There were plenty of people who were up in arms over Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet (just to name two) having a mandatory install on PlayStation 3. After all, the same game is on Xbox 360 without any sort of installation, so why should an install – which does improve loading times – be required?

MTV Multiplayer has been seeking an answer to that question, and needless to say, publishers and developers haven’t been particularly forthcoming. However, there is the inherent technical challenge (I won’t call it a problem, as it’s simply something new that is being taken on) with Blu-ray that developers need to find a way around. As Multiplayer puts it, installations are simply a way around this problem.

The issue arises from differences in the reading techniques of DVD and Blu-ray. By nature, the outer and inner parts of a disc move at different speeds while a disc is spinning, regardless of format (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, etc.). While DVD drives can read data at those differing speeds, Blu-ray reads at one speed. Combine that with the extremely large size of Blu-ray discs, and simply dumping existing DVD data onto a Blu-ray disc will inevitably result in longer load times.

Personally, I would much prefer the option to install. I’m all for decreasing load times, but actually requiring gamers to install seems more like laziness than a necessity.

 LINK - http://news.filefront.com/a-partial-answer-behind-why-some-ps3-games-need-to-install/

Sorry if this has already been posted.

Especially for the people who have 20GB PS3's, after just a few installs all of their space is virtually gone. When I get mine I'll be using external drives for all of my extra storage needs so that most of the internal space can be used for mandatory installs.

The BD reads at 9mb/s. The fasted part of a DVD drive (in a 360 anyway), reads at 10.6mb/s. Slowest at 4.5mb/s

The problem is not the speed. The problem is the amount of data. If DMC was only on BR, the load times would have been the same for BD. The game installed 5 gig. I would assume that means 5 gig is also being loaded off the DVD on the 360. You can't put 5 gig of data in the fast part of a DVD, so the overall load times of DMC would probably be the same. They stuck that game on the HD because they could. Of the two options, DL and almost removing load times they thought was a better option

The cool thing about BD is it's 50gig. Getting 50gig off a disk at 9.0 or even 10.6 mb/s for that matter, sucks.

He would seems to be saying the load time would not be the same.

 If your playing a game with a small amount of data (1-2 gig), that's true. If you need to pull more then that off the DVD at a fast rate, then the BD will start to become faster.

Also, The BD gives you more options, because it holds so much. Let's take Oblivion for example.

It was made with the PC in mind. With the PC, you just install the game and go, who cares how it's stuck on the DVD. With the 360 version, they took a lot of time organizing the data to put the stuff that needs to load often in the fast part of the disk. This helped somewhat, but compared to the PC version, load times sucked.

Along came the PS3, and they needed to implement a different kind optimization. What they did for the PS3 version, is stuck the data on the disk in more then one place. I am not sure what structure they used, but for the sake of argument, let's say they copied every texture a zone needed into it's on area. That way when the zone loaded, you didn't need to move the head as much. Your transfer rate was slow, but you had a lot less seeks. You could do this sort of thing because the disk was so big.

So, Bethesda took two approaches, and optimized each media to the strengths of each system, and what they ended up with was much faster load times on the PS3 (and the PS3 version had sharper textures, so possibly more data to load).

So yes, "simply" dumping the data from a DVD to a BD could give you slower load times, but taking the time to do it right is another matter all together :) 

OK I see what you are saying

FYI - The diameter of the data holding section of a DVD is 116mm outer and 44mm inner. This means that the total area for data storage is aprox 36,200mm². Of that area ~15,680mm² is in the outer 1/3rd of the disc where it spins the fastest. In other words aprox 43.3% of the data is available at the highest speeds.

I'd look at this another way. Devs have always grumbled at lack of HDD on 360. While they've gumbled about Cell etc. too they've always praised HDD on PS3.

Developers like idea of installing. The bottom line is that most would seem to se an install as the best option for performance (over streaming from physical media). With PS3 as Sony does not require them to make installs optional or set a limit of how much can be installed, they are free to take the install option if they want, avoid having to optimise data storage on the disk and claim faster load times. Sound like DMC4 on PS3 anyone?

For DMC4 on 360 they had to stream as the console denied them the install option. I have no doubt looking at Uncharted that DMC4 could run without install on PS3 as well, assuming the data was optimised on the BR Disk, with only fairly minor slowdown of loads (probably in line with 360).

Many see a console game as being plug and play - so using installs on PS3 has not been overall popular with gamers. And the HDD in PS3 is too small to cater to a lot of 5 to 6 GB installs. So I do see a problem here. It's not PS3 specifically (as fanboys would like to target) so much as developers having a choice that suits them and taking it.

I think Sony needs to set an upper limit on installs or even set a locked limit for temporary caches - i.e. the OS keeps say 2GB (should be plenty for most games) free for games to cache to as you play them then deletes cache when you stop playing - either that or admit that there's probably little real cost (given HDD prices today) jumping the standard HDD up to 120 GB and offering consumers with older HDDs a trade in.

it doesn't bother me that you need to install. PC games you install so what the biggy? It's only once so no real issue.

Well that explains why, I don't think many people will be botherd as long it doesn't get out of hand and as finalsquall PC gamers have to do it anyway.