convenient, if it doesn't require concessions either at the beginning of an experience or at several points throughout. It's amazing to me that this is considered progress. They do raise a good point there. Is BluRay really convenient if instead of swapping discs you get installs at various points in your game? |
What's your definition of "convenient"? If it means not having to get up at all, it's obviously a convenience. If it means having to find physical storage space for one disk versus many, it's obviously a convenience. If you're a messy sort of fellow and it means having many fewer disks to misplace, it's obviously a convenience.
The point itself they are trying to make is really premature. How one game decided to use the Blu-Ray storage does not automatically make it representative of all games that will use Blu-Ray. It remains to be seen.
Also, it is incorrect to assume that, had the game been broken out into many DVD's, there would be no installations required. If you look at a game like Mass Effect, you can easily see that some DVD games could really benefit from installs. That's not even a "maybe it'd be better." Mass Effect would 100% absolutely benefited from installations despite being on DVD9.
Penny Arcade lost any image of non-partisanship when they developed a game for XBLA. (Obviously, if people don't have that particular console, they can't buy your game.) I feel Blu-Ray is progress, just as DVD was progress over the CD. It's not innovation, but it is progress nevertheless.
