well is that the point though, you still have to get your  game produced on the media which mean's you have to order so many disc's during preproduction based on how many of the disc's you need duplicated. so by going by duplication and authering cost's what do you think is the +/- when you need your media produced on a DL-DVD 9 or  SINGLE SIDED SINGLE LAYER BD 25?

this used to matter in more upfront cost's for Blu-Ray due to not that many production and authering studio's being how there was less than it is today. not as many production lines, time is money so movie's and game's would be delayed because not enough of the authering and production companies were around .

but even today more companies have invested into Blu-Ray production line's, more authering and publication companies are croping up.

royalities are based on a few criteria and that depend's on a company by company basis.

as an example I will use Google as an example:

to development studio's outside of Google to get published on the android smartphone you have to pay 30% to google

you have upto 70% but that does not include support , nor the return of said software for refund to the consumer. etc.

for disc's based here is an example taken march of last year:

The fees for the new product licenses are US$9.50 for a Blu-ray Disc player and US$14.00 for a Blu-ray Disc recorder. The per disc license fees for Blu-ray will be US$0.11 for a read only disc, US$0.12 for a recordable disc and US$0.15 for a rewritable disc. As a result of the efficiencies obtained with the combined license offering, the royalty rates for Blu-ray products are expected to be at least 40% lower than the current cumulative royalty rates for individual Blu-ray, DVD and CD format licenses.

http://www.sonyinsider.com/2009/03/02/panasonic-philips-and-sony-join-together-for-easy-blu-ray-product-licenses/

for say your production plant:

here is an example:

DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-ray Disc Player Manufacturing License - Perpetual
This license applies to PCs, graphics cards, and DVD, Blu-ray Disc and HD-DVD players capable of activating the Rovi Process on content originating from a DVD, Blu-ray or HD-DVD disc. The current standard, one-time license fee for new licensees is $105,000. Licensees that desire to convert their existing DVD Manufacturing agreement to this type of agreement may pay a bit less. This license may also permit the licensee to manufacture DVD products for Rovi licensed OEM customers in any quantity and for non-Rovi licensed OEM customers in quantities of up to 5,000 per year, per customer.

http://www.rovicorp.com/licensing_certification/licensing/1446.htm

Very good read, what about royalties involve with a dvd disc? Because what I underline doesnt explain much their calculation.

Well let me tell you that since I have a job, studies and shit to read in general gaming is one of my entertainment activities  and my time is limited. Multiple dics cause me to interrupt my gaming session for like a 30+ seconds to a minute but why having to go trough that is just as good as not having to do it and play the game I want to play on the time that I have without having to do it? It isn't, is worst and a negative.  a single disc is a plus an a positive there's no spin on that. the experience is better that's a fact.

However it isn't a MAJOR EARTH SHATTERING THING but if the option exist I will go single disc Vs multiple disc everytime.

back in 2008:

this article on Cnet.


February 19, 2008 11:02 AM PST
Blu-ray victory means royalties, royalties, royalties

Forget about customer satisfaction or superiority of image quality. The real issue in the war between Blu-ray and HD DVD was about royalties.

With the competition gone, the Blu-ray consortium now has the opportunity to persuade PC makers and consumer electronics makers to adopt Blu-ray drives as their optical drives of choice. It will also get studios and disc makers to deliver Blu-ray discs to consumers. And every time one of those drives or discs leaves a factory, the Blu-ray Disc Association will get a royalty.

The numbers add up quickly. Look at DVD, for example. To make a DVD player legally, manufacturers recently had to pay around $4 per player or drive, according to some estimates. A few years ago, those fees were around $15 to $20. Fees get paid every time a DVD drive gets included in a PC. Nearly every PC in the world has a DVD drive these days and roughly 250 million PCs get shipped every year. Companies that legally make DVD discs also pay fees. The DVD6C licensing group dropped the per disc fee in January to 4 cents per disc. Years ago, it was 7.5 cents per disc. Then there are verification fees.

The royalties, in fact, led to what Chinese leaders call the "DVD mistake," said Zhisheng Niu, vice dean of the school of information sciences at Tsinghua University, in an interview with CNET News.com last year. Because of intense competition, many Chinese companies have lost money, or just broke even, on selling DVD players. The people that have made money, he added, were the patent holders. Chinese manufacturers often got around the licensing issues problem by making illegal players. (The DVD Forum eliminated the royalty for DVD players made and sold in China for a few years, but a lot of those systems ended up overseas.)

The royalties are one of the prime reasons China has pushed for its own optical standard.

"We have to develop our own standards so that we can have our own industry," said Niu. "We have a big DVD industry, but we are probably losing money. The market is big enough so that we can have our own industry."

Now, remember. Niu isn't some pirate off the street. He's one of the chief academics at China's leading university. That gives you a gauge on the feelings there.

The same went for CDs. Philips got about 1.8 cents per CD disc while Sony got about 1.2 cents per disc, according to analysts estimates. When some of the patents expired in 2001, Philips said its royalty revenue would drop by about $42 million. Collecting royalties is a great business.

The Blu-ray camp will likely move more cautiously than the DVD Forum in granting licenses to player and disc manufacturers, said Richard Doherty, principal analyst at the Envisioneering Group, adding that one of the reasons that the studios liked Blu-ray over HD DVD was it is probably easier to set up a pirate HD DVD shop.

Gartner analyst Van Baker, however, said he doesn't believe that Blu-ray will be as lucrative as DVD. For one thing, Blu-ray will have to compete against digital download services, which could prove popular with consumers. Second, the studios have been knocking down the royalty rates.

"This is what a lot of the negotiations were about," Baker said. "My suspicion is that this is not going to be as good as it was for DVD."

We don't know the royalty standards from Blu-ray. The consortium hasn't been aggressive about collecting them yet, but it will likely move into action once the industry gets moving.

The royalties will be split among several players, said Doherty.

Blu-ray has a lot of grandfathers. A lot of people call it a Sony standard but by our estimates Sony doesn't even have 30 percent of the IP," Doherty said. The top four intellectual property holders are likely Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer, and Warner.

Royalties were one of the primary reasons that it took so long to get manufacturers to come out with players that could handle both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs. Manufacturers with dual-format players have to license technology from both camps, which boosts costs.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9874317-7.html?tag=nefd.lede

I haven't read the thread so don't crucify me if it has already been mentionned but playing Metal Gear Solid 4 I would have prefered changing disk for each chapter than waiting for that horrible install time. Especially when I was on chapter 4 and my brother on chapter 3... we had to wait for the install time every time we played.

I agree with your last sentence. It really doesn't bother me either way.

here is the rates from the dvd6c forum:

http://www.dvd6cla.com/royaltyrate.html

US$0.075 per disc;
US$0.065 per disc on or after January 1, 2002;
US$0.05 per disc on or after January 1, 2004;
US$0.04 per disc on or after the effective date of the DVD6C License Agreement

this is as of 2008

Well at least, metal gear solid 4 is not representative of usual PS3 exclusive. But I agree with you, I would have gladly change disc instead of waiting 5 minutes per chapter. Its even worst in your case since you were playing at the same time than your brother. After playing Uncharted 2, im really wandering how they couldnt do better than the 5 minutes install sequence each chapter.