Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony 205
Via Opposable Thumbs, an article at GamePro in which Phil Harrison clarifies that Blue-ray on the PS3 is a 'game design' decision. From the article: "Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray Disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent. So games like Resistance which, as a launch title, is up to 20-something gigabytes already. And that's day one -- think about four years, six years from now. We'll be pushing the 50 gigabyte limit with dual-layer Blu-ray very quickly. So we absolutely need it as game designers, and in that regard, the consumer is getting the movie functionality effectively for free." I probably would have had a follow-up question there, but that's where the interview ends. So what do you think? Which came first for Sony: Blue-ray as new movie media, or Blu-ray as answer to design challenges?
That's nice (Score:4, Interesting)
What I want to know is how the extra storage enhances gameplay?
Dan East
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And they can make damn sure you enjoy it, by making the movies unskippable!
Progress is beautiful isn't it?
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Re:GTA SA (PS2) 4.2GB (Score:3, Informative)
I remember having a discussion many years ago about this and how it would be technically possible to have the (~3GB PS2) GTA3 on the Gamecube despite the 1.5GB discs by just compressing the audio. Low and behold the Xbox and PC versions come out under a gig.
Hell, W
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While it's great to use MiB to clarify things and create consistency, you shouldn't assume without checking that any given device is quoted in binary units, particularly when the device isn't RAM. In particular, the floppies you mention are 1440 KiB, or 1.41 MiB, or in metric units 1.47 MB. The quoted "1.44MB" actually mixed both standards, if you can believe that.
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Sounds like so much BS to me. (Score:3, Insightful)
Blu-Ray IS a burden... on the consumer. We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.
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Re:Sounds like so much BS to me. (Score:4, Insightful)
The truth is, you see, I WILL be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a Blu-Ray drive... IF I buy a PS3. There are no non-Blu-Ray PS3's. Thus my use of the word "forced."
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Let me put it this way. Sony has a monopoly on all consoles with the name "Playstation 3" and the design thereof. This is no secret, nor is there anything wrong with it. However, Sony chooses to add a Blu-Ray drive to all of their Playstation 3 systems, thus inflating the price by a few hundred dollars.
Now, I, as a consumer, would gladly plunk down $300 for a PS3 sans Blu-Ray drive. However, Sony chooses not to produce any such consoles. Therefore, all things considered, I
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There's a really obvious answer here: (Score:3)
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Let me put it this way. Sony has a monopoly on all consoles with the name "Playstation 3" and the design thereof. This is no secret, nor is there anything wrong with it. However, Sony chooses to add a Blu-Ray drive to all of their Playstation 3 systems, thus inflating the price by a few hundred dollars.
Now, I, as a consumer, would gladly plunk down $300 for a PS3 sans Blu-Ray drive. However, Sony chooses not to produce any such consoles. Therefore, all things considered, I
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Comparable != equivalent.
The 360 does not play Playstation 3 games. If I want to play games that are released exclusively for the PS3, I have two choices: shell out a couple extra $100's for a Blu-Ray drive I don't want, or not play those games at all.
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Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480). Are you saying that game developers who are currently filling up DVDs for PS2 and XBox games should suddenly have compression algorithms that are 6.75 times more efficient? Or would you like swapping out 7 DVDs?
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First off, the number of PS2 and XBox games that filled up a dual layered DVD could be counted on one hand.
Secondly, the only system that supported compressed textures in hardware was the Gamecube, the XBox and PS2 both had to uncompress their textures prior to rendering a polygon with that texture on it; with how much of a performance d
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But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures. With how much more powerful this generation is, maybe it's not as much of an issue. Or maybe it's worse, given how much larger the textures will need to be. Of course, it may be more efficient to load a smaller compressed image off the disc and decompress it than to wait while the whole thing is loaded.
