Sony's claim of bigger games

HidariMak wrote:
> Jordan wrote:
>> The thing is that normal DVDs haven't been exhausted for HD games yet.
>> There's no need to put them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony would like to
>> have all games on the Blu-Ray format so they can push the format and
>> (hopefully) cut piracy but it has nothing to do with delivering HD
>> games.
>
More space is always nice as it gives more options. The point you make
is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for anybody" and we
all know how that went


> One thing I was wondering about, is if Sony is going to start listing
> the size of the PS3 games, similar to what was done during the days of
> the SMS and the NES. (Remember claims like "The 2 Mega cartridge" on
> the front of some boxes, for example?)
>
Who cares. There is plenty of writing on boxes targeted at those which
knows nothing. It's for the same people which bought the XBOX link
cables at $30 which is rather step for a black patch cable


> First off, Sony keeps hyping how the blu-ray format is necessary for
> advanced gaming, even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on
> single DVDs.
>
Consider this. More data stored in the same physical space on Blue ray
than on DVD means faster data transfer with a disc spinning at the same
speed. That means lower loading times or a slower spinning disc meaning
less noise. Which ever you choose blue ray brings an advantage over
DVD's or would you say the load times on the 360 are just fine?


> Second, Sony is insisting that MPEG-2 compression be used for blu-ray.
> The hardware is capable of using MPEG-4 and VC-1 instead, offering
> fewer dropped frames and twice the compression, but Sony seems to be
> dead set against it. With plenty of CGI in past PS2 titles, and with
> the CGI fest which was the MGS4 demo, that'll take up plenty of disk
> space.
>
Where do you get that?


> Third, I read of an interview with one of the MGS4 developers a week or
> two ago. Among some other details (such as possibly tilting the
> controller to break the neck of an enemy, and repeated claims of "we're
> still working on it, so we don't know how big it will be"), they seemed
> to be against doing any sort of texture compression. I don't know,
> would a compression ratio of 5:1 be fair here?
>
Define fair? I want the best possible graphics quality so if compression
is not lossless I'm against it and also if compression is using up CPU
cycles better spend elsewhere I'd prefer data to take up a little more
space.


> So let's say that a PS3 game, under MPEG-2 compression, has video which
> takes up 8GB of space. There's also 6GB of textures and images,
> accompanying the 1GB of data for game logic, level data, A.I., and so
> forth. So Sony can hype that they have a 15GB game. The exact same
> data might have only been 4GB of video, 1.2GB of textures and images,
> and 1GB for everything else, meaning only 6.2GB total instead of 15GB.
> But then Sony wouldn't have an argument for pushing the blu-ray format
> for the PS3.
>
Pure speculation. The first game I saw on a PC CD-ROM was one I also had
for my Amiga where it fit on a 800 KB Floppy and now there are PC games
taking up more than one DVD. Even if something like that is the case for
some PS3 games Blue ray is still an great thing which brings new
features. I for one is thrilled that Sony is bringing out a console with
true new tech instead of something less that it can be.


> In short, is Sony going to be using inflated stats to claim "ours are
> bigger" as a sales tactic? Because it's starting to seem that way.
>
I don't see it and I don't care. What I see is lots of Sony bashing
based on lies and speculation which seems more and more to me like
Microsoft is running a smear campaign.

Kind regards

Bruno
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

"HidariMak" <HidariMak.DeleteThis@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1154273302.678619.115840@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> Jordan wrote:
>> The thing is that normal DVDs haven't been exhausted for HD games yet.
>> There's no need to put them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony would like to
>> have all games on the Blu-Ray format so they can push the format and
>> (hopefully) cut piracy but it has nothing to do with delivering HD
>> games.
>
> One thing I was wondering about, is if Sony is going to start listing
> the size of the PS3 games, similar to what was done during the days of
> the SMS and the NES. (Remember claims like "The 2 Mega cartridge" on
> the front of some boxes, for example?)
>
> First off, Sony keeps hyping how the blu-ray format is necessary for
> advanced gaming, even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on
> single DVDs.
<snip>

Yeah, but very few PC games have a lot of cinematics. Whether you like it
or not, many many console RPGs have at least an hour or more of video
cutscenes. Which is why there are a number of 2 DVD games for the PS2 (and
why FF7 was 4 cds for the PS1).

If games took 2 DVD fors the PS2, how many would they take for the PS3? 5-6?

Again, you might not like such games, but they do exist, and they do seem to
be quite popular (otherwise there wouldn't be so many).
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Bruno wrote:
> HidariMak wrote:
> > Jordan wrote:
> >> The thing is that normal DVDs haven't been exhausted for HD games yet.
> >> There's no need to put them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony would like to
> >> have all games on the Blu-Ray format so they can push the format and
> >> (hopefully) cut piracy but it has nothing to do with delivering HD
> >> games.
> >
> More space is always nice as it gives more options. The point you make
> is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for anybody" and we
> all know how that went

1. Bill Gates never actually said that.

2. The same post which you answered already, already included the
phrase "even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on single DVDs".
PC game publishers spend years working with advanced graphics, high
speed processors, and lots of storage space (dirt cheap DVD drives and
large hard drives), but none of them thought of making use of that
space?

