MikeB said: MikeB said: @ elendar I already downloaded countless games and animations from the internet during the early 90s, but like the delivery speeds have increased likewise has the supported quality thus size of the distributed content dramatically increased. Currently I have an internet connection of only 8000 kbit/s, thus only 1 MB per second max and that costs nearly 50 Euros per month, most others I know have between 1600 kbit/s and 4000kb/s connections. And note that I live in a country with the second highest percentage of broadband internet adoption. Ranked number 1 is Denmark. Only about half of US and Japanese households have a broadband internet connection. According to research we can expect average internet speeds to double about every 2.5 years. At such a rate that would mean within about 8 years it may actually be feasible for me to stream high quality movie content. However I believe many ordinary people will just choose the cheapest internet solution available to them, just to browse the web, chat and read some emails. I think it will be an enormous task to get these people to pay more instead of just buying Blu-Ray discs, which will be cheap to mass produce and have come down in price considerably by then. In some countries like Greece and Brazil people with a broadband internet connection are just a small minority. IMO don't buy into Microsoft's hype, they know HD DVD is likely to loose. Nomatter how much of a lost cause it becomes, they likely want to confuse and devide the market for as long as possible. Like I said in the past, I believe this war to last well into 2008.

So in 2.5 years your speed may double? Seems your wait to buffer a hd movie and view it should be manageable. As to purchasing a game, let it DL the night before, set it for when you goto work, what ever time you have away. Perhaps they will release 1/2 the files before the game is on sale. You know pre download alot of it. If anything, people today purchase and download games. They have a lot of services already making money. I think its only a matter of time. Perhaps even a little more than 5 years but digital downloads are already happening and the sky is the limit. The thing I don't know: in US most if not all? broadband is unlimited download there is no limit to the amount. I know in some places you are caped?

@ elendar

Like I said, I already did that in the early 90s. Mostly PD and shareware stuff though. Similary today I buy smaller online distributed games today, like Super Stardust and Calling All Cars, but I greatly prefer my bigger high profile games like Oblivion. Heavenly Sword, Resistance Fall of Man, etc to come supplied on scratch resistant Blu-Ray discs. Not much has changed for me from the grand perspective.

Likewise I don't mind slightly lower quality music video or TV series downloads. But the high profile movies like Lord of the Rings, Casino Royale, MonsterHouse, etc I all prefer to have stored in top quality on physical media.

I have the fastest consumer internet connection available here, so I would be an obvious target, but like I said I'm not. I will probably buy music videos from the PSN store though, they are mostly less than 1/30 the size of a movie, they wouldn't even need to be full Blu-Ray quality for me as it's not really new content like a movie you watch for the first time (especially movies that are meant to impress visually, or scary movies when realistic surround sound can play an important factor).

cdude1034 said: Sony and Microsoft will never adopt the format owned by their competitor. Why give your opponent a share of your profits? Makes no sense. If it comes to pass that blu-ray wins the format race eventually (see: fastest turtle in the race), then Microsoft will probably develop their own medium. Personally, I believe that the proliferation of downloaded games will take over so medium won't really matter, and hard drive space will.

First off, Microsoft doesnt own HD-DVD, so if HD-DVD did win and became the medium, then Sony could actually use HD-DVD in their next console. They used DVD's dont they? They were a toshiba product too, just like HD-DVD.

Now with Microsoft, they just go where the crowds go really. Right now, they are supporting HD-DVD, but not very much tbh. They support it because theyd rather it won than Bluray, because they then have an upper hand over Sony; however, they really support downloads. Theyre a software company at heart, nt a hardware company, so downloads plays right into their hands with Vista etc. If the next consoles dont concentrate on downloads (which i dont think they will, they will still use physical media), then im sure Microsoft will use whatever wins this generation, whether it be HD-DVD or Bluray, because in all honesty they dont want either to win, but they will go where the money is.

 

Similar statements like we saw earlier with regard to Final Fantasy now with regard to Metal Gear Solid 4:

MGS4 Producer: “We couldn’t do what we’re doing in MGS4 without Blu-ray”, hints at dual layer discs
http://www.pspsps.tv/2007/10/mgs4_producer_we_couldnt_do_wh.html

To add to the comment above, of course we have read of many developer comments regarding to how Blu-Ray disc has benefitted their games (Ratchet & Clank TOD, Killzone 2, Uncharted, etc, etc), but Final Fantasy XIII and Metal Gear Solid 4 are the first PS3 games rumoured to be using 50 GB dual-layer Blu-Ray discs.