Insomniac Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings has posted his top 10 reasons why the PS3 will succeed. It's on his blog in the members only section of insomniacgames.com (http://www.insomniacgames.com/) so I'll just link to PS3fourms where someone's posted it.

http://www.ps3forums.com/showthread.php?t=65579


There's really not much we haven't all seen or heard before but it's nice to read something positive every once in a while to balance out the negativity. I did find this part interesting:
Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

Sometimes people ask us, “If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn’t it look better than Gears?” Well, for one, Resistance didn’t support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures. Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc. Starting with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction we are supporting texture streaming, which will make the worlds look even better, and will also consume even more space on disc.

did you really expect him to say something different.... thats akin to sony/ms/nintendo hyping their consoles.

Also, remember that the Gears single player was roughly 8 hours long. Of course it will fit on one dvd. Blue Dragon, buy comparison, comes on three dvds.

Good read, thanks.

Also, remember that the Gears single player was roughly 8 hours long. Of course it will fit on one dvd. Blue Dragon, buy comparison, comes on three dvds.
I think thats the point he was making was that Gears looks great but is a "short" game. I have to agree with that. Gears is short. but...looks excellent. But they had to choose between content or graphics as they really cant have the best of both worlds with the DVD9 format the 360 supports. I think he was doing a lil self promoting there..but the underlying truth is there as well. I personally cant wait to see what the New R&C looks like.

I think thats the point he was making was that Gears looks great but is a "short" game. I have to agree with that. Gears is short. but...looks excellent. But they had to choose between content or graphics as they really cant have the best of both worlds with the DVD9 format the 360 supports. I think he was doing a lil self promoting there..but the underlying truth is there as well. I personally cant wait to see what the New R&C looks like.

You haven't seen the trailer?

Good article, lots of valid points.

You haven't seen the trailer?

I have, its gorgeous :)

Good article but one HUGE error... people are running out to BUY a Wii after visiting Reggie's house. They do not need to come back, they own one or are looking for one to buy.

He's crazy about BR as well, but what else is he supposed to say?

Thats like Bill Gates saying the XBox 360 is the **** and you guys jumping for joy that since he said it it is so? Come on now.

I agree with about 80% of the article...

I think he's putting too much emphasis on HDMI. I can't imagine more than 10-20% of PS3 owners having a fully compatible HDMI 1.3 setup in the future. Even in this day and age where Dolby Pro Logic receivers are a dime a dozen, I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of PS2 owners are still using their TV speakers as the main source of sound.

The second point I don't agree with is the Wii being a fad. Even though I personally have no interest in the Wii, I don't think it will fall off the radar anytime soon. That being said, I don't think the Wii and PS3 are direct competitors for the end consumers money (developers is a different case). Anyone looking to buy the Wii as an only console is probably one of the "new age casual" gamers than Nintendo is marketing to or just cannot justify the price for a PS3. Either way they would not be in the market for a PS3 regardless of the existance of the Wii. The second group of Wii owners will be multi console owners who would buy it as a complimentary system to either the 360 or PS3.

His other points are pretty good and I've always felt the same way.

PR mouthpiece.......

Mar 27, 2007 : 10 Reasons Why PS3 Will Win This Console Generation


Insomniac Games Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings discusses why the PS3 is the console to beat

First of all, let me make it clear that Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio. Sony has neither endorsed nor authorized what I’m writing here.

When I started this blog post I was planning to write about Home and Little Big Planet from a developer’s perspective. But as I read some of the media and message board responses to Sony’s GDC presentation, I wanted to address an ongoing industry phenomenon. Specifically, the sheer volume of negative spin toward Sony from both the mainstream press and the internet community. Mere minutes after Sony announced a beautiful, ground breaking, free, community-enhancing online PS3 service, 100 internet posters were trying to argue that this was somehow a bad thing. Whether you love or hate Sony, if you’re trying to spin Home as a bad thing I can only conclude that you’re part of Microsoft’s $3.2 billion viral marketing campaign.

I’ll be the first to say that Sony has had a very rough road from last E3 up through this year’s GDC. Some of their wounds have been self-inflicted, but they’ve also had to face a conspicuously hostile media. Take the New York Times article “How the PS3 will kill your dog, steal your girlfriend, and infect you with Ebola.” And Time magazine’s piece “Global Warming: Is It The PS3?” And more recently, GameSpot’s “Ten Complaints We Thought Up While Everyone Else Was Watching Little Big Planet.”

For the last nine months it has been fashionable to bash the PS3. At first it was controversial, even titillating, to make sensational and dire predictions about the PS3’s future. You could watch it happen again and again – a rumor starts on a message board (“The PS3s all caught on fire at TGS!”, “Blu-Ray won’t have any Porn!”), then it gets picked up by a games industry website, and a few days later USA Today runs the story with the headline “Experts Say PS3 Doom3d!1!!” But the tide has changed so much now that it’s downright controversial to suggest that the PS3 may yet be a success. So, in the spirit of sensationalism and controversy, let me present to you 10 reasons why the PS3 will be the console market leader by 2010:

1. Home & Little Big Planet
One of my jobs at Insomniac is to try to come up with “the next big thing.” This is something everyone at Insomniac does, but as Chief Creative Officer it’s also part of my job description. For the last two years there have been two concepts that I have felt had the strongest potential to be the next big thing. At GDC, Sony came out of the blue and delivered fully-realized versions of both concepts.

The first concept is a realization of the ‘Metaverse’ from Neal Stephenson’s groundbreaking novel Snow Crash. For those who haven’t read it, it’s what inspired Second Life. Over the last couple years, many of us at Insomniac have come up with lots of different ideas on how to make such a system for consoles. So when Home came out, already nearly complete and looking beautiful, it was both amazing and humbling at the same time. In short, Home is exactly what the online console community needs. I’m not saying that because it’s on the PS3. I’m saying that because Home is a fully realized version of something I’ve been trying to figure out how to do for two years.

The other “next big thing” I had been thinking about is how to make a game that is primarily driven by player-generated content. So when Little Big Planet was announced I felt like Orville Wright tinkering on a bicycle-powered balsa wood plane as a learjet suddenly flew overhead. Not only does Little Big Planet have stunningly beautiful graphics, gorgeous animation, brilliant physics and intuitive controls, it’s also a cooperative four player online game! This alone makes it accessible to a much greater audience than player vs player games. And most important of all, it has an absolutely ingenuous system for creating and sharing your own levels. This is HUGE. This is something that’s never been done on consoles and now it’s being introduced not as a half-baked add-on to another game, but as an absolutely brilliant, fully realized, breathtaking experience. You can bet that dozens of developers will create their own Little Big Planet levels as soon as it comes out. Many future game designers will get their start by designing Little Big Planet levels. Gamers who previously had no way to get their foot in the door as a game designer will have developers calling them in the middle of the night if they make a top-rated LBP level. I say again, Little Big Planet is HUGE.

It’s humbling to know that other developers had not only thought of these two concepts, but brought them to fruition in such stunning fashion. Mostly, though, it’s very encouraging to see Sony taking more of a lead in online innovation. While some people were accusing them of merely copying the competition, Sony has been quietly working on two of the most innovative ideas of this generation. “Mii too?” Give me a break.

2. Free Online
Among all the talk about the price of Sony’s console, I almost never see anyone mention the significance of Sony’s free online service. Xbox Live Gold costs $70 to sign up for 1 year, or $20 for three months. You can renew your membership for $50 a year. So if the Xbox 360 stays around for five years, you’ll be paying 70 + 50 + 50 + 50 + 50 = $270 to access features that Sony gives you for free.