Perhaps you've read a few of the few hundred reports published lately,
on the rising costs of making video games? If it costs in excess of
(and sometimes, multiples of) $10,000,000 US to make a single game,
would it make sense for developers to suddenly spend several times that
amount, so they can squeeze several games worth of levels, characters,
maps, etc. out of each game? That would be released to the public
expecting to pay a similar price as before. What, PC game developers
just never thought of doing so for their audience, who have hundreds of
GB of hard drive space to fall back on for installing the entire game?

> > One thing I was wondering about, is if Sony is going to start listing
> > the size of the PS3 games, similar to what was done during the days of
> > the SMS and the NES. (Remember claims like "The 2 Mega cartridge" on
> > the front of some boxes, for example?)
> >
> Who cares. There is plenty of writing on boxes targeted at those which
> knows nothing. It's for the same people which bought the XBOX link
> cables at $30 which is rather step for a black patch cable

....or like "Toy Story 2 quality CGI rendered in real time", or the PS3
"game" videos of E3 2005. Those who know nothing make up a rather
large amount of the population, which is why such tactics are
frequently used.

> > First off, Sony keeps hyping how the blu-ray format is necessary for
> > advanced gaming, even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on
> > single DVDs.
> >
> Consider this. More data stored in the same physical space on Blue ray
> than on DVD means faster data transfer with a disc spinning at the same
> speed. That means lower loading times or a slower spinning disc meaning
> less noise. Which ever you choose blue ray brings an advantage over
> DVD's or would you say the load times on the 360 are just fine?

Again, you really should read the post before you reply to it. If the
texture data is not compressed on the PS3 disk, it'll make that data
bigger on the PS3 disk, meaning more will have to be loaded from the
PS3 disk. And the 360 has the graphics processor which decompresses
that data through hardware, meaning that the process becomes faster.

Also, I don't have the specs handy, but I believe that at least the
$499 PS3 has a slower drive than the 360.

> > Second, Sony is insisting that MPEG-2 compression be used for blu-ray.
> > The hardware is capable of using MPEG-4 and VC-1 instead, offering
> > fewer dropped frames and twice the compression, but Sony seems to be
> > dead set against it. With plenty of CGI in past PS2 titles, and with
> > the CGI fest which was the MGS4 demo, that'll take up plenty of disk
> > space.
> >
> Where do you get that?

There were only several threads posted here in the past few weeks,
regarding how the new blu-ray player is faring against the new HD-DVD
player, with quotes from another discussion group covering home theatre
systems. How about some shrunken links to those discussions, found
after a mere 10 seconds of research?
http://tinyurl.com/pms5t
http://tinyurl.com/qqapm
http://tinyurl.com/o4q4j
http://tinyurl.com/nn6n2

> > Third, I read of an interview with one of the MGS4 developers a week or
> > two ago. Among some other details (such as possibly tilting the
> > controller to break the neck of an enemy, and repeated claims of "we're
> > still working on it, so we don't know how big it will be"), they seemed
> > to be against doing any sort of texture compression. I don't know,
> > would a compression ratio of 5:1 be fair here?
> >
> Define fair? I want the best possible graphics quality so if compression
> is not lossless I'm against it and also if compression is using up CPU
> cycles better spend elsewhere I'd prefer data to take up a little more
> space.

Texture data is not compressed using anything like the JPEG format.
I'm not a games programmer, but why do you think that the technology
has been advancing on the PC front for gaming, despite much of the game
data being copied directly to the hard drive?

> > So let's say that a PS3 game, under MPEG-2 compression, has video which
> > takes up 8GB of space. There's also 6GB of textures and images,
> > accompanying the 1GB of data for game logic, level data, A.I., and so
> > forth. So Sony can hype that they have a 15GB game. The exact same
> > data might have only been 4GB of video, 1.2GB of textures and images,
> > and 1GB for everything else, meaning only 6.2GB total instead of 15GB.
> > But then Sony wouldn't have an argument for pushing the blu-ray format
> > for the PS3.
> >
> Pure speculation. The first game I saw on a PC CD-ROM was one I also had
> for my Amiga where it fit on a 800 KB Floppy and now there are PC games
> taking up more than one DVD. Even if something like that is the case for
> some PS3 games Blue ray is still an great thing which brings new
> features. I for one is thrilled that Sony is bringing out a console with
> true new tech instead of something less that it can be.

What percentage of PC games though take more than one DVD to install?
That's the point which you keep overlooking here. Games back in the
days of the first CD-ROM drives were often written by a staff of half a
dozen people or less, with sometimes one person doing the entire
project. State of the art arcade machines, sometimes with custom
hardware, cost a million dollars to develop. Now video games for the
home which don't have at least ten times that budget seem cheap. Do
you think that the blu-ray drive will suddenly make developers absorb
the current cost of gaming, several times over, so you can play a much
bigger game for the same price?

> > In short, is Sony going to be using inflated stats to claim "ours are
> > bigger" as a sales tactic? Because it's starting to seem that way.
>
> I don't see it and I don't care. What I see is lots of Sony bashing
> based on lies and speculation which seems more and more to me like
> Microsoft is running a smear campaign.

