Taking into account faster CPUs and more on-board RAM (better compression tech available for use), downloadable content, availability of hard disks (etc) - I think DVD-9 is EASILY enough space.

It would be a very rare game that REQUIRES more than 10Gig of COMPRESSED space - and those can be simply delivered on multiple discs.

BluRay IMO is complete and utter overkill. It lends itself to lazy development practices more than anything else (wasting space). And its ironic that a BluRay drive (PS3) is slower than the DVD-9 drive in the 360.

If they should have improved anything, it should be an ungraded DVD-9 drive with faster seek/access times, and faster read rates. That would have been much more useful!

I am referring to every other month this year.  I can not cite numbers that don't exist yet.  They'll be out soon enough I'm sure.  It's early in the month.  I am merely predicting based on the rest of the year and looking at product wars every day. 

CPUs and RAM do not make up for texture sizes and 1080p videos.  If it did, why are sizes of everything increasing?  That logic just makes no sense.

Not all 360's have hard drives, developers can not depend on them.

People said the same crap about DVDs back in 2000.  The only difference this time is people are holding on to hope that the inferior hd-dvd format will succeed.  It is unfortunate that the dual-format players may succeed.  Either way, blu-ray is making money so it's not going away.

K, I'll accept that.  Still, as of right now we have no current data suggesting a huge blu-ray domination.  It looks like a pretty even field, even if the Blu-Ray does have some advantage.

Well, any attach ratio numbers you are citing are just as old as the data that states that blu-ray is dominating total sales.  You can not discount the PS3 like hd-dvd is trying to do lately.

1. When did I say anything about load times being longer or shorter between the 360 or PS3? And why are you going to refer to both of us when you don't respond to anything I said. I asked about the possibility of eliminating the need for redundant data on the Blu-Ray to try and find some justification for the nightmare Blu-Ray is, not how fast my PS3 games are going to load by installing them onto the hard drive first.

2. The real question though is why in gods name should a console ever need to install a game first before playing it? Why not just sell a monitor with it and call it a PC? Hell, better yet, why bother with a disc at all? Oh that's right, because a certain someone is trying to force Blu-Ray on the consumer market, that's why. Hey I know, let's make an overly large disc format handicapped by redundant data, boast about how much data it can hold then turn around and make you install your games anyway to compensate for the format's shortcomings, brilliant.

Yes while this is true, it doesn't change the fact that Blu-Ray's size is basically its own worst enemy if its using a larger part of it for redundant data to reduce load times. Obviously there will be redundant data to play the game's essential functions in a multi-disc DVD9 too, but it wouldn't be redundant data for the same reason and it wouldn't be taking up a fraction of the space Blu-Ray redundant data would. Furthermore, my original point in this statement was to say that you might be able to fit a theoretical Blu-Ray game onto a single DVD-9 if you didn't have to deal with the redundant data which accounted for the space taken up on the Blu-Ray disc.

1) DVD-9 should be enough for the vast majority of game genres, but won't be enough for RPGs.

2) I don't mind multi-discs myself. Have had to rely on multi discs all my life, being a PC gamer as well as a console gamer. As long as you are not forced to swap discs every hour or so I can deal with getting off my butt and walking to the console.

Microsoft shouldn't have come out with the core system, because if all 360s came with hard drives, then they could install portions of the game to minimize/eliminate the need to swap discs, but that's another story.

3) Blu-ray (or HD-DVD, for that matter) is not overkill. People were saying the same thing when CDs came out (OK, Nintendo thought that!), but the fact remains: There is no such thing as too much space. I am not sure about Blu-ray being slower or not as I've heard/read mixed comments regarding this.

About lazy development practices, this is not the fault of the medium, but of development houses and their (lack of adhering to) best practices methodologies. What does get to me is how developers may see the extra space and deem it necessary to fill up all those extra gigabytes with "fluff". If I'm paying extra for prerendered cutscenes then I'll be upset, because I'd much rather see the extra space being used for real in-game content and not just what essentially amounts to video. Cinematic cut-scenes are alright, but I'd rather see them rendered by the in-game engine as it doesn't break my temporary suspension of disbelief.

The other issue I have with advanced media formats like Blu-ray and HD-DVD is that we are paying an extra 200+ bucks for having extra storage that we as the end users cannot really use, being that the consoles don't burn hi-def media. Instead of those 200$ being utilized for extra storage that can arguably be had on 3-4 DVD-9 discs, I'd much rather see that money being justified by improving other hardware aspects of the console (improved graphics - not necessarily more polygons, but perhaps more sophisticated HDR rendering techniques or better handling of toolsets like fur and hair as examples, physics acceleration, sound capabilities, innovative input mechanisms).

4) That isn't much of an issue for me. For the vast majority of games the loading times are not something that has me pulling on my hairs. Gaming is a "waste of time" anyhow, and an extra minute here and there won't change that fact!

My 2 cents'...

Yes.

Yes but did CDs have to negate one third of their storage capacity to hold redundant data?

"There is no such thing as too much space" You got that right, the bigger a media format like Blu-Ray is the less information it can hold proportionately it would seem. When 1/3 of your disc space is dedicated to redundant data because your disc space is so big, then there's really no claiming that there was "too much space" to begin with now was there.

 I don't know where you got the 1/3 of the storage capcity is for redudant data. If you're refering to the guy at the head of Bethsada who made oblivion,  he responded to what was said (about lots of data duplication) and said that those reports of data duplication on blu ray were way over exagerated. Also, with blu ray you don't need to compress textures and audio, and compressing things takes development time and decreases the quality.