"Resistance vs Halo 3 would work better, right?" I would say yes but Halo is not HD so it does not count.

Blu-ray is needed this gen and thats a fact, multiple games on the 360 take up more then one disc. The guys who made PGR4 already had to change their game to make it fit on DVD9, the rockstar VP Dan Houser said that the lack of HDD and the small disc size of DVD9 is a limit on what they wanted to do.

Most multiplatform games look better on the PS3, the only people having problems are EA and Ubisoft, and they suck and just toss out as many games as possible with as little man hours as they can manage.

The new CoD is better on the Ps3 then the 360, better lighting, better textures and some other stuff. This was even mentioned on a 360 site preview for CoD4.

The new UT game will be limited by DVD9, the guys at Epic have basically said this. They plan to fill the blu-ray disc if they have enough time, over 40 maps last i heard.

The Wii does not have the shortest games this generation. In fact, That's a huge joke. Metroid Prime 3 is more than 20 hours on Veteran and more than 25 on hyper. Super Mario Galaxy is reportedly 20-30 on the main quest depending on how good you are at platformers. It's also got a lengthy fully orchestrated soundtrack. That's not even counting Brawl, which has more content crammed into a game than I have ever seen in the 20 years I've been gaming. Folklore is less than 10 hours per charcter. Even with sidequests. If you count the second character (who plays through pretty much the exact same levels) as more playtime, then you can call it 15-20.

Also, I've never said Blu-ray wasn't being used at all. I just said it's not being used for content. Graphics and audio aren't content. They are graphics and audio. That's great and all, but why did we sacrifice content to go to High Definition? If HD graphics and audio are part of what's causing games to be shorter despite Blu-ray's disc size, then why is the 360 on 7GB discs releasing games like Bioshock (20 hours) and Mass Effect (40 hours)? What's wrong with using multple DVDs like Lost Odyssey to make 80 hour games?

Again, I really don't care about what visual and audio effects Blu-ray is being used for right now, because I'm a stingy bastard and when I buy games I want them to be long and full of content. I don't care if Ratchet's face is bump-mapped to all hell if that sacrifices 5 hours of gameplay and all the fun I had in online multiplayer. If that is a good sacrifice for you, then great, but Blu-ray has not been used to increase the qualities in games that I care about.

Jesus, I wish people would stop relating game length to BD-ROM size. It's not only game length. How cool would it have been for Oblivion to have different looking dungeons instead of the same re-placed tile sets? Wouldn't it be nice to be able to choose from thousands of cars instead of four? How cool would it be to have a game where your character model evolves through the game and changes into something completely different in the end? All those extra models take up space. It doesn't matter if you reach the end of the game in 1 hour or 100 hours. That's up to the design team to create a long game, and balance feature count and content.

Heck, I know it's an MMO, but Vanguard: Saga of Heroes weighs in at 17GB+. It has the benefit of low load times, a large world full of unique dungeons, towns, and people. The largest part of that game is not the textures. It's the models for all the different dungeons, houses, cities, etc. The sad part about it was they tried to "cheat" and make all player models use the same skeletal structure and all the human players look alike. If they were to enhance this part of the game you could tack on more size for models, armor models and texture sets.

I also hate the compression argument. You simply want to trade decompression time for load time? Compression/adaptive generation is not free. It just doesn't come from magical fairy trees. There is an example FPS floating around that's like a 95K EXE or something. I love when people use that for an argument that disc space doesn't matter, because it takes a long time to generate all the textures, and on top of that, they are very repetitive and low quality.

This is exactly the point.  Game length is entirely valid as we're talking about games.  For some reason your argument, about graphics not being possible without the extra space of BluRay, is just silly to me.  I've yet to see anything put on a BluRay disc actually surpass anything being done on Xbox.  For that reason BluRay isn't necessary at all.  Games are being made without it and they're still amazing games.  How can those games exist if BluRay is "necessary"?  And if they're using all of a games disc for textures, models, audio and video which you say is a more important use of space than game length... then you appearantly think you're on a movie forum and not a gaming forum.