Again, you're not making sense. Sony are saying that the size of games
currently available for PCs is inadequate, despite the fact that some
of those games are on hardware which rivals the PS3. A PS3 developer
appeared insistent on not using texture compression technologies which
have been in place on PC games with high definition graphics for years.
Sony is insisting that their video compression format should take up
more space.

Are you saying that you'd rather believe Sony to be lying when they say
that a whole new drive format will be a requirement, and that what I've
mentioned happening is only a coincidence? Or do you honestly believe
that Call of Duty 3 will magically have several times the missions and
music and animations and everything else as the 360 version, despite
being the same price to purchase?
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Jeremy Reaban wrote:
> "HidariMak" <HidariMak RemoveThis @gmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1154273302.678619.115840@m73g2000cwd.googlegroups.com...
> > Jordan wrote:
> >> The thing is that normal DVDs haven't been exhausted for HD games yet.
> >> There's no need to put them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony would like to
> >> have all games on the Blu-Ray format so they can push the format and
> >> (hopefully) cut piracy but it has nothing to do with delivering HD
> >> games.
> >
> > One thing I was wondering about, is if Sony is going to start listing
> > the size of the PS3 games, similar to what was done during the days of
> > the SMS and the NES. (Remember claims like "The 2 Mega cartridge" on
> > the front of some boxes, for example?)
> >
> > First off, Sony keeps hyping how the blu-ray format is necessary for
> > advanced gaming, even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on
> > single DVDs.
> <snip>
>
> Yeah, but very few PC games have a lot of cinematics. Whether you like it
> or not, many many console RPGs have at least an hour or more of video
> cutscenes. Which is why there are a number of 2 DVD games for the PS2 (and
> why FF7 was 4 cds for the PS1).
>
> If games took 2 DVD fors the PS2, how many would they take for the PS3? 5-6?
>
> Again, you might not like such games, but they do exist, and they do seem to
> be quite popular (otherwise there wouldn't be so many).

Cutscenes had to be prerendered because the hardware couldn't generate
anything as impressive on its own. And having your characters look the
same in the cutscenes as they do in the game (which is really no worse
from what had to be pre-rendered last generation) helps with the
immersion. You would still need pre-rendered footage if you wanted
cutscenes from a movie or TV series, although celshading could
reproduce a fair bit of animated footage in many cases with todays
hardware.

And my argument was never that the cutscenes weren't needed. But with
anything pre-rendered, using a more efficient compression method than
what was used in the first generation of home DVD players does mean
that less space is needed.
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Bruno wrote:
> HidariMak wrote:
> > Jordan wrote:
> >> The thing is that normal DVDs haven't been exhausted for HD games yet.
> >> There's no need to put them on HD-DVD or Blu-Ray. Sony would like to
> >> have all games on the Blu-Ray format so they can push the format and
> >> (hopefully) cut piracy but it has nothing to do with delivering HD
> >> games.

> More space is always nice as it gives more options. The point you make
> is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for anybody" and we
> all know how that went

1. Bill Gates never actually said that.

2. The same post which you answered already, already included the
phrase "even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on single DVDs".
PC game publishers spend years working with advanced graphics, high
speed processors, and lots of storage space (dirt cheap DVD drives and
large hard drives), but none of them thought of making use of that
space?

Perhaps you've read a few of the few hundred reports published lately,
on the rising costs of making video games? If it costs in excess of
(and sometimes, multiples of) $10,000,000 US to make a single game,
would it make sense for developers to suddenly spend several times that
amount, so they can squeeze several games worth of levels, characters,
maps, etc. out of each game? That would be released to the public
expecting to pay a similar price as before. What, PC game developers
just never thought of doing so for their audience, who have hundreds of
GB of hard drive space to fall back on for installing the entire game?

> > One thing I was wondering about, is if Sony is going to start listing
> > the size of the PS3 games, similar to what was done during the days of
> > the SMS and the NES. (Remember claims like "The 2 Mega cartridge" on
> > the front of some boxes, for example?)

> Who cares. There is plenty of writing on boxes targeted at those which
> knows nothing. It's for the same people which bought the XBOX link
> cables at $30 which is rather step for a black patch cable

....or like "Toy Story 2 quality CGI rendered in real time", or the PS3
"game" videos of E3 2005. Those who know nothing make up a rather
large amount of the population, which is why such tactics are
frequently used.

> > First off, Sony keeps hyping how the blu-ray format is necessary for
> > advanced gaming, even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on
> > single DVDs.

> Consider this. More data stored in the same physical space on Blue ray
> than on DVD means faster data transfer with a disc spinning at the same
> speed. That means lower loading times or a slower spinning disc meaning
> less noise. Which ever you choose blue ray brings an advantage over
> DVD's or would you say the load times on the 360 are just fine?

Again, you really should read the post before you reply to it. If the
texture data is not compressed on the PS3 disk, it'll make that data
bigger on the PS3 disk, meaning more will have to be loaded from the
PS3 disk. And the 360 has the graphics processor which decompresses
that data through hardware, meaning that the process becomes faster.

Also, I don't have the specs handy, but I believe that at least the
$499 PS3 has a slower drive than the 360.