I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better? And Sony is steadily narrowing the gap in online features. With improvements to the messaging system and support for background downloading, Sony is rapidly catching up with many of the key advantages that Live has enjoyed. Add to that the fact that Sony is offering virtually lag-free dedicated servers at no cost, while on Xbox Live you are paying for a more laggy peer-to-peer service. Furthermore, one of the biggest advertised features of Xbox Live is matchmaking, yet the implementation of this feature has been inconsistent since it is left up to the developer. The matchmaking service on Resistance: FOM, meanwhile, has been one of its biggest successes, proving that even at this early stage the PS3’s online capabilities are very competitive. And free. As the PS3 community continues to grow with new features and player-generated content from Home and Little Big Planet, Sony’s online service is looking better and better. And, again, they’re not charging you $270 for it.

3. 50 GB games
If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living. At Insomniac, we were filling up DVDs on the PS2, as were most of the developers in the industry. We compressed the level data, we compressed the mpeg movies, we compressed the audio, and it was still a struggle to get it to fit in 6 gigs. Now we’ve got 16 times as much system RAM, so the level data is 16 times bigger. And the average disc space of games only gets bigger over a console’s lifespan. As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

Sometimes people ask us, “If Resistance takes 14 gigabytes, why doesn’t it look better than Gears?” Well, for one, Resistance didn’t support texture streaming, so we had to make choices about where we spent our high-res textures. Resistance also had 30 single-player chapters, six multiplayer maps, uncompressed audio streaming, and high-definition mpegs. That all added up to a lot of space on the disc. Starting with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction we are supporting texture streaming, which will make the worlds look even better, and will also consume even more space on disc.

There’s no question that you can always cut more levels, compress the audio more, compress the textures more, down-res the mpeg movies, and eventually get any game to fit on a DVD. But you paid for a high-def experience, right? You want the highest resolution, best audio, most cinematic experience a developer can offer, right? That’s why Blu-Ray is important for games, and why it will become more important each year of this hardware cycle.

4. Casino Royale
Casino Royale is the first high definition title to crack the top 10 on Amazon’s DVD charts, rising up to number seven shortly after being released. This is significant because it dispels the myth that high definition discs are merely a niche and will never take off with the mainstream.

A lot of people have been waiting on the fence to see whether Blu-Ray or HD-DVD would emerge as the winner of the format war. Well, at this point the war is as good as over. Blu-Ray has won a TKO. It always had superior technical specs and much wider studio support, but there was the question of whether HD-DVD’s earlier release and initially lower price would capture enough of the market to make it the winner. But Blu-Ray has already surpassed HD-DVD in overall discs sold, and is currently outselling HD-DVD discs at about a 3:1 rate. Many neutral observers in the A/V community have called the war in favor of Blu-Ray. If you want minute-to-minute updates, you can follow what’s left of the format war at various locations on the internet:
http://www.eproductwars.com/dvd/
http://www.hdgamedb.com/amazon/versus.aspx
These sites mainly compare Amazon sales data, but the Nielsen sales data shows the same thing: Blu-Ray discs are outselling HD-DVD by a steadily increasing margin.

Many of Disney, Fox and Sony’s biggest box office movies will release exclusively on Blu-Ray in the next three months, likely pushing the sales separation between Blu-Ray and HD-DVD to a margin where many retailers will begin phasing out HD-DVD. Retailers hate a format war even more than consumers, and I suspect they’ll take the initiative to end it as quickly as possible.

5. HDMI
A lot has been said about Sony’s choice to ship with composite cables. I won’t say I agree with that decision, but I think too little has been said of the fact that even the cheaper PS3 SKU supports HDMI 1.3. The PS3 was the first consumer device to support it, and this is a very important future-proofing step. When you go to buy higher-end TVs, the PS3 will support the highest possible audio and video input the TV and receiver can accept. If and when high-def movies start requiring an Image Constraint Token, the PS3 will still be able play them in high definition.

Right now, HDMI seems primarily to be a selling point to the hardcore audio and videophiles of the world. But HDTVs are getting cheaper and more popular all the time, and consumer sophistication and knowledge of high definition audio and video is growing. In a couple years, HDMI devices will be the standard. Graphics and audio in games will also continue to improve, and more and more consumers will want HDMI in order to get the best results on their home theater setups. As this happens, Microsoft has a difficult choice – do they stick with “last gen” video output, or do they release a premium version of the Xbox 360 that includes HDMI but effectively forces early adopters to re-buy the system to get the best results? Sony ultimately made their console more expensive by including HDMI, but over the next couple years it’s likely to play out as the right choice.

6. Standard HDD
When we were developing for PS2, I was jealous of Xbox’s standard hard drive. There are so many things this allowed you to consider as a developer – virtually unlimited save data, improved load times, custom music, downloadable content and user-created content just to name a few. But since hard drives, no matter what the size, never get cheaper than about $50, Microsoft lost money trying to compete with the PS2’s price. That may be the reason they left it out of the cheaper Xbox 360 SKU, thinking that Sony would again leave out the hard drive on the PS3. Instead, Sony made the hard drive standard for both SKUs. This added to the cost of the PS3, but it also let developers use the HDD in games.

The problem with including a hard drive in one version of the 360 and not in the other is that developers can’t use it for the games. Or, at least, they can’t use it for any required features. When you are guaranteed to have at least a 20 GB hard drive in the console, you can write your load caching routines around it, or use it for your application’s storage needs. To a developer, an optional hard drive is roughly equivalent to no hard drive at all.

Another advantage of the PS3 is that it will let you put in any third party hard drive you want. From a developer’s standpoint, this is good news because the market will gradually be able to support larger downloadable games over the course of the PS3’s life. As downloadable content gets larger and more sophisticated, PS3 owners can choose to buy larger hard drives at the best market price. The more this happens, the more developers will be encouraged to create better and better downloadable games.

7. The Wii Fad Will Fade
OK, this one’s going to be controversial, but I have to say it. I like Nintendo a lot. I think Nintendo has innovated far more than any other company in the industry. And I think the Wii is really, really fun. But… let me relate to you a story that may sound familiar:

Your friend Reggie invites you over for a Wii Party. It’s awesome. You and your friends partake in whatever beverages are legally appropriate for your age group. The next day everyone who went to the party rushes out and buys a Wii.

A week later Reggie hosts another Wii Party. This time only half the group comes. It’s still fun, but there isn’t quite as much shoving to get at the Wiimote.

The next week Reggie hosts another Wii Party. You tell him you have bird flu.

Obviously I’m exaggerating, but the Wii does have many characteristics of popular mainstream fads. It’s instantaneously accessible, it’s unlike anything you’ve tried before, and it’s great fun to share with friends. In short, it’s everything Nintendo said it would be and it has captured the world’s imagination. The only downside is that the world is easily distracted. Tickle Me Elmo captured the world’s attention at one point, as did Furbies. They were both instantly accessible, were unlike anything people had seen before, and were fun to share with friends. But a year later, after everyone had seen them and tried them out, their popularity waned.

The Wii is currently riding on a massive wave of mainstream attention and has been purchased by lots of people who don’t normally play games. But how many of those people who are hooked on Wii Sports will also buy Wii Need For Speed? Mainstream fads usually run their course within a year. As the honeymoon period fades, the Wii will be going up against more and more graphically impressive games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. More people will be buying HD televisions and looking for the most immersive and stunning experiences available. For these reasons, I think the Wii will be more successful than the GameCube or N64 but in the long run will still be outsold by the PS3.

8. PS3 Has a Major CPU Advantage
The GPUs on the Xbox 360 and PS3 are roughly equivalent, with the Xbox 360 arguably having a slight edge. The difference in CPU power, however, is far greater with the PS3 enjoying the advantage. The PS3’s eight parallel CPUs (one primary “PPU” and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360. Just about any tech programmer will tell you that the PS3’s CPUs are significantly more powerful. The problem is that it has been challenging thus far to take advantage of the Cell’s parallel architecture.

