@ CapAmerica

"Blu-ray offers the capacity, performance and high-speed internet connectivity to take us into the future of gaming."

"EA, a leading games developer and publisher, added that the delivery of high-definition games of the future was vital and Blu-ray had the capacity, functionality and interactivity needed for the kinds of projects it was planning."

But please understand while most XBox 360 developing companies may be complaining behind the scenes, most of them would like to remain anonymous to the general public. IMO the reason being XBox 360 fans, for instance if stating out loud the PS3 is superior in this or other regards some or many XBox 360 consumers may get upset, which may effect game sales for these companies eventually. Epic being a good example in this regard, not wanting to answer a question on which platform is more powerful in public.

Microsoft on the other hand will try to muddy the waters as much as possible, trying to focuss solely on the movie aspect of the format while claiming DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray would soon be obsolete as a movie format due to the internet (they know HD-DVD is currently losing the war, despite heavily pushed by Microsoft in the past), which is of course nonesense even in the US there is a large percentage of people not having internet access at home and Microsoft needs to do quite big server upgrades to deliver the content fast enough. I think most people for the forseeable future would prefer a disc in a nice case.

PS3 needs it, certainly, especially if they really are going to be doing FMV and HDaudio intensive 1080p games.  360 might need it down the road but can probably squeak by without it.  Wii obviously would not see much if any benefit from it.  It's just based on each platform's hardware philosophy.

@ RolStoppable

Although you add a strong point into this discussion, note that distributing games through the PSN is a very cheap alternative available to PS3 developers. WIth regard to the bigger projects, they have the resources.

Blu-Ray disc production costs are dropping quickly and with regard to movies is now generally cheaper than HD-DVD, as many / most HD-DVD movies use dual-layer discs and Blu-Ray movies are currently supplied on single layer discs.

Note that the average game is priced way above Blu-Ray movies, so with regard to games the added cost is less of a factor as compared to movies (percentage of the total revenue). 

Heres my philosphy on this issue.

Gears of War had to take up the whole DVD it was supposed to have more and i remember it was supposed to be a launch game with the 360 but due to disc space problems the needed to "find" a way to fit what they were working on onto 1 disc (microsoft did NOT want to relese a multi-disc game so early) at one point i read that the infomation that game had could esily be put on 4-5 discs.microsoft would have looked like they droped the ball on the format they chose to use.so that was the huge delay on gears and why the game was still so short alot was missing from the original.I can't see that disc space will not be an issue in the future if was already an issue with what was supposed to be a Launch game

@ NorthStar

IMO the single player aspect of Gears of War was way too short, I played the game through within just a couple of evenings. Also IMO the game didn't offer much varierty, the light gun tank section of the game wasn't fun for me at all and I would have preferred more freedom to wander around the environments, you can't jump down from a higher level to a level below, right at the start of the game I was impressed by the visuals the building was damaged wide open and the outside environment looked really good but I wasn't able to even jump outside and fall to my death like I wanted to do, just to see a little more of the environment.

IMO Gears of War is a good game, but heavily overrated if you look at the game as a whole and not just at the flashy graphics. The story telling is weak, the AI isn't really smart and the main characters not being very appealing. One thing I found really odd, was running faster while crouching, not very realistic, well maybe only I noticed as I am a Physical Therapist.

So you can't trust the company that says we needed the PS3 and bluray for our game to get the full potential out of our game?But you will trust the Companies that are out just to make the most money from going cross platform.What the hell is EA going to say sure it could have been a better game but then we couldn't make as much money so we decided to make a Mediocre game."Do we really need 1080p video"...do we really need next gen graphics?Isn't the Idea of "next -gen"to be a step ahead ?Look at the N64 they didn't feel the need to switch from cartridges or the Dreamcast didn't feel the need to offer DVD.Lastly "we don't even know how good Lair will be it could turn out to be a pretty bad game"?Are you kidding me the game Looks amazing and you on a Effin Dragon.Of course it "could turn out to be" a bad game, it "Could turn out to be" the best game ever made or it "could turn out be "coming out for the system you own and you "could turn out be" saying how amazing this game looks and how you can't wait to play it ...or that "could turn out to be"me.Any game "coudl turn out to be" bad.In any case what is wrong with making a Big game that is(Could Be) great?

Oh you misunderstood me: I still remember why the 3rd parties left Nintendo - I don´t consider Blu-Ray a mistake or something. I´m just somewehre in the middle: You don´t really "need" it (this would mean you can´t develope games without the Space of a Blu-Ray) but it can make developement a lot of easier and you don´t always have to watch if you´ve got enough space left to bring your games on one disk.

That´s what I said about cardridges too back in the PSX/N64 days: You could still make games on them but it was much easier to develope for a CD and you cut put all your cutscenes on a single CD - every N64 game developed by Nintendo was without pre rendered cutscenes cuz there was not enough space on a single cartdrige. that was pretty funny for me as a PSX owner

You do realize in N64 days we were talking about 16-32 (64 meg cartridge was used a couple times) megs versus 650, while now we are talking 9 gig versus 25 or 50.  Another thing about the n64 is it cost developers more money to use a bigger cartridge.  Part of the reason everyone wanted CD at the time was just because they wanted FMVs and prerendered backrounds which were so cool at the time (see FF7).  I know many people that thought PS had better graphics than N64 just because they were watching FMVs and prerendered backrounds. 

DVD's cost close to $0.70 to replicate and you can add 15 or more cents per layer. The cost of media between the high def formats actually isn't that expensive. Probably the initial press but then again if you look at the amount that dvd's cost.... to fill a blu ray disc you would have to multiply that by three. Then multiply the replication cost by three. Then factor in the cost of localization (different discs pressed).

Please people, Quit looking out for the good of the industry because they were doing fine with their risks before this generation and your opinions came along. Seriously... it may cost more for them to make a game on blu ray but if it is an amazing game I am sure they will make their money back. I have seen people purchase systems and multiple copies of games because they liked a game that much. The cost of making a game on any of the next generation systems are still a choice. The assets, R&D, sound and the visuals are all up to design. I have heard peoples arguements about game companies competing and that still falls under choice. Comparisons are going to be made no matter what even if they do not make complete sense (zelda vs Sotc, Gears vs resistance, KOF vs streetfighter), and these comparisons are mainly made by the media or gamers themselves. I do not think the companies care as they are getting their money and have fullfiled their internal goals.

@Louie

I gotcha with what your saying. It isn't needed to make a great game but apparently for the ambitions of game developers, it is claimed that they need more space to play with. As mentioned here earlier gears is beautiful but it is really short. If this is the future then something is going to have to give. It is great for people to assume it would be easier to put games on multiple discs but no one is really asking whether or not it would hurt the consumer. It is about what is cheaper, easier and coherent to what the developers have in mind. You may not mind changing a disc but what if it irks the director to make concessions for disc changes?

I can yak on and on but I just hear on forums a bunch of people saying that "blu ray isn't needed, because it doesn't bother me" type sentiment and it really bothers me because it seems as if people think that devs have no knew techniques or creativeness to take advantage of the space.