> > Second, Sony is insisting that MPEG-2 compression be used for blu-ray.
> > The hardware is capable of using MPEG-4 and VC-1 instead, offering
> > fewer dropped frames and twice the compression, but Sony seems to be
> > dead set against it. With plenty of CGI in past PS2 titles, and with
> > the CGI fest which was the MGS4 demo, that'll take up plenty of disk
> > space.

> Where do you get that?

There were only several threads posted here in the past few weeks,
regarding how the new blu-ray player is faring against the new HD-DVD
player, with quotes from another discussion group covering home theatre
systems. How about some shrunken links to those discussions, found
after a mere 10 seconds of research?
http://tinyurl.com/pms5t
http://tinyurl.com/qqapm
http://tinyurl.com/o4q4j
http://tinyurl.com/nn6n2

> > Third, I read of an interview with one of the MGS4 developers a week or
> > two ago. Among some other details (such as possibly tilting the
> > controller to break the neck of an enemy, and repeated claims of "we're
> > still working on it, so we don't know how big it will be"), they seemed
> > to be against doing any sort of texture compression. I don't know,
> > would a compression ratio of 5:1 be fair here?

> Define fair? I want the best possible graphics quality so if compression
> is not lossless I'm against it and also if compression is using up CPU
> cycles better spend elsewhere I'd prefer data to take up a little more
> space.

Texture data is not compressed using anything like the JPEG format.
I'm not a games programmer, but why do you think that the technology
has been advancing on the PC front for gaming, despite much of the game
data being copied directly to the hard drive?

> > So let's say that a PS3 game, under MPEG-2 compression, has video which
> > takes up 8GB of space. There's also 6GB of textures and images,
> > accompanying the 1GB of data for game logic, level data, A.I., and so
> > forth. So Sony can hype that they have a 15GB game. The exact same
> > data might have only been 4GB of video, 1.2GB of textures and images,
> > and 1GB for everything else, meaning only 6.2GB total instead of 15GB.
> > But then Sony wouldn't have an argument for pushing the blu-ray format
> > for the PS3.

> Pure speculation. The first game I saw on a PC CD-ROM was one I also had
> for my Amiga where it fit on a 800 KB Floppy and now there are PC games
> taking up more than one DVD. Even if something like that is the case for
> some PS3 games Blue ray is still an great thing which brings new
> features. I for one is thrilled that Sony is bringing out a console with
> true new tech instead of something less that it can be.

What percentage of PC games though take more than one DVD to install?
That's the point which you keep overlooking here. Games back in the
days of the first CD-ROM drives were often written by a staff of half a
dozen people or less, with sometimes one person doing the entire
project. State of the art arcade machines, sometimes with custom
hardware, cost a million dollars to develop. Now video games for the
home which don't have at least ten times that budget seem cheap. Do
you think that the blu-ray drive will suddenly make developers absorb
the current cost of gaming, several times over, so you can play a much
bigger game for the same price?

> > In short, is Sony going to be using inflated stats to claim "ours are
> > bigger" as a sales tactic? Because it's starting to seem that way.

> I don't see it and I don't care. What I see is lots of Sony bashing
> based on lies and speculation which seems more and more to me like
> Microsoft is running a smear campaign.

Again, you're not making sense. Sony are saying that the size of games
currently available for PCs is inadequate, despite the fact that some
of those games are on hardware which rivals the PS3. A PS3 developer
appeared insistent on not using texture compression technologies which
have been in place on PC games with high definition graphics for years.
Sony is insisting that their video compression format should take up
more space.

Are you saying that you'd rather believe Sony to be lying when they say
that a whole new drive format will be a requirement, and that what I've
mentioned happening is only a coincidence? Or do you honestly believe
that Call of Duty 3 will magically have several times the missions and
music and animations and everything else as the 360 version, despite
being the same price to purchase?
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

"Bruno" <dont.use.RemoveThis@this.address.ever> wrote in message
news:44ccf045$0$60782$157c6196@dreader1.cybercity.dk...
> The point you make is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for
> anybody" and we all know how that went
>

I bet you think Bill Gates said that.
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

> Is there that big a functional difference between Office 97 and 2007?
> Seriously. To go from a 486 to 500Mhz? From 8/16 MB RAM to 256/512?
> >From less than 200 MB for install to 2 GB?
>
> - Jordan

Yes, there is a big functional difference between the two. Maybe not
to justify a 10 fold increase in hardware requirements; but 2007 is
going to have far more functionality than 97; just like 2003 had more
than XP; which had more than 2000. And the difference between 2007 and
the previous version is much greater than any of the other versions.

Besides the additional functionality; the reason that additional
hardware would be required is that it is so damn cheap. THere are very
few customers who are not going to upgrade or install Office 2007 who
aren't going to meet those minimum requirements; so why would any
company spend time and money trying to reduce the hardware
requirements??? I think there is little doubt that office 2007 would
be able to maintain all the functionality that it currently have and
reduce the hardware requirements; but what would be the benefit?

