PlayStation 4 - Page 21

It sounds like games may avoid that entirely. Streamed straight to your memory via the dedicated chips (download and compression).

Would this be faster? Sounds a bit more complex.

Back to PS4 specs, about the blu-ray drive:

1- Can the PS4 blu-ray drive read triple(100GBs) and quad (it's a shame this is only 128 GBs instead of 200 lol)layers? I know the PS3 can read dual layers (most BD movies use it these days and even some games like MGS4), but not really sure if even the PS3 is able to read triple or quad BD too.

2- PS3 blu-ray drive read speed was x2 and the PS4 is x6, so this is quite an upgrade from 72 Mbps (9MB/s) to 216 Mbps (27MB/s), I remember people bringing up every once in a while about how the 360 x12 DVD was faster than the PS3 BD x2 , but what I'd like to know is how much of a difference does this make in real world gaming? So in which areas we will be looking at improvements with this upgrade?

I know the high data rate will probably help running media with very high data rate requirements, e.g 4K video and PCM audio, but how will this affect gaming, e.g will this upgrade help the console to require less amount of caching on the HDD, be able to put out more data on the screen at the same time ?..etc

Pretty confused about this, so any info would be great.

The first part hasn't been confirmed or denied AFAIK, but id be surprised if it couldn't read at least 100GB discs.

As far as the disc speed goes - its a bump, but its still very slow. The data on a bluray is denser than DVD and at 6x, the sustained sequential data rate will be decent, but the 12X DVD still probably has a better seek time, and optical drive seek times are still like an order of magnitude slower than HDDs. Sequential transfer rates for a HDD could easily reach 100mb/sec+. Im amazed they ever got games working so well purely off the disc the current gen, but the party is over, both systems will have HDDs and will be designed with this in mind. The disc speed may have increased 3x, but the amount of memory has increased 16x. It just can't keep up. It will be more reliant on the HDD, not less - games will have to partially install before you can play them, and once they reach the minimum playable point, they'll continue to install in the background. They might opt to leave some assets that are easily streamed in real time like movies or music out of the install. Managed well this should be completely invisible to the user....but we'll see.

I gave it some thought and ideally, this is the way it will work:

Lets assume each retail game averages to 50GB, and the stock drive is 500GB. Games can be in one of three states, not installed (red), playable (yellow), or fully installed (green).

As soon as you begin the download or pop the disc in, an icon for the game pops on your dashboard (think like iOS). No need to press anything, putting the disc in is enough confirmation you want to play it - It'll then start installing automatically, the progress bar will be red. When it reaches a point where its initially playable, the bar turns yellow. In an SP game, basically the tutorial/first level, maybe even an intro movie long enough to ensure enough time to install the first level. MP games where you can dump into any map from the start might take longer. Either way, nothing will stop the install/download in the background, even turning the PS4 off. 10-20 mins may be required for a full install, but they can probably get the minimal install going in less than 3-5 mins for smaller games. Assuming they go with activation codes, once you're fully installed, you won't need the disc as long as it remains fully installed. I think its unlikely the game will ever read directly from the disc - games will be designed from the ground up to run purely from the HDD, the disc/download is just for installing. This isn't a huge leap - most PC games require full installs and never touch the disc. Blizzard games in particular are already using the red/yellow/green model.

If each game is 50GB, 500GB isn't going to hold a lot of games. But instead of forcing people to manage their space, once it reached 10% free disc space or so, they could start automatically dropping the least played games down to their minimal install, without any user intervention. Should you ever launch the game again, it'll either begin to redownload in the background, or prompt you for the disc, but you should be able to play immediately. I'm sure you'll be able to manage it - delete stuff, mark stuff to always stay installed etc....but you probably won't ever need to.

Patching and updates should happen in the background while the system is off (this is nothing new). Ideally the game would check for the latest patches during the install process or in the middle of the night. You should never, ever have to stare at an update bar if they do this right.