With the PS2, Sony got away with making a fairly developer-unfriendly system, and its success allowed their hardware designers to ignore developer’s complaints as they made the PS3. People high up at Sony have realized that approach simply won’t work anymore and are trying to fix the problem. Sony is actively improving their libraries, tools and developer support in order to make PS3 development easier. They are giving first party developed techniques and code to third-party developers so that multi-platform games should start looking better on PS3.

Games developed from the ground up on PS3 are the ones that will really show off the PS3’s CPU advantage. The complexity of the distributed processing architecture means that PS3 engines won’t fully blossom until a little later in the lifecycle than the PS2. This has put the PS3 at a disadvantage early in its lifecycle, but within two years you will see games that surpass what is possible on the Xbox 360.

9. PS2 still outselling 360
I know, it’s outselling the PS3 by an even larger margin. But the continued strong PS2 sales really are a good thing for Sony. Anyone buying a PS2 at this point is probably not going to buy a PS3 or Xbox 360 in the next year. And when they do choose to buy the current generation of hardware, the PS3 will be in a lot better position. The price will have come down, the game library will be broad, and the top PS3 titles will probably have the edge in both graphics and sound. Just as important, the people buying into the PS2 now will be getting into many of Sony’s exclusive franchises that they will then later want to play on the PS3.

10. Something For Everyone
One of Sony’s biggest advantages is that it has strong franchises in every genre. Whereas Microsoft’s successful titles are mostly M-rated, and Nintendo’s are mostly E-rated, Sony has a big list of hit titles across the spectrum. When a 30-something gamer (like me) goes to buy a game console, it’s a lot easier to justify the purchase when there are games he can play with his kids as well as more mature stuff.

To Microsoft’s credit, they are doing a good job of catching up. The acquisition of Rare and the development of Viva Pinata have helped to broaden their spectrum. But it takes time to build a franchise, and Sony has been building their suite of titles for over a decade. Consider the breadth, success and critical acclaim of some of their exclusive properties: The Getaway, God of War, Gran Turismo, Hot Shots Golf, Jak and Daxter, Killzone, Ratchet & Clank, Shadow of the Colossus, Singstar, Sly Cooper, SOCOM, and Twisted Metal. These are all million-plus sellers worldwide that are either already announced or likely to appear on PS3. Add to this Sony’s new line up of first-party titles, including Heavenly Sword, Lair, Motorstorm, Resistance: Fall of Man, Uncharted and White Knight Story, and they have an even deeper and stronger line-up than what they had on PS2.


A lot of industry watchers and even a handful of publishers have been quick to write Sony off this generation, and I think that’s near-sighted. Sony has made a lot of decisions with the PS3 that may have slowed them down in the short run, but should give them a big advantage in the long run. The high price, hardware complexity, and the uncertainty of the Blu-Ray/HD-DVD format war have contributed to the PS3’s slow start out of the gate. But as the price drops, developers master the hardware, and Blu-Ray becomes the new DVD standard, Sony’s early disadvantages turn to advantages. As downloadable games become more common, the 60 GB hard-drive will be a big advantage to developers and consumers. As games get bigger and more sophisticated, Blu-Ray storage will increasingly become a major advantage. And as more and more of Sony’s exclusive first-party titles get released, the PS3 will begin to outsell the competition on a monthly basis. Those publishers who have shifted resources away from PS3 development will find themselves behind the curve and losing money as the market center gradually shifts toward the PS3 over the next two years.

I’m sure many of you may have comments about my point of view. If you do, please email blog@insomniacgames.com and I’ll do my best to respond. Also, I’ll be visiting the various forums to see what people think, including our own at www.insomniacgames.com (click on the community tab). Hope to see you there.

Thing is most of the talk is about system power, and the most powerful system rarely wins the generation. He has some good points (and some silly ones) but they don't really support his argument that Sony will 'win'.

The second point I don't agree with is the Wii being a fad. Even though I personally have no interest in the Wii, I don't think it will fall off the radar anytime soon. That being said, I don't think the Wii and PS3 are direct competitors for the end consumers money (developers is a different case). Anyone looking to buy the Wii as an only console is probably one of the "new age casual" gamers than Nintendo is marketing to or just cannot justify the price for a PS3. Either way they would not be in the market for a PS3 regardless of the existance of the Wii. The second group of Wii owners will be multi console owners who would buy it as a complimentary system to either the 360 or PS3.
I think the Wii will be a fad, but for different reasons. I got a Wii on launch day, and i LOVED it...until i finished Zelda.

Now, i'm waiting for the games.

The only games i'm really interested in so far are Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Super Mario Galaxy, and Mario Party 8. Mario Party got delayed until June, and the other two, which originally had spring release dates, have also been delayed, and have been given nothing but a "TBA" release date.

I fear that the Wii will suffer the same fate that the GC and, to a lesser extent, the n64 did - a complete lack of games.

I remember how many people said that the DS would be a fad. :)

I also remember how many people thought that the immense capacity of UMD would guarantee that the PSP would dominate the handheld market. :D

Quote from Brian.....

"The Wii is currently riding on a massive wave of mainstream attention and has been purchased by lots of people who don’t normally play games. But how many of those people who are hooked on Wii Sports will also buy Wii Need For Speed? Mainstream fads usually run their course within a year. As the honeymoon period fades, the Wii will be going up against more and more graphically impressive games on the PS3 and Xbox 360. More people will be buying HD televisions and looking for the most immersive and stunning experiences available. For these reasons, I think the Wii will be more successful than the GameCube or N64 but in the long run will still be outsold by the PS3."


I mostly agree about his assumptions about the Wii...Its a $250 fad like the $34.99 Elmo..unless it gets some really good games...it will go down like the gamecube. It will be a success but it will not completely dominate like the DS. The Wii will not be like the Nintendo DS...the DS built off the popularity of the gameboy...at portable gamming systems...nintendo rules.

The is the next generation...and SD graphics are not going to cut it for the long hall...the graphics on the Wii will not get much better than what the best the gamecube could do last year...If you think the PS3 is overpriced...then the Wii is also overpriced.....gamecubes are like $99 right now...

Now i am not hating on the wii, I have one and i like it because wii sports is fun..buts its old now..i want something new i am bored..Zelda on the Wii is not Elder Scrolls IV on the PS3..people are going to realize this very soon....and they are going to want a PS3 or Xbox 360 if they do not already have one....

HDTVs are getting cheaper by the month. On of my friends just got a Samsung 42 inch Plasma HP-S4273 for $900 brand new from a local store called Cons.

As long as nintendo knows they are in a a class by themselves and they are not going to try to compete against Sony and Microsoft...they will be ok...The HD era is upon us...

We all know that once the PS3 gets cheaper...everybody who had a PS2...will probably get one...The PS3 is a different animal than the Xbox 360. But if you are going to really upgrade you really have to have a HDTV to get the best results of the PS3 or Xbox 360...you are going to want some HD movies...and once the price of the PS3 falls to within $100 of the mid priced Xbox 360...The HD-DVD addon has subpar video according to test...

Check out this review...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/27/AR2007032700516.html

Maybe this is the reason why microsoft is going HDMI in the new Xbox elite?

Thats why it is best to have Wii as "reserve" console, pick XBox360 or PS3 than ad Wii for Nintendo exlusive games which are some of if not the best for gameplay and fun.

I remember how many people said that the DS would be a fad. :)

I also remember how many people thought that the immense capacity of UMD would guarantee that the PSP would dominate the handheld market. :D

UMD may have failed as a movie format by that was Sony's fault...they should have priced the UMD movies less than $10 each....The PSP is a success..it has sold over 20 million...as much as the gamecube...Remember the PSP is $200 to $300...while the DS is $129...the only thing keeping the Wii fad going is the price....they need to get some games..the drought is worst on the Wii than the PS3.....plus they need online games....but hey once they drop the price of the DS to $99 they will sale another 20 million of them!