And relative to the average machine of the day; 2007 is probably less
resource hungry than 97.
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

tic....TakeThisOut@gmail.com wrote:

> Besides the additional functionality; the reason that additional
> hardware would be required is that it is so damn cheap. THere are very
> few customers who are not going to upgrade or install Office 2007 who
> aren't going to meet those minimum requirements; so why would any
> company spend time and money trying to reduce the hardware
> requirements??? I think there is little doubt that office 2007 would
> be able to maintain all the functionality that it currently have and
> reduce the hardware requirements; but what would be the benefit?

I guess I am just biased because my first GUI word processor ran in 64K
from two 5 1/4 floppy disks. (1 if I didn't need to use the spell
checker.) :^)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)

My 2nd (Final Copy on the Amiga) wasn't much bigger:

http://www.kds-online.com/Shop6a/catalog/images/Amiga_FinalCopy_01.jpg

- Jordan
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Jeremy Reaban wrote:

> If games took 2 DVD fors the PS2, how many would they take for the PS3? 5-6?
>
> Again, you might not like such games, but they do exist, and they do seem to
> be quite popular (otherwise there wouldn't be so many).

How many games really took 2 DVDs on the PS2? I've got about 15 or 20
PS2 titles and there's only 2 that came with 2 discs, .Hack Infection
(game is on 1 disc, 2nd disc is a DVD movie) and Soul Calibur III (game
is on 1 disc, 2nd disc is another Namco demo.)

Both Final Fantasy X and Finaly Fantasy X-2 are single disc games.

- Jordan
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

"Company Man" <spook.DeleteThis@covert.invalid> wrote in message
news:Wihzg.77950$Lm5.36775@newssvr12.news.prodigy.com...
>
> "Bruno" <dont.use.DeleteThis@this.address.ever> wrote in message
> news:44ccf045$0$60782$157c6196@dreader1.cybercity.dk...
>> The point you make is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for
>> anybody" and we all know how that went
>>
>
> I bet you think Bill Gates said that.
>
>

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Bill_Gates

He has said quite a bit though.
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Company Man wrote:
> "Bruno" <dont.use.RemoveThis@this.address.ever> wrote in message
> news:44ccf045$0$60782$157c6196@dreader1.cybercity.dk...
>> The point you make is like one by this dude "640K ought to be enough for
>> anybody" and we all know how that went
>>
>
> I bet you think Bill Gates said that.
>

I sure did just as almost everybody else. Maybe he did or maybe he
didn't the point is still valid.
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

HidariMak wrote:
> 1. Bill Gates never actually said that.
>
So what you get the point. Don't make me dig up to quote about the world
never needing more than five computers or so.


> 2. The same post which you answered already, already included the
> phrase "even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on single DVDs".
> PC game publishers spend years working with advanced graphics, high
> speed processors, and lots of storage space (dirt cheap DVD drives and
> large hard drives), but none of them thought of making use of that
> space?

There are plenty of games taking up several GB of harddisk space when
installed, plenty of games using multiple CD's and also games using more
than one DVD. It may be that a single DVD cost next to nothing compared
to a game budget but I promise you that if a game needs 10-20-30% more
space than what's on a single DVD then graphics gets squezzed to avoid
writing disc swapping rutines (remember we are talking consoles) and
also importantly avoiding the extra cost of that extra DVD times a
million copies.



>
> Perhaps you've read a few of the few hundred reports published lately,
> on the rising costs of making video games? If it costs in excess of
> (and sometimes, multiples of) $10,000,000 US to make a single game,
> would it make sense for developers to suddenly spend several times that
> amount, so they can squeeze several games worth of levels, characters,
> maps, etc. out of each game? That would be released to the public
> expecting to pay a similar price as before. What, PC game developers
> just never thought of doing so for their audience, who have hundreds of
> GB of hard drive space to fall back on for installing the entire game?
>
Extra space brings freedom. Freedom lets new ideas come to light.

I can easily imagine movie license titles using the extra space for wast
amount of movie clips or how about a movie quiz... or how about just
considering that true HD graphics require more texture details.

Just upping the graphics resolution on textures will cost little in
development costs and easily use lots of space.


> ...or like "Toy Story 2 quality CGI rendered in real time", or the PS3
> "game" videos of E3 2005. Those who know nothing make up a rather
> large amount of the population, which is why such tactics are
> frequently used.
>
So what - I don't see how this matters in this debate. Unless of course
you suddenly have developed a compassion for those spending more money
than sense.



> Again, you really should read the post before you reply to it. If the
> texture data is not compressed on the PS3 disk, it'll make that data
> bigger on the PS3 disk, meaning more will have to be loaded from the
> PS3 disk.

You're the one needing to read before you reply. The paragraph you
comment on here is about Blue ray bringing an advantage even if games
don't need the extra space.



And the 360 has the graphics processor which decompresses
> that data through hardware, meaning that the process becomes faster.
>
Please explain who the PS3 is not able to do the same. In fact I think
the Cell should be rather good at something like that.



> Also, I don't have the specs handy, but I believe that at least the
> $499 PS3 has a slower drive than the 360.
>
No specs but you believe, LOL.

There are plenty of people believing just the opposite. But say you're
right and it is at least it will be a lot quieter than the DVD drive in
the 360.