I think that the real thing people have a problem wi
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I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but the phrase "hardware decompression" implies to me that there will be dedicated hardware assigned the task of running the decompression algorithm, as opposed to using a portion of the CPU's cycles to run a software decompression routine. If that is true, then the CPU is left unburdened by any decompression activities
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The PS3 has five DSPs (Score:2)
The PS3 "Cell" CPU is already an order and a half of magnitude faster than the PS2 CPU. It consists of one traditional PowerPC CPU core and seven digital signal processors, two of which are reportedly dedicated to running the PS3's operating system. So just dedicate one of the five remaining DSPs to decompressing or procedurally synthesizing textures, and you'll hav
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Well, when I was talking about texture decompression I was specifically refering to the GPU; the Gamecube's GPU handled real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC) (from Nintendo.com). The result of this was that textures were compressed on disc and in memory, reducing the memory imprint of the game and reducing loading times. On a side note, I think anyone who has an iterest in GPUs should really loo
Fill limits and reason (Score:2)
Of course. If you are a game designer a huge priority is going to be to make a game fit within a single DVD, because the cost of a dual layered disc (or heaven forbid, a second disc!) is a cost that detracts from every sale you make.
It's a lot cheaper to reduce the number of textures used or the size of levels than it is to pay a per disc cost for every game ever sold. That's why most games fit on a
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Except that MS has repeatedly said that the HD-DVD player will be for movies only (effectively irrelevant for games). This means there is only one option for game distribution... DVD.
... they split the cinematics and game-play so the game-play is on a DVD and goes in the 'main' XBox360 drive, and the cinematics are on an HD-DVD and go in the add-
UNLESS
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Only if all your "data" is full screen video.
Most of the time, just like with PC games, all the higher resolution will mean in practice is that you see the same image but with higher resolution. Obviously there will be more data due to the higher capacity of the machine, more vertex data and more detailed texture data, but not 6.75 times as much because you don't need to fill the entire scree
Texture data much higher res (Score:2)
You are also discounting the use of HDR, the greater dynmic range of image data increases the bit depth of textures as well.
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I don't believe that since game consoles have been doing better than 256 color since the Playstation, and a normal TV can do better than that as well. I went to the trouble to look it up, and the Gamecube has a 24 bpp frame buffer, and presumeably 24bpp textures to match. The PS2 uses 16 or 32 bpp, and the Xbox uses 32.
I'm not convinced that pixel depth will end up having any effect on data size, relative to the las
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Um, yeah, that was my point. It's rendered from data that does not have to multiply 6 times over just because the output resolution of the rendering pipeline has multiplied 6 times over. There is not a 1:1 correspondence between vertex/texture data and screen resolution.
For future reference "full screen video" generally refers to the source.
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What proportion of gamers have that screen?
The PS3 caters to the high-end electronics market, not to gamers.
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That would include 480i...
If 10% of all people have it, then it's not the high-end electronics market anymore.
Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?
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480i is NOT HD. The minimum to be considered HD is 720p. Even if you sell a 480p TV, you have to call it an EDTV.
Every TV does 480i.
Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?
The "high-end electronics market" is a rather specific term - these people can spend tens of thousands of dollars on their systems. I bought a 50" HDTV last year and have a component audio system to go with it, and I c
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It means the VRAM image sent to the rasterizer is 6.75 times as large. It does not follow that the size of the raw content on disc (textures, geometrical data, etc.) will also be 6.75 times as large.
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The textures must now be 6.75 times larges to not look pixelated or blurred, the models have to have more detail and so on so it's a hard call. I doubt the games will be fully 7 timeslarger but I doubt that it's goign to be a trivial increase. Remember they're not just throwing up SD FMV's for you to play now.
It does not to look like crap (Score:2)
No, the textures are actually larger - not only do you have to store textures at a higher resolution so they will still look OK at 1080p, all the consoles are moving to support HDR now which requires textures with a greater bit depth.