Many great points. I agree with almost all of them, especially from a financial standpoint. The 360 gamers (myself included), will end up spending more money on their 360's after add ons and xbox live than the one time $600 cost of my PS3.

I will go out on a limb and disagree that the Wii will be a fad though. I think that it could be a fad to the hardcore gamer. But the general public may still be picking them up years from now. It's a big if, but Nintendo will be doing very well if it happens. I want one myself, but have never been able to actually see one yet!

I think that we will eventually see things on the PS3 that are not possible on the 360, but I am not sure how important those things will be to the game. I am just saying that I don't expect the PS3 to blow away the 360 from a technical standpoint.

I got a lot of crap for buying the 360 on launch day. Only a few good games for about 6-9 months. But, then the games came and people started to want to come over and play.

Now after buying a PS3 on launch day those same idiots are giving me crap. I expect the same thing to happen as last year, except the turn around time will be shorter with the PS3.

Thats why it is best to have Wii as "reserve" console, pick XBox360 or PS3 than ad Wii for Nintendo exlusive games which are some of if not the best for gameplay and fun.

I agree with you 100 percent....hey if you got the money you should get all 3 consoles and both handhelds...they all have their plus and minuses....


Its stupid to be a total fanboy for just one console or manufacturer..

Remember i do not hate on any of them, i own they all...but i just gots to defend the PS3 when the time arises.

I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better?Easily.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tripjammer
I agree, Xbox Live is overall offering a better online service right now. But $270 better?

Easily.


First of all, I don't know how to respond to someone else's post, but anyway.
I wanted to comment on the cost of xbox live. I am a subscriber myself and I think it sucks that we have to pay for sh$t that I am getting for free with PSN. The additional features of xbox live that the PSN does not have are mostly a marketing ploy to get you to spend even more money. These are things like movie and tv downloads. So basically, you are paying for a service that allows you the option to pay for more stuff to store on your hard drive. Except, your hard drive only has 13 GB available so you better buy another one, only it's not that easy because MS is so greedy that you can only buy the ones they have marked up for you at $100 per 20 GB. What a raw deal. I am kind of embarrassed that I am one of the xbox live idiots making Bill even richer paying for services that I should get for free.

I agree with about 80% of the article...

I think he's putting too much emphasis on HDMI. I can't imagine more than 10-20% of PS3 owners having a fully compatible HDMI 1.3 setup in the future. Even in this day and age where Dolby Pro Logic receivers are a dime a dozen, I would hazard to guess that the vast majority of PS2 owners are still using their TV speakers as the main source of sound.




You should read the thread in the receivers section on "why you don't need hdmi 1.3".

IMO the main benefits of hdmi over component are hdmi switching and "better than DD sound". The only way you can utilize it is with the right receiver & decent speakers. That's about it.

The 360 "elite" doesn't need hdmi if it's not going to utilize better sound. 360 games won't utilize it. Only the hd-dvd drive can utilize it if the 360 upgrades it's firmware to support dts.

The second point I don't agree with is the Wii being a fad. Even though I personally have no interest in the Wii, I don't think it will fall off the radar anytime soon. That being said, I don't think the Wii and PS3 are direct competitors for the end consumers money (developers is a different case). Anyone looking to buy the Wii as an only console is probably one of the "new age casual" gamers than Nintendo is marketing to or just cannot justify the price for a PS3. Either way they would not be in the market for a PS3 regardless of the existance of the Wii. The second group of Wii owners will be multi console owners who would buy it as a complimentary system to either the 360 or PS3.

I think it's a fad. I got bored of it 1/2 way through zelda & sold it for a profit.

Nintendo needs to expand on their "new age casual" gaming strategy & make new games. They've been pretty much rehashing mario, zelda, etc etc since famicon, which is fine, but they need new franchises.

Obviously they can't compete graphics wise with the ps3 or 360, but they need to keep the innovation alive or their system will be as dead as the GC.

Also, I'm thinking that "casual gamers" would be more likely to lose interest faster (if nintendo doesn't put out good games timely) than hardcore gamers.

First of all, I don't know how to respond to someone else's post, but anyway."Quote" button at the bottom of the post.

I am a subscriber myself and I think it sucks that we have to pay for sh$t that I am getting for free with PSN.There are plenty of features (including 100% of the ones you listed) that a) don't require a Gold membership and b) aren't part of PSN ... yet.

Wow a Sony dev praising the PS3?!!! Gee who woulda thunk huh. Seriously though, what do you expect him to say? I'm sure if you ask a Bungie employee he could come up with a million reasons why 360 is better. I like Insomniac games but he comes off as a raving 12yr old fanboy, some of his points are downright retarded like saying how HDMI is next gen while component is stone age.

All of the online issues Sony has right now can be remedied through software upgrades. If they really wanted to, there's no reason why Sony can't fix up the PSN to compete with Live. Write some code to have voice chats in background, beef up the friends list a bit and it will already be a good contender. Ranked matchmaking on Live is no different than what Insomniac has done in R:FOM. I actually much perfer it to the occasionally laggy custom option ranked systems in GoW and R6: Vegas.

Edit: Live Marketplace for movies and tv shows is a completely useless service that people outside USA have to pay for. There are no trailers to download let alone movies in Canada.

I agree with about 80% of the article...

The second point I don't agree with is the Wii being a fad. Even though I personally have no interest in the Wii, I don't think it will fall off the radar anytime soon. That being said, I don't think the Wii and PS3 are direct competitors for the end consumers money (developers is a different case). Anyone looking to buy the Wii as an only console is probably one of the "new age casual" gamers than Nintendo is marketing to or just cannot justify the price for a PS3. Either way they would not be in the market for a PS3 regardless of the existance of the Wii. The second group of Wii owners will be multi console owners who would buy it as a complimentary system to either the 360 or PS3.

His other points are pretty good and I've always felt the same way.
I think the Wii is here to stay, but I think it's sales will level off as they get more of them in the pipeline. Wiis don't sell to the traditional gaming base in the numbers that the PS3 and 360 do. Which is a good thing. I like Nintendo's stance of coming up with an easy to use "family friendly" console. But, I don't think they are stealing a lot of the gamer base that bought the PS2 and original XBOX.

As I've said before, the world will continue to support 3 consoles. Each one will find it's corner of the market, and each generation there will be a different distribution of which one sold more. I don't think it means software support will go away from any of them. There is still too much money to be made, and all of the consoles have sold enough hardware at this point to make the software development profitable for most companies.

3. 50 GB games
If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living. At Insomniac, we were filling up DVDs on the PS2, as were most of the developers in the industry. We compressed the level data, we compressed the mpeg movies, we compressed the audio, and it was still a struggle to get it to fit in 6 gigs. Now we’ve got 16 times as much system RAM, so the level data is 16 times bigger. And the average disc space of games only gets bigger over a console’s lifespan. As games get bigger, more advanced and more complex, they necessarily take up more space. If developers were filling up DVDs last generation, there are clearly going to be some sacrifices made to fit current generation games in the same amount of space.

Granted, some really great Xbox 360 games have squeezed onto a DVD9. Gears of War is a beautiful game and shows off the highest resolution textures of anything yet released, partly because of the Unreal Engine’s ability to stream textures. This means that you can have much higher resolution textures than you could normally fit in your 512 MB of RAM. It also means that you’re going to chew up more disc space for each level. With streamed textures, streamed geometry and streamed audio, even with compression, you can quickly approach 1 GB of data per level. That inherently limits you to a maximum of about 7 levels, and that’s without multiplayer levels or mpeg cutscenes.

