they said "Not loading levels while you drive around is a much better decision regardless of platform."

perhaps in sony's magic fantasy land there isnt any loading on the ps3...but there sure is in reality.

Even if the game is not gimped (as stated earlier and in another thread), the entire game will have to be remade/redisigned to accommodate multiple disks, it's inevitable. the older PS1 FF's got around this by having a massive boss battle at the end of one CD and massive world change at the start of the next disk.

This game will have to do something similar. So of course, if the came is going to remain much the same across platforms, this redesign will influence how the game flows on the other platforms. Luckily it's easier to work it that way (by using the data restraint of the 360 to influence the game design) than trying to work it the other way around.
Say at the end of disk one on the 360 version there's a massive boss battle. "insert disk two" then carry on in a different environment. in the PC or PS3 version just leave out the "insert disk two".
To work it the other way around would be problematic at best, having to find a place in a story to split it evenly onto two disks would be a nightmare if the game wasn't envisioned on multiple disks in the first place.
Sorry if I'm not making much sense, but thats as clear as i can get it at the moment :(

Uncharted says hi....twice

Soul Calibur IV wants in on the action too

Bottom line: 360 rushed to market, exclusion of HDD and/or higher capacity optical storage media is taking a step backwards, everyone suffers.

As Iothers have pointed out if you can have games that don't load if you make use of HDD or other means.

Look, he makes it clear that gameplay design elements were made with DVD / no HDD as the lowest platform and therefore we'll never know whether it would have been better otherwise but we do know that the 360 spec forced the lowest demoninator decision

That's the point I'm making and its in his words.  Don't pretend they made changes purely for gameplay then went 'oh, and luckily this solves the space issue we had with DVD and no HDD'.  If it made overall gameplay better then yeah, but it was an accidental decision as its clear that technical constraints forced those decisions rather than someone at Id saying 'you know I'm not sure about the gameplay feel here.'

Using VGChartz numbers, you'll find that the PS3 userbase is 75% of the 360 userbase worldwide.  You'll also find that the sales of PS3 multi-platform titles average 75% of the same 360 multi-platform titles of the top 50 titles.  People are buying the PS3 for games AND Blu-ray playback.

Thanks for saving me the trouble of responding to this most idiotic of statements regarding the PS3.  Can't believe people trot this out in the face of actual sales to the opposite.  I might as well argue people mainly buy 360 to download movies...

Why can't M$ say to developers now that we'll let you design your games on the presumption that your buyer will have a HDD which will surely, surely help the game developers marvelously.

This means that hopefully games wouldn't have to be 'gimped' developers can have a little more freedom, and M$ benefit from the sale of overpriced HDDs users will have to buy

So reading up on all the comments, ID Software changed the overall game design to suit the 360 platform. They did not cut out textures and such, but instead the 360 version will have lower quality textures on two 6.8 GB DL DVDs compared to the PS3 version which comes on one single layer 25 GB Blu-Ray disc. So unlike GTA IV where the quality of content is roughly on par between the two versions, but shipped with less content than those devs would have wanted (more graphics varierty/data and more extras like radio songs, etc).

It is widely known 360 DVD storage and other limitations has resulted in tons of sacrifices with regard to multi-platform titles as companies target to release content wise identical versions. But for example sacrifices include sticking to 5.1 audio instead of the PS3's 7.1 capabilities, content sacrifices, game engine related sacrifices like sticking to sub-720p optimized graphics to get the most out of the 360 EDRam's too small size.