The geometrical data will be larger due to the need for greater poly counts, ag
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That's sarcasm, in case anyone missed it.
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For a linear RPG, that's not a problem. For a game like GTA, where you just get a huge area to play in, it's more of a problem. Imagine taking a wrong turn in San Andreas and accidently crossing the DVD line. Now you have to switch disks, wait for it to load, go back, switch disks, and wait for more loa
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Take tradewars 2002. It's great that community supported servers still exist for this old BBS game. But we've lost simplicity. Instead of some simple
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Yea... but remember a vital restriction on the disc swapping setup. The fact that disc swap games are at least to a point, linear. And that is what allows them to set up the game like that.
Take a final fantasy game for example. At some point in a disc change, some content becomes unavailiable. Now I'm sure a fair amount of that space is FMV's, and most of the game engine / world can be duplicated (more wasted space btw since it has to be on every disc). As a general rule, most FMV's also only play a
Movies first (Score:5, Interesting)
Sony is taking the same strategy this time around. Blu-Ray is Sony's technology and they NEED it to succeed. History is not on their side though - Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD... Sony just can't get their formats off the ground. Their solution? Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money.
Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.
So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.
Chicken or the Egg? (Score:2)
So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.
It is now. Bear in mind Murphy's Law of Storage: storage requirements rise to meet storage capacity... plus. The storage capacity became available; thus, now it's "needed". Now pardon me, I have a 1 TB RAID to check up on....
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The problem I see is filling the space with quality. Somebody else in this article imagined GTA:San Andreas on a Blu-Ray disk, talking about how huge the area to explore could be, how detailed they could make it, etc. As I see it, it's not the space that's the problem, it's the time to fill that spac
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Simply put, no. GTA: San Andreas was a HUGE map, and had to take a lot of developer time to create. The designers I doubt weren't wanting for more storage space (though I did read somewhere they did have to take a few intended songs and whatnot to fit it on a DVD). What you might see though would be movie cut-scenes included as well.
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There's a few differences, though. DVD was already doing well on its own before the release of the PS2. Hollywood Video and Blockbuster already carried a good selection of DVD titles. DVD also didn't have any real competition from other formats, like Blu-Ray has now. HD-DVD players were out before Blu-Ray players, at half the cost. The fact that the Toshiba HD-DVD player costs $450 on Amazon vs. $700 for the Sa
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Gamble Not a Burden (Score:2)
Sony has parlayed two bets that the PS3 will do well and so will Blu-Ray. They feel the two technologies helped each other out. Blu-Ray gives the PS3 more proliferation via a selling point while the PS3 proliferates the standard of Blu-Ray throughout the community prematurely.
However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also. Sony has tied their fates and if consumers balk on either, Sony goes under. A
Makes little sense either way (Score:2)
This makes no sense, at least in one direction.
Lets say Blu-Ray does not take hold as a movie format, despite having the backing of more major studios and the two major computer vendors (Apple and Dell).
Fine then, how does the PS3 owner suffer?
They still have games that make use of the extra space. Because of the volume of manufacturing games, there's not really any great cost to the media the games are on (as if media cost has ever
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The difference is that people wanted a DVD player.
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The sad thing is it would have worked perfectly if they started the system out at $250-300.
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Even as such, I've never found a worse DVD player than a PS2. I tried to use mine as an extra player on the TV in the back room where I play my games and it skipped more than any other player I've tried
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DCFanboi: You don't have many games for your just-released PS2! (Duh, it just launched)
PS2Fanboi: But it plays DVDs! (total non-sequitor, and completely retarded when you consider that it supported a HUGE base of PSx games yet the Fanboi decided to focus on the crappy DVD player instead).
"Need" or "want"? (Score:2)
My guess is that the "need" for 25Gig media is not really present. More, it's convenient to abstain from compression for those cutscenes, to increase the size and thus (and here is the real benefit for game studios IMO) make it rather impossible to download it from a torrent, given that 25Gigs of traffic would kinda upset any provider.