I find it odd how he didn't once mention Oblivion, one of the biggest games in videogame history,if not "thee" biggest game so far, and yet it's stored on a DVD9 Disc.

Enough Said....

Nice try Brian.H ;)

Good read!

I've benn a N fanboy most of 20 years now and even I have got to say in this generation of HD content and gaming, the Wii is gimmicky.

...and nothing against the Xbox in paticular, it's mostly the PRO-MS corrosponding crowd that trolls this forum and so many others that has left a sour taste in my mouth.

PS3 fits my needs just right.

I find it odd how he didn't once mention Oblivion, one of the biggest games in videogame history,if not "thee" biggest game so far, and yet it's stored on a DVD9 Disc.

Enough Said....

Nice try Brian.H ;)

Keep in mind that length of gameplay or square mileage is not always what takes up the space. Oblivion uses alot of the same data for most of the areas generated as far as textures go. It also doesn't have any video in it. I know some people don't like cut scenes but some people do and they have a place in certain genres.
Imagine if Oblivion took place in several different environments (jungle, desert, ect.) and if there were several different types of architecture depicted. Even if the game wasn't as big it could still take up more disk space.

Overall I think Brian H's comments are not that off base. Some of them are a reach but then again so is alot of PS3 criticism. I imagine he feels like some of us do always being hit with doom and gloom predictions about his system.
And while I'm stream of thought commenting here... I think the Wii's success depends on one thing. Do casual gamers buy enough games? It seems many people love Wii Sports but are those some people willing to spend $50 every month or so for a game. If the answer is no then the Wii will find itself losing support. Game makers only get money if their game sells... if many Wii owners are happy with sports and Wii Play things might get rocky.

Good article but one HUGE error... people are running out to BUY a Wii after visiting Reggie's house. They do not need to come back, they own one or are looking for one to buy.

He's crazy about BR as well, but what else is he supposed to say?

I think he hit the nail on the head with both the Wii and Blu-Ray. HDDVD is all but dead and Wii is dead without any 3rd party support. Even the slew of PS2 ports to the Wii look worse than the PS2 version! Wii is great but does it have true staying power? Not unless they come out with Wii version of Nintendogs or something. Nintendo's destroyer of worlds is and will remain the DS. Its on track to be the best selling piece of gaming hardware ever.

I find it odd how he didn't once mention Oblivion, one of the biggest games in videogame history,if not "thee" biggest game so far, and yet it's stored on a DVD9 Disc.

Enough Said....

Nice try Brian.H ;)

Let me respond to this with another quote:

If you ever hear someone say “Blu-Ray isn’t needed for this generation,” rest assured they don’t make games for a living.

Now, please don't take this the wrong way. I'm not trying to be insulting when I say this; Can we agree that you have no idea what you're talking about?

Enough said....

Nice try SurfingMatt27. ;)

PR mouthpiece.......

A mouthpiece that had some very valid points. Take that back to your cave, troll.

Wow a Sony dev praising the PS3?!!! Gee who woulda thunk huh. Seriously though, what do you expect him to say? I'm sure if you ask a Bungie employee he could come up with a million reasons why 360 is better. I like Insomniac games but he comes off as a raving 12yr old fanboy, some of his points are downright retarded like saying how HDMI is next gen while component is stone age.

The article isn't that long. Try reading it. Especially the FIRST sentence:

"Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio."

For an independent studio, he's actually going out on a limb with his statements. With developers going more and more to multiple platform games, he's definitely not making any friends with Microsoft. In fact, as much as I agree with the article it almost sounds like posturing for a possible selling of the company to Sony. Wouldn't that be crazy. This to counter the possible sale of Take Two for MS. hmmmmm. :eek:

The article isn't that long. Try reading it. Especially the FIRST sentence:

"Insomniac is a 100% independent development studio."

For an independent studio, he's actually going out on a limb with his statements. With developers going more and more to multiple platform games, he's definitely not making any friends with Microsoft. In fact, as much as I agree with the article it almost sounds like posturing for a possible selling of the company to Sony. Wouldn't that be crazy. This to counter the possible sale of Take Two for MS. hmmmmm. :eek:

Insomniac hasn't made any games for non-Sony platforms since the PS2 days.

It's easily a pr peice. Especially the bit about the cell. He boasts about the 8 parrelel processors. Except all the devs have stated that only 7 of the cores are active and even then 3 are alwaysd locked off to keep the system OS running. Leaving 5 to handle everything in the game.

He said, "The PS3’s eight parallel CPUs (one primary “PPU” and seven Cell processors) give it potentially far more computing power than the three parallel CPUs in the Xbox 360." Please read again and find your error.

Also three SPE cores are not taken by the OS. Of the eight SPEs, one is disabled for yield purposes, a second is reserved for the system, and a third can be taken over by the system if it's needed.

NOTE: There is a debate over the "secondary" OS SPE. It is said that the OS never uses more than one SPE, and that the "special OS calls" option was a mis-communication.

With all of these kinds of articles both pro and con, I think it is important to look at what is actually being said as opposed to who is saying it. The one exception to this rule is if you have someone who is an expert in a field and is commenting on an area within their expertise (ie, when someone clearly knows more about something than you do). Using this approach to this article, you find that a lot of what is said is outside Hastings area of expertise, which is game development. Thus, when he talks about bluray or the impact of the Wii or any of that, his opinion is just as good as yours or mine.

However, there is one area that is within his expertise: whether the size of the dvd is sufficient for most games. He makes a good argument that the Xbox's reliance on the DVD could impact future games because a DVD cannot store all the data that modern games need. To me, this means that future 360 games might be of reduced quality OR be published on multiple disks and/or more dependant on the hard drive in the 360.

Make of this what you will.

With all of these kinds of articles both pro and con, I think it is important to look at what is actually being said as opposed to who is saying it. The one exception to this rule is if you have someone who is an expert in a field and is commenting on an area within their expertise (ie, when someone clearly knows more about something than you do). Using this approach to this article, you find that a lot of what is said is outside Hastings area of expertise, which is game development. Thus, when he talks about bluray or the impact of the Wii or any of that, his opinion is just as good as yours or mine.

However, there is one area that is within his expertise: whether the size of the dvd is sufficient for most games. He makes a good argument that the Xbox's reliance on the DVD could impact future games because a DVD cannot store all the data that modern games need. To me, this means that future 360 games might be of reduced quality OR be published on multiple disks and/or more dependant on the hard drive in the 360.

Make of this what you will.


Gears of War was short because they had no disc space for more textures...that is fact. Had the Xbox 360 has HD-DVD or bluray then GEARS of War would have been even better...

Brian said they can now do streaming on the PS3 in their new engine...so the next Resistance Fall of Man 2 will have streaming of the 1080p textures and will probably fill a 50 GB bluray disc!

I can not wait...


We already know the Cell is a perfect streaming processor..once they get the engine fine tuned...we are going to see some awesome games...

two words..

more talk






The most amazing aspect of the PS3 in my opinion is how much it actually gets people to talk and type.. forget the games.. forget BR playback.. forget Cell.. forget any real annoucements for stuff I can actually buy off the shelf and use in my home tomorrow..

What the PS3 does actually best is get people to talk (and type on internet forums) for days.. weeks.. months and years about its woulda, coulda, shoulda's..

two words..

more talk






The most amazing aspect of the PS3 in my opinion is how much it actually gets people to talk and type.. forget the games.. forget BR playback.. forget Cell.. forget any real annoucements for stuff I can actually buy off the shelf and use in my home tomorrow..

What the PS3 does actually best is get people to talk (and type on internet forums) for days.. weeks.. months and years about its woulda, coulda, shoulda's..


