What Im not understanding is how people think that MGS4, FFXIII, et all are going to take up anywhere near 50gb of space.

I don't believe, over 5 years, you can go from an average game taking up around 3-6gb per game, as it is now, to 40-50gb in 2012. That'd be more than any other increase in storage size since the transition from cartridge to CDs, which were about 20x higher in capacity.

If R:FoM can take up 15-16gb uncompressed, with no attempt at making the game smaller, how can games take up 5x that?

I admit, in 2012, I am sure that the 9gb will start getting pretty tight, and BR looks good, but the fact is, in 2012, Blu-Ray will be antiquated with vastly superior storage solutions such as HVD. At that point, MS or even Nintendo can switch to HVD solutions, and offer something at a cheap price, and end up holding 1~3TB of storage.

not going to read the whole thread.


Basically...

WHO CARES - does it really cause that much trouble changing a disc at some stage through the game?

Who gives a flying fuck.

Just read about mrstickball and I think FFXIII could possibly take up that much space, simply in the sheer amount of HD cutscenes that will be included on the disc but other than that no way.

@ mrstickball

Insomniac:

"And yes, we do compress our level data. The fact that we store so much on disc is actually not that surprising when you look at the numbers. Consider that even with compression, each of our “levels” (or loaded areas) has more than 300 megs of unique data. And keep in mind that we’re also streaming data during level playthroughs. It doesn't take too much level data before you've gone past what can be stored on a dual-layer DVD. And between single player and multiplayer we have a lot of level data (over 40 different large loaded areas) – yes, more than will fit on a dual layer DVD."

Note they have now implemented texture streaming into their PS3 game engine. Why is this relevant? You don't have the load those textures into memory beforehand, so you aren't limited so much by the size of the available memory. You can have more and higher quality textures in your games.

 BTW, it's confirmed most of Motorstorm's data is compressed in a 2:1 ratio. 

@ Odion

You are probably referring to DVD-18, Ben-Hur is the only movie I know of which used this format and was released years ago. This isn't optimal as you can read from the review below:

"The choices they had were to split it over two sides of a double-sided, double-layer disc (a DVD-18), or to split it over two single-sided, double-layer discs (DVD-9s - perhaps the most common variety of DVD available today). In both Region 1 and Region 4 they have chosen to use a DVD-18. To be honest, I'd have preferred that they use two discs, because two discs would be easier to handle, and would be more useful in the event that you had either two DVD players, or a DVD player with multiple disc capabilities. I suspect they used a single DVD-18 so they could state that they'd put the whole movie onto a single disc. Anyway, what it means is that you must handle the disc quite carefully to avoid getting fingerprints on it, and it is a little more fragile. Also, because the only label is a thin ring around the centre of the disc, it is not particularly easy to work out which side is which. It doesn't help that they haven't labelled them clearly, either - both labels say "Widescreen DVD Ben-Hur" - you think they could have added "Side A" and "Side B". The easy way to tell them apart is to look at the serial number: on the first side it ends in A and on the other in B. Still, look at it this way: DVD-18s are quite rare, so you get an uncommon piece of technology for your money."

Having XBox 360 games on double sided DVDs would mean you would still have to swap the game disc to read the other side, also you will have to watch out for fingerprints for both sides. Blu-Ray discs, apart from being relatively scratch resistant are also pretty fingerprint resistant, in addition to that the Blu-Ray laser is more scratch and fingerprint tolerant while reading your DVD collection.

OriGin said: Just read about mrstickball and I think FFXIII could possibly take up that much space, simply in the sheer amount of HD cutscenes that will be included on the disc but other than that no way.

 

As I said, I agree. FFXIII is just about the only game I think that can get close to that number. However, FFXII still was one DVD, suprisingly. IMO, it'll probably end up at 35-40gb.

 

This capacity issue is a lot exaggerated. Its sure thing that PS3 has an advantage over others since Bluray can hold up to 25 GB on one side while a dual dvd can take 8-9 GBs but its not as importnant as some people are making fuss about it.

Ok, lets give an example of ID software games, the father of FPS.