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I've heard multiple game devs say that if the guys really do have 20 gigs of UNIQUE content on the disc for Resistance, then the rest of the game industry will bow down to them as game development gods.
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fill it with something useful (Score:2)
I'd say that much space is more of a challenge (Score:2)
Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?
Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is
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Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?
Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is
Don't confuse more art with higher res art. The same art that had to be compressed and downsampled to fit inot a 700 meg CD and slightly less compressed to fit on a 4
Sony's problem was that they wanted all the profit (Score:4, Insightful)
Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.
Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
Re:Sony's problem was that they wanted all the pro (Score:2)
HD-DVD uses blue lasers, too. So they'd still be having the problem. Maybe more, because MS might have included HD-DVD in the XBox 360.
Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker.
And would those savings be passed on to the consumers in the absence of competition?
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Re:Sony's problem was that they wanted all the pro (Score:2)
Just about the only advantage of the HD-DVD standard is easier retooling of existing manufacturing lines. The cost of the discs probably won't be too different in the long run and is irrelevant any
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Not A Blue Ray Player (Score:2)
My yoke is easy and light (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand, let's see how the Blu-Ray has really hurt the PS3. Assume the PS3 had simply stayed with DVDs, like the xbox 360. They would've certainly released the PS3 much earlier, probably at the same time as the 360. The PS3 would've cost the expected $300 or $400, again remaining competitive.
Now, they've given Microsoft a year head-start. We all know in console time that's incredibly significant - in terms of market share, development time, allowing older title prices to come down. Giving Microsoft a lead will especially hurt Sony in terms of online games, where xbox Live was already moving to its next iteration. Also, I'd bet good money when the PS3 becomes available Microsoft will conveniently announce a $249/$349 price break on the the 360, further making the $600 PS3 sticker more unreasonable. Maybe even a Halo 3 for good measure?
Most big-name titles are going to be multi-platform, and without something truly innovative to set it apart (like the Wii), the PS3 has really positioned itself for failure. And the fault is almost exclusively due to Sony betting the PS3 on Blu-Ray. Honestly, as much as I love my PS2 games, I hope it does fail. The last thing I want video game manufacturers thinking is that they can release crap late and exorbitantly priced and succeed.
[1] By the way, Slashdot, Blu-Ray is the correct spelling; I heard Sony didn't use "Blue" as they couldn't trademark it.
Welcome to 1994 (Score:2)
-BbT
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that's crap. (Score:2)
As far as rendering large levels or detailed game play graphics, developers don't even use up the current generation's 4 gigs.... its the VIDEO clips that use all the space.
Sony bragging that they can have tons of high def video clips in a game is great and all but its just FUD directed as MS. I typically skip out of the clips when I see them. And it sure isn't worth all the extra money to me to have them. And fran
Nit pick (Score:2)
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You can't trade mark somethign liek Red Fridge/Blue ray/Yellow banana. So they went with Blu-ray to avoid havign to deal with a trademark that is too general.
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hehe
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Consider that even with compression, each of our "levels" (or loaded areas) has more than 300 megs of unique data. And keep in mind that we're also streaming data during level playthroughs. It doesn't take too much level data before you've gone past what can be stored on a dual-layer DVD. And between single player and multiplayer we have a lot of level data (over 40 different large loaded areas) - yes, more than will fit on a dual layer DVD.
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It can be done
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I wouldn't really call Slashdot a game. And Microsoft's not really the enemy.
Oh, that's not what you meant? Sorry.
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64k (Score:2)
But, like everyone else, when they remove the restriction, they get lazy. I think there's one demo that's 5-10 megs, which they mostly fill with things like actual voice recordings for the audio. You can tell they're getting lazy, because they then redo something that looks much the same, only better, and in (again) 64k.
And there is actually someone doing a project -- don't remember what it was called, but the plan is to only design the s
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