Well to be fair, Insomniac has already released a game for PS3 so it's not like Guerilla telling ppl to wait for Killzone.

PS3's potential is there and I'm excited for it but that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying what I have with it now.

For PS3 owners that are always complaining, I'm not sure if it's anyone's fault but your own for buying a PS3. Seriously, you're just SOL.

For non-PS3 owners that are always complaining. You guys are just dumb.

It's easily a pr peice. Especially the bit about the cell. He boasts about the 8 parrelel processors. Except all the devs have stated that only 7 of the cores are active and even then 3 are alwaysd locked off to keep the system OS running. Leaving 5 to handle everything in the game.

lol so how many does MS need to run their OS? 3? Let's see that leaves just the core... In my experience (Windows SA) Microsoft tends to use up more processor time than any other OS...

Live costs $70 at the start? funny, I signed up for $50.

two words..

more talk






The most amazing aspect of the PS3 in my opinion is how much it actually gets people to talk and type.. forget the games.. forget BR playback.. forget Cell.. forget any real annoucements for stuff I can actually buy off the shelf and use in my home tomorrow..

What the PS3 does actually best is get people to talk (and type on internet forums) for days.. weeks.. months and years about its woulda, coulda, shoulda's..

Here's something to talk about: Ninja Gaiden Sigma Demo coming to PSN on 4/27. 1080p/60fps. Begin......

I think the article was great and well written. He makes a lot of valid points and he isnt even being fan boy-ish, but more like trying to dispel the negativity people throw at the PS3. As fast as PC hardware gets outdated, I can easily see another Xbox having to come out before the PS3 is close to being outdated. You pay more now for a PS3 but having to buy another system from Microsoft 5+ years from now is going to put you way over what the PS3 costs. Look at Msoft releasing a 3rd version of the 360 to include HDMI. A year+ after its release they had to put another version out just to try and keep pace in the HD world. Its funny how bad peoples memory is when it comes to history. I bought a PS2 at launch and waited more than 6+ months for good games to come out. People bagged on Sony and talked trash about how hard it was to develope for but look now and it smokes all systems combined in sales. Sonys arrogance has been pretty bad and had really hurt themselves lately but in the long run all of that will be forgotten and PS3 will be a monster for HD gaming.

I wonder what the closet Sony haters, the thinly veiled fanboys, tell themselves to overlook RFOM and Motorstorm. How do they explain away those technical achievements (considering thet are first gen games and aren't running on game engines ANYWHERE near optimized for the cell/rsx.)?

It's amazing, four months after launch and so many haters are lamenting about what could have...should have....would have been. Utterly hilarious.

It is quite a phenomenon: the negative press the PS3 received so quickly and so lavishly. But beyond the instances where Sony deserved some complaints, the amount of piling on was amazing. Well, everyone loves to see the one on top fall. Fact of life.

You don't see these same people complementing Sony for the good choices they have made. Their is no balance from these folks. Sony made the great choice to create a well built technical marvel. Combines Blu ray, HDMI 1.3, blue tooth enabled, hard drive standard, and an innovatice cell processor. Why don't those folks complement Sony for including those assets in the box?

The answer....they are fanboys.

You know something is up when 4 MONTHS after launch people are judging the hardware. Hello....Bueller....Bueller?

The article was a great one that provides a dose of reality to go along with all those in the media that have been swept up in the "make PS3 fail" campaign.

whatever, i still say blu-ray isn't needed for gaming this generation, If Oblivion and Mass Effect can fit on a single DVD9 disc.

then that's enough said. :cool:

I disagree.

DVD9 disc's will not be enough because as companies keep pushing the graphics in games, other aspects will suffer.

Yes, OBLIVION is on a DVD9. Yes, I agree it is a great game. But if they had developed the game from the beginning to fit on a Blu-ray, I think it could have been better.

Reason: As OBLIVION stands right now, with the enormous size of the game, you get a huge amount of repetition in textures in the game due to the fact that they could only fit so much on a disc. If they had made the game on a Blu-ray, they could have made every area have different textures and no two areas would have the same look. Of course it would have to be up to the developer to go to those lengths, but you get the idea.

Gaming in this generation does need a larger storage medium such as Blu-ray.

JD

For once, wouldn't it be nice if someone who truly had no agenda and was completely neutral could take both systems and test them side by side with the same games so the public could see exactly which one wins out in all categories?

For once, wouldn't it be nice if someone who truly had no agenda and was completely neutral could take both systems and test them side by side with the same games so the public could see exactly which one wins out in all categories?

Games that come out for both systems aren't the true test though.

No, I know that's not the only test, but it is part of it. To say "X game on Xbox 360 played like this and Y game on the PS3 tested like that" makes no sense. You have to see the same exact game side by side to see which system wins out in that category.

But, by all means, I know that isn't the whole test. You have to test speeds, graphics, processing power, online, future potential, etc., etc.

What games have Insomniac made outside of Playstation? There are none listed anywhere for Xbox or Nintendo...

I disagree.

DVD9 disc's will not be enough because as companies keep pushing the graphics in games, other aspects will suffer.

Yes, OBLIVION is on a DVD9. Yes, I agree it is a great game. But if they had developed the game from the beginning to fit on a Blu-ray, I think it could have been better.

Reason: As OBLIVION stands right now, with the enormous size of the game, you get a huge amount of repetition in textures in the game due to the fact that they could only fit so much on a disc. If they had made the game on a Blu-ray, they could have made every area have different textures and no two areas would have the same look. Of course it would have to be up to the developer to go to those lengths, but you get the idea.

Gaming in this generation does need a larger storage medium such as Blu-ray.

JD

But more storage doesn't neccessarily make the game better in PQ, it has more or less to do with RAM limitations than storage limitations that determine how a game looks.

then again i mentioned another game...Mass Effect, a beautifull game that looks to be as huge as oblivion yet is only on a DVD9 disc.

More i less i think blu-ray in the PS3 was put in to push the blu-ray movie format more than anything,not neccessarily gaming.

If you ask any developer out there, they will say DVD-9 is sufficient this gen, the only ones that disagree are the japanese DEV's with their HD CGI cinema's.

What games have Insomniac made outside of Playstation? There are none listed anywhere for Xbox or Nintendo...

Exactlly!!

I was just going to say that... if anything it sounds like more pro-sony PR from Insomniac since they are heavily in sony's pockets.

Exactlly!!

I was just going to say that... if anything it sounds like more pro-sony PR from Insomniac since they are heavily in sony's pockets.

Regardless of whether they have made games for Sony only doesnt discredit the facts he put out there:

Blu-Ray is killing HD-DVD and a much more capable format without the size limitations DVD9 has

Cell is a more powerful processer

Online is free

HDD and HDMI are standards that future proof the system, not leave gamers and developers stuck in the olden days

But more storage doesn't neccessarily make the game better in PQ, it has more or less to do with RAM limitations than storage limitations that determine how a game looks.

then again i mentioned another game...Mass Effect, a beautifull game that looks to be as huge as oblivion yet is only on a DVD9 disc.

More i less i think blu-ray in the PS3 was put in to push the blu-ray movie format more than anything,not neccessarily gaming.

If you ask any developer out there, they will say DVD-9 is sufficient this gen, the only ones that disagree are the japanese DEV's with their HD CGI cinema's.
The developers of Mass Effect have stated that they initially thought that they would never have been able to fit the game on one disc, but Bioware's crafty devs managed to barely fit on one DVD9. Source. (http://kotaku.com/gaming/mass-effect/mass-effect-shoehorned-on-one-disc-240249.php)

How about games coming out after Mass effect? Games will only be improving from here on out.

I think a better example is Blue Dragon, which comes on 3 DVD9s.