> There were only several threads posted here in the past few weeks,
> regarding how the new blu-ray player is faring against the new HD-DVD
> player, with quotes from another discussion group covering home theatre
> systems. How about some shrunken links to those discussions, found
> after a mere 10 seconds of research?
> http://tinyurl.com/pms5t
> http://tinyurl.com/qqapm
> http://tinyurl.com/o4q4j
> http://tinyurl.com/nn6n2
>
Pardon but none of links you provide seem to mention anything about what
is to used in games. Also a bunch of fanboy action threads are not
really hard evidence.


> Texture data is not compressed using anything like the JPEG format.

Of course not.


> I'm not a games programmer, but why do you think that the technology
> has been advancing on the PC front for gaming, despite much of the game
> data being copied directly to the hard drive?
>
Of course compression is also used to save memory but surely you're not
suggesting the MGS4 will have uncompressed textures on the disc only to
compress them once read into memory. Either what's really meant is that
they won't use destructive compression or at least you can be pretty
sure they chose whatever brings the best graphics on screen.


> What percentage of PC games though take more than one DVD to install?

Not many, but more will come. Once games only took up one 360 KB floppy
but that changed and there are games taking up 20 1.44 MB discs, then
came CD's...



> That's the point which you keep overlooking here. Games back in the
> days of the first CD-ROM drives were often written by a staff of half a
> dozen people or less, with sometimes one person doing the entire
> project. State of the art arcade machines, sometimes with custom
> hardware, cost a million dollars to develop. Now video games for the
> home which don't have at least ten times that budget seem cheap. Do
> you think that the blu-ray drive will suddenly make developers absorb
> the current cost of gaming, several times over, so you can play a much
> bigger game for the same price?
>
When you move a game to real HD just the more detailed textures needed
will take up a lot of space and textures are pretty cheap so you just
can't factor up developing costs by the same factor as the increased
storage space.

Also you need to remember that a console will be with us for several
years so even if every game made today should fit on a DVD things will
change.


> Again, you're not making sense. Sony are saying that the size of games
> currently available for PCs is inadequate, despite the fact that some
> of those games are on hardware which rivals the PS3. A PS3 developer
> appeared insistent on not using texture compression technologies which
> have been in place on PC games with high definition graphics for years.

I'm not gonna repeat my self. Go read above.

Oh and go read what resolutions most gamers use on their PC's, Valve has
a nice stats page. PC games are not made to be all they can be with
regards to resolution so the textures aren't either.


> Sony is insisting that their video compression format should take up
> more space.
>
As I understand it MPEG4 is coming to Blue Ray and it's to do with the
movie to disc transfers process that is keeping it at MPEG2 just now. I
may have misunderstood but this is really not the place so can we
concentrate on gaming please. This thread is about gaming - if you wanna
debate video start a new thread.



> Are you saying that you'd rather believe Sony to be lying when they say
> that a whole new drive format will be a requirement, and that what I've
> mentioned happening is only a coincidence?

I'm sorry but I do belive more what Sony says than the conspiracy theory
you're cooking up. You have some valid points but I think you're
forgetting to think about what's to come. The PS3, like any console, is
frozen so if not to look stupid in a second a certain extra is needed.
Unfortunately bringing that certain extra is mostly impossible since CPU
cycles cost $$$ but storage space does not (relatively speaking of course).


> Or do you honestly believe
> that Call of Duty 3 will magically have several times the missions and
> music and animations and everything else as the 360 version, despite
> being the same price to purchase?
>
No I don't. But it will not be a big surprise if COD4 or COD5 comes with
much more detailed textures on the PS3 than on the 360. And in the mean
time I'm looking forward to a console which does not mimic a leaf blower
every time the optical drive spins. My 360 is by far the loudest piece
of electronics in my house and that is not something I consider a great
feature.

Kind regards

Bruno
 >> Stay informed about: Sony's claim of bigger games 

Bruno wrote:
> HidariMak wrote:
> > 1. Bill Gates never actually said that.
> >
> So what you get the point. Don't make me dig up to quote about the world
> never needing more than five computers or so.

I'm sure that with some research, you can find stupid statements coming
from anybody who talks to the media on a regular basis. But what's the
point of bringing up an urban legend, in an attempt to make the former
head of Microsoft look bad, in discussing why so many current computer
games don't need a new drive format?

> > 2. The same post which you answered already, already included the
> > phrase "even though many PC games still ship on CDs or on single DVDs".
> > PC game publishers spend years working with advanced graphics, high
> > speed processors, and lots of storage space (dirt cheap DVD drives and
> > large hard drives), but none of them thought of making use of that
> > space?
>
> There are plenty of games taking up several GB of harddisk space when
> installed, plenty of games using multiple CD's and also games using more
> than one DVD. It may be that a single DVD cost next to nothing compared
> to a game budget but I promise you that if a game needs 10-20-30% more
> space than what's on a single DVD then graphics gets squezzed to avoid
> writing disc swapping rutines (remember we are talking consoles) and
> also importantly avoiding the extra cost of that extra DVD times a
> million copies.

You keep saying "plenty of games" for the PC require multiple DVDs. I
keep responding by asking for examples. You keep replying with "plenty
of games". Why is that?

