Now before I say anything, let me defend myself. In no way am I bashing Sony's use of Blu-Ray in the PS3. In fact, I think that Sony made a good business decision by incorporating blu-ray into the PS3, because it insured Sony more sales and thus furthered Sony's goals of making blu-ray the HD format of choice. Furthermore, it's not about the price of games either, as the Xbox360 still uses standard DVD's, but they happen to cost the same amount as PS3 blu-ray games.

My question, and the point of this thread, has nothing to do with the fact that the PS3 uses blu-ray discs per say. What I'm really asking here is; will we ever see games that actually need all 25GB (50 if it's dual layered) of a blu-ray disc's storage capacity? To put that much space into perspective, two dual-layered blu-ray discs could hold everything on my computer on them, which is just under 100GB.

The Xbox 360 still uses standard DVD's for it's gaming and, so far, it has been graphically on par with the PS3. Heck, the GameCube used 1.5GB discs in just about every game, usually only needing one disc to fit the entire game. The only game I can think of that used more than one disc and was multi-platform was RE4, which even with extras still only took up one DVD on the PS2 (and I'm guessing at the most was about 4, possibly 5, gigs).

My point is, that very few games seem to even use up all of a standard DVD's storage, so how necessary will the storage of the blu-ray format be with upcoming PS3 games? How many, if any, games will we see that need that kind of storage?

(Admittedly I'm not incredibly tech-savvy, and if games using all that space have already been confirmed, please feel free to call me an idiot and ignore me.)

*Edit* 24 GameCube games were placed across 2 discs according to Wikipedia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_multiple-disc_Nintendo_GameCube_games

It definitely allows programmers more freedom to not be concise, use shortcuts and clever programming, or harsh compression that makes them lose quality.

Consequently, promoting lazier programming doesn't seem that wise to me. Mega Man 1 was a 125kb game, the adds on the side of this site are larger. But clever programming kept even that tiny game fun, thus spawning a series with about 56 titles in it.

Give a logical mind a challenge and they will solve it. Give a logical mind pure freedom, and they won't be challenged. But I'm not a programmer and I'm sure they don't like me saying "Suck it up, work harder and better and faster bitch".

The bigger question is what developer is willing to put up with the development costs to fill up a blue ray disc? I can imagine Sony's first party games trying to use it or just gloat about 10 gigs of space for sound alone, but for the most part, its too costly and risky. If they make a game that cannot be multi platform, they probably wont do it. The PS3 user base is too small and seeing expensive games like Lair and Heavenly Sword selling about as well as Carnival Games isnt too encouraging. Huge games can still fit on a dvd like mass effect. Remember, pc games are still gonna be on dvd for a long time and there in ultra high resolution. Blue ray is too ahead of its time for now

well, the reason why pc gamers aren't in dire need of blu-ray is because you can have games like crysis or others who come in 2 seperate dual layer dvds that you can 'instal' and run :) In a couple of years, games will either come on blu-ray/hd-dvd or 3-4 dual layer dvds... like they did just before the cd died and dvd took place... or when floppy died before the cd stated to come along :) lol... I still remember warcraft on 4 diskettes!

Data as high as 50gig for a game is because of the resolution it may be outputting, not the games actual content.

So it's not need unless you are a hardcore HDMI nerd.

The adavantage's that Blu-ray gives devs is the ability to have perfect uncompressed sound at 7.1, a ton CG or in game MPEG's at 1080p (which when used right covers up load times), tons of variations in textures throught the games, and the ability to let the processor work more on game tasks than decompressing when streaming. When devs start to relly take advantage of this no one will question the benifits that Blu-ray brings to gaming. The best examples of what this can do so far are Uncharted, Ratchet, Heavanly Sword, and (the underrated) Lair. These games all use 25GB Blu-ray discs; Uncharted Showed and Ratched showed the freedom in textures with every level having its own unique textures, Lair showed the ability to stream lager levels, and Heavanly Sword showed the use of uncommpressed audio. Next year we will see many games coming out on 50GB Blu-ray discs. Games like Killzone 2, Getaway, and MGS4 will bring all of the advantages of Blu-ray together into one game, and create worlds that DVD is just not capable of.

Yes. No. Perhaps. Not yet. There's more than one correct answer depending on your personal taste and your current stance in the whole format wars issue.
Personally I think it's not needed yet, but I'm glad it's here none the less, there are advantages.

Ahh see your question was already answered like 10x over :) is it NECESSARY? Nope :) Hell some of the PSN games I've downloaded don't even span 100 meg ^_^ But after playing Uncharted, you'll realize a few things, first off the game can run 7.1 uncompressed audio :) A BIG bonus for me :P Second off, you can play the whole game using the skins of almost everyone in the game, massive feature? Not really. After unlocking some of the content, you get all the behind the scenes, concept art, mo-cap sessions, meet the actors etc etc etc. Hell I've killed almost an hour just watching extra's XD, after playing through this game and realizing that almost ALL the textures in-game are high-res, I go back to playing games like Resistance or Halo 3 and I simply wonder "what happened?". Blu-ray isn't a necessary thing by any means just yet, but if it makes me look at my old games and really get blown away by what "next gen." can truly offer, I'd say definitely, I wouldn't trade it for anything :) While playing a particular area in Uncharted, I literally just pulled myself over and couldn't believe what I was seeing was in a video game. I've never had an experience quite like it in video game history yet  ^^

from a man that know nothing :

yes BR is important in 1 case : games that are playing in a big world when u dont want loading time.
example : GTA4 !

In this type of game, when you are driving your car to go in the other side of NewYork, you don't want any loading time.

It doesn't mean that the Xbox360 is not able to do it.
It just means that the BR, in my opinion, may be an good help for creating such game.

Code size was never the limit. Things that take up the most space are pre-recorded high-definition cutscenes and uncompressed sound, both of which are just desirable add-ons, even for games with a focus on presentation. Wii, DS and even PSP games prove that that the best games are not necessarily the best looking, and indeed the massive budgets needed to create such content are often never regained with less than what is considered stellar sales. It is not worth the additional cost at this point - this is why I believe Microsoft did not include HD-DVD when they had the opportunity.