Hell, Kojima said that he was already pushing the limits of a single-layered BD-rom for MGS4 (though primarily because he wants uncompressed soundtracks for the game).

The developers of Mass Effect have stated that they initially thought that they would never have been able to fit the game on one disc, but Bioware's crafty devs managed to barely fit on one DVD9. Source. (http://kotaku.com/gaming/mass-effect/mass-effect-shoehorned-on-one-disc-240249.php)

How about games coming out after Mass effect? Games will only be improving from here on out.

I think a better example is Blue Dragon, which comes on 3 DVD9s.

Hell, Kojima said that he was already pushing the limits of a single-layered BD-rom for MGS4 (though primarily because he wants uncompressed soundtracks for the game).

then again those games you mentioned are filled with HD CGI Cinemas so that could acount for their need for more storage space.

If it comes down to it microsoft will do the 2 DVD route, no big deal or worst case scenario is you put multiplayer online on one DVD and just the main SP compaign on another DVD.

then again those games you mentioned are filled with HD CGI Cinemas so that could acount for their need for more storage space.

If it comes down to it microsoft will do the 2 DVD route, no big deal or worst case scenario is you put multiplayer online on one DVD and just the main SP compaign on another DVD.
MGS's cutscenes have always been real-time, not cgi.

MGS's cutscenes have always been real-time, not cgi.

Same can't be said for blue dragon.

then again those games you mentioned are filled with HD CGI Cinemas so that could acount for their need for more storage space.

If it comes down to it microsoft will do the 2 DVD route, no big deal or worst case scenario is you put multiplayer online on one DVD and just the main SP compaign on another DVD.
Last I heard, coding for Multiplayer wouldn't involve gigs of information.

If it did, you'd have to duplicate textures, code, maps, etc, which still wouldn't give you enough room if the developers are going all out on map size and textures.

Same can't be said for blue dragon.

You miss makingmusic's point.

then again those games you mentioned...

He is saying, of the 2 examples he gave you, only half uses CGI. Therefore, your statement is incorrect and misinformed.

Reason: As OBLIVION stands right now, with the enormous size of the game, you get a huge amount of repetition in textures in the game due to the fact that they could only fit so much on a disc.Sorry, but this is a highly uninformed statement. Two things:

1) The Oblivion disc came in at only 6GB of the DVD-9 limit.

2) The entirety of my 3D texture collection -- which I've been amassing since the mid to late '90s -- would fit on a single DVD. We're talking 27,253 files in 1,096 folders at a size of 5,421,379,584 bytes (5.04 GB). Most of these files are at 640x480 or higher, and many are uncompressed .TGA sequences.

I won't try to convince anyone that Blu-Ray won't be useful for games -- I do believe it certainly will, especially HD cut scenes -- but the claim that DVD-9 somehow limits texture capacity is erroneous.

A single layer DVD was also enough for GT3. Did Polyphony Digital settle again for single layer for GT4? No, they went and added stuff and dumped it on a DVD9 cause it was available to use. How can you people be so blind that you think a DVD9 will suffice 4 years down the road? Complaining about having more space to work with is about the stupidest thing you can do. "it's ok guys, I really don't need a penthouse suite, I'm fine with my closet thanks"? Riiiight...

But more storage doesn't neccessarily make the game better in PQ, it has more or less to do with RAM limitations than storage limitations that determine how a game looks.

then again i mentioned another game...Mass Effect, a beautifull game that looks to be as huge as oblivion yet is only on a DVD9 disc.

More i less i think blu-ray in the PS3 was put in to push the blu-ray movie format more than anything,not neccessarily gaming.

If you ask any developer out there, they will say DVD-9 is sufficient this gen, the only ones that disagree are the japanese DEV's with their HD CGI cinema's.


Nope DVD9 is old tech...and microsoft just does not want to admit it...YOU will need 50 GB of bluray space for a game within 2 years....if the xbox 720 comes with a DVD 9 when it comes out in 3 years...then people will trash it. The Wii really is a joke in the hardware arena except for the controller. People just don't care and they are buying it...they think it is cheap and it is to a certain point, yes it is cheap in its hardware...but at least it has built in wireless and real bluetooth unlike the Xbox360..For the Wii DVD9 is perfect...there are no HD graphics to ever be found on the Wii.

The PS3 will be fine...its expensive right now but..its not much more than a fully optioned Xbox 360 premium or Xbox 360 Elite. IPTV is nowhere near mainstream....Bluray is now mainstream. If you want to watch HD Movies in 1080p you will have to watch them on bluray or HD-DVD. Sony did the right thing about including the bluray drive...plenty of space for the current and the future.

The Xbox 360 will be screwed when Bluray is the standard and when game developers develop from the PS3 down, which they will in the next 2 years. Its all a matter of time.

A single layer DVD was also enough for GT3. Did Polyphony Digital settle again for single layer for GT4? No, they went and added stuff and dumped it on a DVD9 cause it was available to use. How can you people be so blind that you think a DVD9 will suffice 4 years down the road? Complaining about having more space to work with is about the stupidest thing you can do. "it's ok guys, I really don't need a penthouse suite, I'm fine with my closet thanks"? Riiiight...
Didn't many of the early ps2 games actually come on cds?

Bluray is now mainstream.

really?

However, there is one area that is within his expertise: whether the size of the dvd is sufficient for most games. He makes a good argument that the Xbox's reliance on the DVD could impact future games because a DVD cannot store all the data that modern games need. To me, this means that future 360 games might be of reduced quality OR be published on multiple disks and/or more dependant on the hard drive in the 360.

Make of this what you will.
I did think that was an interesting part. I've read all of the discussion about the new XBOX not having an HD DVD drive for gaming because the current HD DVD drives can't run fast enough with DVDs to support the XBOX needs. As much as the Blu Ray aspect of the PS3 is criticized, I was happy to see it for the reasons you mentioned. Even if Blu Ray doesn't make it as a movie format, it's a great storage medium for computers and games on the PS3. The DVD drive in the XBOX seems like it will be a limitation in the future. I'm sure MS knows more about this than we do and is working to come up with a solution.

The Xbox 360 will be screwed when Bluray is the standard and when game developers develop from the PS3 down, which they will in the next 2 years. Its all a matter of time.
I can guarantee they are planning for the future. I figure they are waiting to get a HD DVD drive with the price and specs they want, or they are waiting to see which HD format wins. Then, they will include a drive of that format for the XBOX 720 or whatever they call it. If Blu Ray wins and HD DVD dies, then maybe the XBOX comes with a BD drive in it. If HD DVD wins, maybe the new XBOX doesn't need a standalone HD DVD drive anymore.

Point is, we will wait and see. But, it is interesting to talk about the possibilities. The future should be exciting either way. The technology is moving forward fast enough that we should have some even better gaming and movies in the near future.

Sorry, but this is a highly uninformed statement. Two things:

1) The Oblivion disc came in at only 6GB of the DVD-9 limit.


The reality is a DVD-9 gets you about 6 to 6.5 gigs of storage because there is a set amount that is reserved. I can't remember the exact number, but you're never getting the full 8.5 gigs to work with.

The reality is a DVD-9 gets you about 6 to 6.5 gigs of storage because there is a set amount that is reserved. I can't remember the exact number, but you're never getting the full 8.5 gigs to work with.The exact number is closer to 7 gigs (out of roughly 8.5). Both my points still stand.

The exact number is closer to 7 gigs (out of roughly 8.5). Both my points still stand.
Really!?! Man, i could really use that to show some people up.

Do you have a link to some technical website or something for that? Because i'd never get away with linking to some random guy on a forum

The exact number is closer to 7 gigs (out of roughly 8.5). Both my points still stand.