No idea why PC games need to inflate their sizes on the HDDs as much as
some of them do, although my guess is so that there's adequate areas
for cacheing game data (like what the HDDs in consoles do), as well as
support for the multitude of possible hardware components and game
setting adjustments to compensate.

Also, "multiple CDs" is still less than a DVD. Comsidering that a
double layered DVD can be over 8.5GB, and a single CD is less than 1/10
of that, "multiple CDs" still doesn't justify the added expense of a
new format drive which may not be needed.

> > Perhaps you've read a few of the few hundred reports published lately,
> > on the rising costs of making video games? If it costs in excess of
> > (and sometimes, multiples of) $10,000,000 US to make a single game,
> > would it make sense for developers to suddenly spend several times that
> > amount, so they can squeeze several games worth of levels, characters,
> > maps, etc. out of each game? That would be released to the public
> > expecting to pay a similar price as before. What, PC game developers
> > just never thought of doing so for their audience, who have hundreds of
> > GB of hard drive space to fall back on for installing the entire game?
> >
> Extra space brings freedom. Freedom lets new ideas come to light.
>
> I can easily imagine movie license titles using the extra space for wast
> amount of movie clips or how about a movie quiz... or how about just
> considering that true HD graphics require more texture details.

Like with the HD-DVD and blu-ray movies released so far? Yeah, that
was included in the hype for the new format. Pity that none of the
disk producers bothered including that though.

> Just upping the graphics resolution on textures will cost little in
> development costs and easily use lots of space.

Oblivion used up a whopping 6GB of space. I'll leave it to those who
actually play PC games to provide other examples of newer games and
their sizes.

> > ...or like "Toy Story 2 quality CGI rendered in real time", or the PS3
> > "game" videos of E3 2005. Those who know nothing make up a rather
> > large amount of the population, which is why such tactics are
> > frequently used.
> >
> So what - I don't see how this matters in this debate. Unless of course
> you suddenly have developed a compassion for those spending more money
> than sense.

Yet you defended including the urban legend of what Bill Gates
supposedly said, about 640kB of memory, in your argument...

> > Again, you really should read the post before you reply to it. If the
> > texture data is not compressed on the PS3 disk, it'll make that data
> > bigger on the PS3 disk, meaning more will have to be loaded from the
> > PS3 disk.
>
> You're the one needing to read before you reply. The paragraph you
> comment on here is about Blue ray bringing an advantage even if games
> don't need the extra space.

I keep asking you for some examples of recent PC games which require
plenty of DVDs. I ask because PCs can deliver the same types of games
as the PS3 with a blu-ray drive, with the same levels and the same
resolution. Either you keep failing to mention all of these PC games
which need multiple DVDs, or you're arguing that PC games developers
just never thought of exceeding the "DVD limits" for their game
productions.

> And the 360 has the graphics processor which decompresses
> > that data through hardware, meaning that the process becomes faster.
> >
> Please explain who the PS3 is not able to do the same. In fact I think
> the Cell should be rather good at something like that.

The Cell could conceivably get the compressed, lossless texture from
the disk, then recalculate how the graphics processor should display
it, sure. But that detracts from other tasks that the processor could
be handling such as the gameworld physics, AI, and so forth. And it'll
also be slower than having the hardware handle it, even if the
processor has cycles to spare.

Do some research into the pipelines for the two processors, and other
aspects of how they work.

> > Also, I don't have the specs handy, but I believe that at least the
> > $499 PS3 has a slower drive than the 360.
> >
> No specs but you believe, LOL.

Articles have been published on that matter. The $599 PS3 will have a
drive which transfers data at a speed which is overall close to the 12x
DVD drive in the 360. The $499 PS3 will have a drive which spins at
2/3 of that speed.

> There are plenty of people believing just the opposite. But say you're
> right and it is at least it will be a lot quieter than the DVD drive in
> the 360.

Some 360s have drives which are louder than drives in other 360s. Mine
seems quiet enough. So you're saying that the drive in the PS3 will be
quieter than one of the three drive manufacturers for the 360, or two
of the manufacturers, or all three? And this is based on what?

> > There were only several threads posted here in the past few weeks,
> > regarding how the new blu-ray player is faring against the new HD-DVD
> > player, with quotes from another discussion group covering home theatre
> > systems. How about some shrunken links to those discussions, found
> > after a mere 10 seconds of research?
> > http://tinyurl.com/pms5t
> > http://tinyurl.com/qqapm
> > http://tinyurl.com/o4q4j
> > http://tinyurl.com/nn6n2
>
> Pardon but none of links you provide seem to mention anything about what
> is to used in games. Also a bunch of fanboy action threads are not
> really hard evidence.

Who said I was talking about game video? Sony is directly telling its
third parties for their current blu-ray movie players that they must
use a format which is less efficient, and takes up more space, than
other existing formats. This is in response to their third parties
asking to use one of the better formats. Your stating that Sony would
do a complete 180 when it comes to Sony game video compression, when
that was never even mentioned in what you're replying to, reads more
like the actions of a fanboy to me than citing current examples of
Sony's practices regarding usage of their blu-ray players in the only
current division where that info is possible.