 Oh yeah and if I put $60 down on a game and I can beat it (first time through) in only 12-15 hrs, not only is that short... I'm a little disappointed. 

 You're making an argument for something that WILL happen in the future, but isn't happening now.  At some point a better media will be necessary, but right now it's not.  I'm sure games will make major use of BluRay's space.  Lets wait for that day, I'm guessing MGS4.

The point being missed here is that nobody is saying that BluRay doesn't offer some potential benefits over DVD. I commented on this earlier - those saying that it's 'necessary' this generation have to first show that it provides significant benefits, but they also have to show that these benefits are standard-setting.

BluRay clearly hasn't been shown to be necessary if games that supposedly use it, such as Heavenly Sword, Ratchet and Clank, or maybe even Resistance fail to be better-received than similarly-priced games which obviously can't use it, with Halo 3 being the clearest example. CDs were eventually shown to be necessary for certain types of games, and RPGs in particular. They allowed for as much or more content at much lower prices, and they shifted the market significantly. It doesn't seem to me that PS3 games would be any less popular were they on DVD-9s.

It's a similar argument to that which can be used against the necessity of HD consoles. The Wii is proof that people aren't willing to spend that much extra for these benefits.

I'll ask again, if BluRay is necessary simply because it allows for better games, or even if you believe that it already has brought about better games, how can you say that it's not necessary for a next-gen console to be a $10,000 beast? Much more powerful hardware would obviously allow for better games.  The mere fact that the potential for better games exists does not mean that those benefits will be realized in a meaningful way, and it does not mean that those benefits are a net advantage for the system when you consider the costs involved as well.

Also, to Kamahl, who responds to my point about multiplatform games being generally better on the 360 by saying that the fact that they're multiplatform prevents BluRay from being used, that was exactly my point.

If BluRay were truly necessary, the market would be such that it would be well worth a developer's time and money to make PS3 games take advantage of it. 360 game sales would suffer because everyone would see how much better BluRay could make games, and the PS3 would probably pass the 360 in hardware sales in short order. This hasn't happened.

waaah!!! maybe i should start threads like, why last gen graphics are bad for the Wii, or, why no guaranteed HDD is bad for the 360...

i like my BD drive in my PS3, this is still just the 1st yr of development, what the hell do you expect? if we're comparing **** sizes then NOTHING on the Wii can compare to Oblivion, or even FFXII for that matter, each of which has easily more than 100 hrs of gameplay. and i fully expect to get another 200+ hrs out of FFXIII, and i know guys that can literally get 400-500 total hrs out of Gran Tourismo games, which i'm sure 5 will be no exception.

i got the full HD experience without having to pay as much as 360 owners even, not to mention stand alone players.

Sony made a mistake by adding BR player on PS3, and they are paying (literally) for it. They are getting desperate - cutting prices - losing money and now this -
The BR camp is accusing Microsoft for fueling the format war!
http://www.homemediamagazine.com/news/html/breaking_article.cfm?sec_id=2&&article_ID=11479

Good article about the format war. There are many articles on this subject today - the war is heating up.

"Collins said Microsoft decided to join the HD DVD format two CES shows ago because the format’s replication costs were and still are the cheapest. He said there are only three plants in the world that can produce BD-50 discs, and those are all owned by Sony." (emphasis mine)

This is a good point.  No system is perfect.  However, their is a fundamental difference in a system lacking something that might not be necessary, and another system forcing you to pay for something that might not be necessary.  I don't think that last gen graphics, or lack of a guaranteed HDD has really had any effect on the sales of those systems the way BR has had on the ps3.  I fully believe that the ps3 would be in a much better place, at this moment in time, if they hadn't included BR in their machine.  They focused on selling their movie format and made ps fans front the bill.  I don't think the inclusion of BR was ever about games.  Whether that changes in the future isn't really clear.  I think it could continue to drive them into the ground or be their saving grace.  Guess we'll see soon enough.