Last time I checked an h.264 action video at 1080p runs at about 3gb/hour. Now the fact the game is on 3 discs. That would mean there are either. A. 6 hours of HD Action. (anime sequences take no space compared to this)

I would say the game has either.

a. 20+ hours of beautiful anime sequences.
b. the game itself is that big.
c. They need to learn to encode anime.

within a few years Blu-ray format will be used heavily in games if not by 3rd parties then Sony will use it.As much as Mr.Jaffe says the blu-ray could have been left out he only refers that to price not that it can or will not be utilized.Whan a Whoping game that uses even 30GB of space on the disc comes out you will see the difference.I would put money on when God of War III comes out in a few years it will be close to filling up a Blu-ray disc and He will then see why Sony wanted to be ahead of the competitors.The only reason to not put in An HD format would be for cost.Microsoft was going to have the 360 run HD-DVD games but they couldn't due to supply and the need to get out first to market.Obviously they did see a positive in regaurds to what could be done with games.

It refers to efficiency, and whether or not data is necessary.

And at which point does space become a hinderance? Did you know that Soul reaver was never supposed to be two games? Have you read about the enchant arems developer running out of space?

These devs know what they are doing and sometimes it stops being an effiency issue and then the story, scenes and characters have to be dropped because their ambitions couldn't fit on the disk.

First of all, no, the FMVs in VII did not integrate into the gameplay. They all had a short loading screen before and after. Second, I distincly pointed out that better optimized data applied to game data, not FMVs. FMVs use codecs, and the PS1 just handled MPEG-1, which applied to every FF game on the system, so more FMVs would require more data, no matter how effectively the game data was coded.

It is not even a question. The fire and smoke in many parts of the 1 disc. Many of the intown elements like escalators and elevators actually simulated movement by just runing an FMV. There were many many instances in which your characters were runniing ofer or interacting with FMV's in final fantasy 7 and it should have been painfully obvious. "EDIT" and if you can try to rip the videos you would see that for yourself.

Not wanting to make them doesn't take away the fact that he knows how they are made.

And does that make his opinion more important than kojima's? or Hayashi's? Of course his personal pov will reflect what he says because he believes in a "DIRECTION" for the "ENTIRE" industry. How best to propogate that if everyone is restricted by hardware. I believe that he is under the mistaken impression that devs with too much freedom cannot create masterpiece's or envoke alot of emotion out of epic titles. I disagree and I was shocked that he said that after the completion of god of war because I considered that gem to be very involving.

Just to the first part, "less is more", in the context of game design, does not refere to total data size, but how that data is done. The point is to have the data take up the least space possible, so that if it takes up a lot of space, you know that space was needed. For example, Resistance had a lot of its data in FMVs (which was necessary, as a lot of cut scenes were shown in ways that couldn't work in real time), but the data was used well enough that the game took only 16GB, instead of the earlier reports of 22GB. That wasn't being reduced for the sake of it. It shows that Insomniac knew how to handle the data.

And in terms of RAM, "less is more" means that more information can fit in the RAM, meaning better graphics, draw distance, physic, AI, etc. That's why games on the same system look better in later years of that gen.

EDIT: So in the case of Soul Reaver and Enchanted ARMs, those games were done well, so that they actually were large enough not to fit on one disc without some work. They actually did need more space. Of course they could have just added a second disc, as those games could have worked with that. 

I'm gonna say this.

More is more.

Less is less.

That is my opinion on this.

EDIT: 5 'worlds' are usually all the 'texture' worlds in a game. That is less. A massive game would have 10-20 texture 'worlds' Now you do have to compress the data. That is common sense. If you dont, your stupid. STUPID. More is more. Less is less.

Just becuase you can fit a texture in 100k instead of 150k means NOTHING to me. I would rather it be on 3 discs and have 2 textures instead of 1. 

 final fantasy 7 came out roughly 2 years after the playstation launch, that's hardly a first gen game and definately not launch

FF7 had many FMVs in the gameplay, mainly because the backrounds were pre-rendered, and the only way to make them change real-time was to change it to a FMV, then when the FMV was over the pre-rendered backround would change to the last part of FMV, appearing that nothing had changed.  However if you look closely you can see the screen starts to get a little fuzzy whenever this happens because it's not real-time. 

I would never say that more space is a bad thing, but at what price?  Blu-ray has very few other advantages, yet it is increasing the price of the PS3 by at least 200$.  PS3s are costing Sony approx. twice as much to make as the 360 is to microsoft, yet graphically we have yet to really see a difference. 

On the plus side for Sony, it appears that PS3 has turned the tide of the war between HD-DVD and Blu-ray, but again at what cost?

Just FYI, the quote from Jaffe about blu-ray is from GT's "Bonus Round" show which you can watch at gametrailers.com, here:  http://www.gametrailers.com/bonusround.php?ep=4&pt=2

Some interesting perspectives, particularly the 2-part Jaffe interview.  There are 2 more parts of it yet to be released, including the part where the blu-ray statement is put into context.  The only quote we know for sure (from that show) is a short clip of him answering a question about what he wouldn't have included if he had to choose and he said blu-ray so that the PS3 could sell for $400.  That's a reasonable thing to say. 

There was a thread on this forum debating whether or not Sony should not have gone with blu-ray.  If blu-ray wins I think it might be worth it, but would have releasing the PS3 sooner and cheaper made a big difference?  We'll never know, but it's not a hard argument to make that Sony would have had an easier time in the console war without including blu-ray due to costs and manufacturing problems.  That is very apparent.  Obviously, including blu-ray in the PS3 helps them in the blu-ray war.  Personally, I think blu-ray is going to win and it will end up being ok, but only time will tell.  Also, free online games and wireless and blah blah that I keep having to mention more than offsets the cost already, but not necesarily to the average consumer (and many on this board).

Blue Dragon already being 3 discs already shows the benefit of blu-ray's extra space.  RPGs and other games will only get larger and more content added.  Being able to play blu-ray movies is a nice bonus to me, especially considering that players of any HD format are still $350 and above, and the PS3 is still the best blu-ray player out there (according to a recent UK review). 

Also, dual-layer DVDs read slower so the reading time is offset by the constant read of blu-ray discs.  Blu-ray discs also can hardly be damaged no matter how hard you try.  Scratches are still a problem for DVDs, in case you forgot.

Anyway, the exact context of what he said will be shown soon.  I like Sony's response (google news searches) saying Jaffe can say whatever he wants, he's earned it.  Jaffe also admits that Sony knows better than he does.  We'll see I guess.