> > I'm not a games programmer, but why do you think that the technology
> > has been advancing on the PC front for gaming, despite much of the game
> > data being copied directly to the hard drive?
> >
> Of course compression is also used to save memory but surely you're not
> suggesting the MGS4 will have uncompressed textures on the disc only to
> compress them once read into memory. Either what's really meant is that
> they won't use destructive compression or at least you can be pretty
> sure they chose whatever brings the best graphics on screen.

They were arguing against any compression being used for the textures.
It has nothing to do with bringing "the best graphics on screen", since
PC games have been able to do bring HDTV-comparable resolutions to PC
monitors for a while now.

> > What percentage of PC games though take more than one DVD to install?
>
> Not many, but more will come. Once games only took up one 360 KB floppy
> but that changed and there are games taking up 20 1.44 MB discs, then
> came CD's...

That was back when games had 8 color low resolution displays and "cheap
watch alarm" soundtracks. There are currently "not many"
unnamed-but-presumably-major-hit-title PC games which need more than a
single DVD, which (assuming these titles are comparable to the latest
advanced PC games) include video and audio comparable to the best you
can expect from the PS3. What would drive the necessary game size to
grow even further, aside from longer non-interactive movies or much
bigger budgets for game development?

> > That's the point which you keep overlooking here. Games back in the
> > days of the first CD-ROM drives were often written by a staff of half a
> > dozen people or less, with sometimes one person doing the entire
> > project. State of the art arcade machines, sometimes with custom
> > hardware, cost a million dollars to develop. Now video games for the
> > home which don't have at least ten times that budget seem cheap. Do
> > you think that the blu-ray drive will suddenly make developers absorb
> > the current cost of gaming, several times over, so you can play a much
> > bigger game for the same price?
> >
> When you move a game to real HD just the more detailed textures needed
> will take up a lot of space and textures are pretty cheap so you just
> can't factor up developing costs by the same factor as the increased
> storage space.

PC games have been well beyond the range of 640*480 for their graphics
a few generations of consoles now. HDTV comparable game graphics were
being used in PC games when the PS2 was still considered to be rather
new to the market, in fact.

> Also you need to remember that a console will be with us for several
> years so even if every game made today should fit on a DVD things will
> change.

There might be a few more titles which need a second DVD drive,
assuming that todays consoles produce graphics which go beyond HDTV
levels, or game publishers suddenly start volunteering a lot of their
resources, or assuming that they prefer smaller areas between loading
sequences. Game graphics improve over the life of a platform, but that
usually has little to do with the size of the format.

> > Again, you're not making sense. Sony are saying that the size of games
> > currently available for PCs is inadequate, despite the fact that some
> > of those games are on hardware which rivals the PS3. A PS3 developer
> > appeared insistent on not using texture compression technologies which
> > have been in place on PC games with high definition graphics for years.
>
> I'm not gonna repeat my self. Go read above.

Yeah, the belief that displays will be even better than the high
resolution pixel perfect displays coming from PC games, and the belief
that games will magically grow in size for no apparent reason.

> Oh and go read what resolutions most gamers use on their PC's, Valve has
> a nice stats page. PC games are not made to be all they can be with
> regards to resolution so the textures aren't either.

Some game developers limit what the games appear like to include those
with less powerful systems as possible players. Or is there some other
aspect which I should be looking for from some unknown stats page from
somewhere on Valve's website?

> > Sony is insisting that their video compression format should take up
> > more space.
> >
> As I understand it MPEG4 is coming to Blue Ray and it's to do with the
> movie to disc transfers process that is keeping it at MPEG2 just now. I
> may have misunderstood but this is really not the place so can we
> concentrate on gaming please. This thread is about gaming - if you wanna
> debate video start a new thread.

Sony have already stated that they don't want to use MPEG4, despite it
being the superior format. I was just trying to include a realworld
reason to accompany Sony's claims that the disks have to be bigger, and
Sony refusing a format which would allow for more on the same space
would fit.

> > Are you saying that you'd rather believe Sony to be lying when they say
> > that a whole new drive format will be a requirement, and that what I've
> > mentioned happening is only a coincidence?
>
> I'm sorry but I do belive more what Sony says than the conspiracy theory
> you're cooking up. You have some valid points but I think you're
> forgetting to think about what's to come. The PS3, like any console, is
> frozen so if not to look stupid in a second a certain extra is needed.
> Unfortunately bringing that certain extra is mostly impossible since CPU
> cycles cost $$$ but storage space does not (relatively speaking of course).

What conspiracy? I only proposed the _possible_ thinking based on
claims made by Sony regarding their blu-ray movies, by Sony regarding
their PS3 games, and by a developer of one of the higher profile PS3
games. It was an _idea_ of how Sony might try to validate the claims
that they've made, when many current PC games require less than the
8.7GB which can be fit on a single DVD. And with todays games not
needing to rely on pre-rendered footage or movie clips to advance the
story, the one reason why some of the largest games are as big as they
are, won't be as much of an issue.

> > Or do you honestly believe
> > that Call of Duty 3 will magically have several times the missions and
> > music and animations and everything else as the 360 version, despite
> > being the same price to purchase?
> >
> No I don't. But it will not be a big surprise if COD4 or COD5 comes with
> much more detailed textures on the PS3 than on the 360. And in the mean
> time I'm looking forward to