The point doesn't totally stand in the overall meaning of things. It's one thing to say it takes up 6 gigs and you have 2.5 gigs to work with still because then that's only about 75% of the capacity of the DVD. But even with 7 gigs, you're much closer to reaching that cap. You really have to be foolish to think that developers can't won't need more space. Sure they can do what it takes to cram it within the limitations of DVD-9, but not need it? That's like saying 512 megs of RAM is enough space....

The point doesn't totally stand in the overall meaning of things. I wasn't trying to make a point in the overall meaning of things. I was replying to a bit of nonsense that claimed Oblivion for the 360 suffered because of a lack of space for textures. It didn't.

It's one thing to say it takes up 6 gigs and you have 2.5 gigs to work with still because then that's only about 75% of the capacity of the DVD. But even with 7 gigs, you're much closer to reaching that cap.Closer, but still not at a point where it couldn't hold a significant chunk of additional data.

You really have to be foolish to think that developers can't won't need more space.Well, it's a good thing I never tried to claim that.

Do you have a link to some technical website or something for that? Because i'd never get away with linking to some random guy on a forum

http://www.gamersreports.com/index.php?sid=3138

-In a double-layer DVD for Xbox 360, 7GB is usable by a game. The transfer rate of the DVD drive is 15MB/sec max, 10-12MB/sec average. The seek time is 115ms, switching layers takes 75ms. Loading 512MB data takes 34 seconds.

Sorry, but this is a highly uninformed statement. Two things:

1) The Oblivion disc came in at only 6GB of the DVD-9 limit.

2) The entirety of my 3D texture collection -- which I've been amassing since the mid to late '90s -- would fit on a single DVD. We're talking 27,253 files in 1,096 folders at a size of 5,421,379,584 bytes (5.04 GB). Most of these files are at 640x480 or higher, and many are uncompressed .TGA sequences.I've got about four times that, including more than a gig and a half of dirt maps.

He's an interview with Mark Rein, the VP of Epic gams. It may be old, but it's very relevent.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/news/news_story.php?id=125925

To quote Mark, "Unreal Tournament was 6GB compressed. Next Generation games are going to be 20GB plus, and how we're going to fit them on DVD9's I don't know, they'll probably be a few of them. On the PS3, we're going to be using the majority of the space on those Blu-ray disks. "

games will take up more space, that's a given. Games used to fit on a floppy disk. Now we're pushing the limits of dvd. I fully expect most of the space on blu-rays to be utilized in the next few years.

New compression techniques will only get you so far. Space will be a limitation. Other things like audio may not be too good to compress unless you can do so losslessly.

But more storage doesn't neccessarily make the game better in PQ, it has more or less to do with RAM limitations than storage limitations that determine how a game looks.

then again i mentioned another game...Mass Effect, a beautifull game that looks to be as huge as oblivion yet is only on a DVD9 disc.

More i less i think blu-ray in the PS3 was put in to push the blu-ray movie format more than anything,not neccessarily gaming.


I guess my original point was lost on you..
Who do you think is in more of a position to know if Blu Ray storage is an advantage? Yourself, or someone with years of game development experience?

Judging by your comments, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you likely have no experience with game development. The fact that you continue to argue your point after being presented with information from a developer with intimate knowledge on the subject just baffles me. You are not thinking rationally.

It's also a bit ironic that this thread contains some of the very negativity that this developer was addressing in his article. You really have to question the motivation of some of the posters here.

As for the Blu Ray storage issue, this really has been beaten to death previously. There are threads about it in this very same forum. Developers agree that not only is the extra space nice to have, it's necessary.

If you ask any developer out there, they will say DVD-9 is sufficient this gen, the only ones that disagree are the japanese DEV's with their HD CGI cinema's.

Talked to many developers lately?

Let me respond with more quotes:

http://www.ps3land.com/article-485.php
7. Developing for the Sony Playstation 3 and its next gen
hardware, how is it? Further more, are you happy with having much larger
disc storage in
Blu-Ray...allowing for more capacity for game content?

Jens Andersson, Lead Designer: It's a difficult question to answer for
a lot of
reasons (and not only for the political ones). The PlayStation 3 is
powerful but
you need to write some very complex code to take advantage of that.
Luckily, with
having our own engine we've been able to make some technology choices
to go in that direction, so we are starting to take advantage of that
now. Personally, I think
Blu-Ray is going to be the thing that will make most difference. Since
the start of
the development we've been discussing whether or not we will fit the
game onto one
DVD, and that is not counting all the bonus materials we want to cram
onto the disc.

http://forum.teamxbox.com/showthread.php?t=446554
"The 360 is a fantastic machine. I really really like it. The
only thing, you know, that is going to cause trouble is the amount of
storage space available on a DVD... thats really a problem."

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/aei/2006/07/nvidia_ceo_an_e.html
I'm excited that they made Blu-ray high-definition
storage as a standard part of the PlayStation 3 platform. The first
PlayStation had a CD-ROM drive. The PlayStation 2 had DVD. It makes no
sense for the PlayStation 3 to use DVDs. To postpone it by a few months
so they could include Blu-Ray was a master stroke. When that comes out,
it's going to look so much more advanced than last-generation game
consoles. I think that was a wonderful call on their part.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/wrestlekingdom/news.html?sid=6132218


From Software producer Masanori Takeuchi, who's been working on Enchant Arm, a role-playing game slated to be an Xbox 360 launch title, said developers will also be running into issues of storage space in the next generation. While the Xbox 360 is a next-generation console, Microsoft decided to equip it with a normal DVD reader rather than give it HD-DVD or Blu-ray reading capabilities.

"The volume of data in Enchant Arms won't fit into a single DVD. It's an RPG, so we're thinking it would be inevitable that we release it on two discs," says Takeuchi. "But to be honest, that's even looking grim."

These are but a few examples of what developers are saying about the storage issue. There are more out there. Do some research.

Now, I really have to question your motivation for posting here.
Judging by your posting history, I think I've figured it out, I just wanted to ask you a question though.

Are you getting a piece of Microsoft's $3.2 billion viral marketing budget, or are you being this ignorant for free?

kind of an old article, but even Mark Rein, VP of Epic games agrees that Blu-Ray will be needed.

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=125925

Unreal Tournament was 6GB compressed. Next Generation games are going to be 20GB plus, and how we're going to fit them on DVD9's I don't know, they'll probably be a few of them. On the PS3, we're going to be using the majority of the space on those Blu-ray disks.

Full Story (http://us.i1.yimg.com/videogames.yahoo.com/ongoingfeature?eid=510646&page=0)

Xbox 360 promoted to Elite

A new $479 black, HDMI-enabled, 120GB version of Microsoft's latest console will arrive on April 29; $179 120GB HDD add-on to be sold separately; Sony unimpressed.

...The fact the Elite is only $20 less than the 20GB PlayStation 3 and does not have next-generation video format playback did not go unnoticed by Sony. "We think every PlayStation 3 owner should have an 'elite' experience, which is why we include an internal hard drive and HDMI output in every PS3 we sell, along with the 50 GB of storage capacity on a high definition Blu-ray disc," said Peter Dille, Sony Computer Entertainment's senior vice president of marketing. Sony also issued a series of talking points asserting that the release of the 360 Elite "further validates the PS3 business model, which [Microsoft] criticized at launch."

Anyway, the only way for Microsoft to complete with the PS3 in the future is to release the XBox 720 w/BD hardware platform, piss-off their loyal XBox360 customerss, and hope to still get a big enough piece of the home entertainment/video game market over the next 5-7 years. Except for the cost, I really feel that Sony is on-track with developing the PS3, while preserving their PS2 markets. In any case, competition in the gaming industry will drive innovation, bring us additional choices and, hopefully, lead to even better gaming experiences.

These threads are ridiculous. Just support whatever system you want, the more the merrier.

Kyser