Wolfenstein (1992) 1.4 MB compressed, 3 MB installed, in 1 floppy
Doom (1993) 4 MB compressed, 10 MB installed, in 3 floppies
Doom2 (1994) 7 MB compressed, 15 MB installed, in 5 floppies
Quake (1996) 23 MB compressed, 40 MB installed, in 1 CD
Quake 2 (1997) 280 MB compressed, 370 MB installed, in 1 CD
Quake 3 (1999) ~600 MB compressed, ~1 GB installed, in 1 CD
Quake 4 (2006) a few GB, a few GB, in 1 DVD

As you see, when PS1 was released, games were already too big in floppies and CDs were almost a must. This is why Most N64 ports or simultaneous releases were crippled and downsized versions due to very insufficient capacity (4-8 MB at first, later enlarged up to 64 MB). They lacked FMVs or CD quality sound and music.

I dont think Dreamcast with a capacity of 1.2 GB (versus 4.5 GB DVD) or GC with a capacity of 1.5 GB had a significant problem with game storage though. The vast majority of PC games came in 1 CD anyway (like 70%). An additional 15-20% came in 2 discs (which was still within their capacity range) and only a max of 10% of PC games (up to 2005) came in more than 2 CDs. Most of the games using more than one CD was usually using it for Videos or some dispensable extra content anyway.

Over the 2-3 years, Games have begun to come in DVDs so have the nextgen consoles. There isnt hardly any game that comes in dual DVD right now, and those which come in dual usually include extra content. So clearly Single side DVD are easily sufficient for about 2 years and Dual layer DVDs will suffice for another 2 years as well. Well, after then, in 2010 or so, this capacity might not be really enough, but hey, Games can still come in 2 or more DVDs, right? This is what happened with floppies and CDs and why not DVDs. If there is 30% of games after 2010 that wouldnt fit in 1 dual dvd, then put it on 2 dvds! Its still way cheaper and more effective way of packaging your products! 2 DVDs are and will be much cheaper than 1 Bluray, feel free about it!

@ freedquaker

In the early days game development often got severely hindered and compromised due to the lack of space on storage media, keeping the amount of discs to a minimum.

An example:

1986 Defender of the Crown for the Amiga (1.6 MB)

http://youtube.com/watch?v=cvW6okgy4wA

Defender of the Crown for the Amiga was considered to be a masterpiece, note the time of release were the start of the early NES games.

Amiga (1986)





NES (1989), released years after the original:





However later on there was an Amiga CD remake of the original, thus minus the storage contrainst, apart from more storage all other specs were roughly the same (7 Mhz CPU). So essentially this version was already possible on 1985 hardware, provided there was additional storage available to development teams:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Af0vFi4sSzw

 

Using up the additional Blu-Ray space isn't mandatory, yet with bigger dev teams, 10-25 million USD budgets it's easy to run out of DVD space without making compromises.

MikeB said: @ freedquaker In the early days game development often got severely hindered and compromised due to the lack of space on storage media, keeping the amount of discs to a minimum. An example: 1986 Defender of the Crown for the Amiga (1.6 MB) http://youtube.com/watch?v=cvW6okgy4wA Defender of the Crown for the Amiga was considered to be a masterpiece, note the time of release were the start of the early NES games. Amiga (1986) NES (1989), released years after the original: However later on there was an Amiga CD remake of the original, thus minus the storage contrainst, apart from more storage all other specs were roughly the same (7 Mhz CPU). So essentially this version was already possible on 1985 hardware, provided there was additional storage available to development teams: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Af0vFi4sSzw Using up the additional Blu-Ray space isn't mandatory, yet with bigger dev teams, 10-25 million USD budgets it's easy to run out of DVD space without making compromises.

You have just told a big lie, in that you are using screenshots to illustrate the importance of storage, when it was the SPECS that were the reason the game was reduced on the NES.

Unless you are an idiot, you know damn well that the NES couldn't show a lot of colors or detail on screen, even if it had DVD as its format (just as a hypothetical, not that DVD existed at the time). If that game was ported to the SNES, it would look a lot closer, even if was just 512k (the size of the first year SNES games).

This doesn't prove blu-ray is worthless as a game medium. It just shows you used a BAD EXAMPLE. 

@ LordTheNightKnight

I just used the NES screenshots to illustrate how much the Amiga computer and this game were ahead of its time. If you read on, you see I am making a comparison with the CD version to illustrate the storage benefits. I am sorry if this wasn't clear enough for you, but you can try to be a little bit more polite.

One of the reasons why I am attracted to the PS3 must be because I see a similar design (as compared to the Amiga), which IMO is well ahead for its time.