When it comes to digital games, you should also be able to preorder and preload the full game - once its officially out, you're ready to go. The idea of downloading games and demos in the background you might like is also pretty neat - and it shouldn't rape your connection or HDD too hard if all it downloads is the partial install.
Edited by bd2003 - 3/21/13 at 5:37am

A 100GB (3-4 layer) or above bluray disc requires a different type of player than the 50GB (1-2 layer) disc. If the PS4 is going to fully support 4K/UHD playback then it must be capable of playing the 100GB and above discs. The real problem here is cost- the 4 layer BD drive is only used for commercial applications so the parts are still expensive, like when BD was a new tech. I'm hopeful that Sony can include a 4 layer drive but it might prove too expensive. Maybe the rumor of no CD playback means PS4 is getting a 4 layer drive? As for the read speed, Sony has been making an 8x BD standalone drive for years, so I would hope for that if they go with a 2 layer drive.

If the BD drive is just being using to dump the data onto the HDD, they can def increase the speed in later revisions to reduce install times without breaking compatibility. But I'm pretty sure 6x is the locked in spec for the launch.

I'm curious, can a dual layer BD drive read 2 layers from a 4 layer disc? Or are they completely incompatible? If they are compatible, they can eventually shift to shipping games on 100GB discs in later revisions, using the extra 50GB for higher quality assets/video or to mitigate the need for disc swaps. With just 50GB Id worry we'd start to see multiple disc titles towards the end of the lifecycle, but I suppose if you can just install the second disc in the background long before you need it, it wouldn't be so bad.

Thanks for the input both of you, I doubt we'll be able to fully install our games on the PS4, probably a large portion of it but not entirely, unless it's optional of course. I really hope the console will be able to run triple/quad layers, I absolutely hate multiple disc games and wouldn't want developers to face any bottlenecks when it comes to capacity, I have a feeling there were barely any full motion videos included in FFXIII-2 just so the game could fit on a stupid single DVD for the 360 (pretty sure I read those took a huge amount of space in FFXIII).

As for the HDD, they didn't mention the size yet IIRC, any chance you guys think they'll use 1 TB? Most are expecting 500GB, but the $299 PS3 AC3 bundle already has that, I have a good feeling they'll use 750GB or 1TB, it just makes a lot more sense considering the size of 4K downloadable videos and digital game downloads.

For some reason I could have swore they mentioned 500gb specifically, but I guess not. Either way its got to be the baseline, like you said, they're already shipping 500GB PS3s. Probably a good chance there's more than one model, a 1TB drive is pretty pedestrian nowadays.

I wouldn't be surprised to see a 1 TB drive.

I have a 1TB drive on my PC and it's mostly all games - a lot of games. Right now I have about 350gigs free. So it's a lot of space. I don't think we will see 50GB-100GB games right away.

I think bd2003 is right. They will go with phased stealth installs. Some games already do the stealth install thing - I think GT5 and Oblivion are two examples.

Preloading is also a must. There's really no way to implement a system like this without preloading.

Whatever drive speed they pick for launch will be the speed forever, but we can hope for the best. 6x is probably it, 8x for my dreams

The 2 and 4 layer discs are apples and oranges as far as drives go. The hardware to read a 4 layer BD is different, so they have to ship the PS4 with the correct drive if they want to use 4 layer discs. The 2 layer drive will only read 25 or 50GB BD discs, period. The question is, can a 4 layer drive read a 1-2 layer disc? If it can, then fingers crossed this is the type that the PS4 gets. It will come down to cost and how serious Sony is about 4K and future proofing.

I don't like the term future proofing, because, as bd2003 points out, it's kind of impossible here. They can release a 20x drive and it still wouldn't be future proof.

No matter what, the BD drive will be the slowest part, the weakest link. They need to lean on hard drives more.

Yeah, they're def doing some form of it already. The PS3 file system has space dedicated to temporary storage - a lot of games will precache into this temporary area while you play, like uncharted. If you watch the drive light while you play, it almost never stops blinking, there's constant activity. Sometimes games carve out a dedicated chunk of space like GT5, and it even gave you the option to deliberately install ahead of time or not. There's a lot of ways to go about it, but given that they've already mentioned that you'll be able to play games before they're done downloading, and the inability of the BD to keep up....I think the stealth install is going to be basic functionality.

Either way I'm excited about HDD installs.

Ultimately I don't think BD drive speed is going to be a huge issue. With the PS3, at launch, there was a 20GB HDD model - less than the size of a single BD. They could rely on temporary caches and partial installs, but full installs could never be mandatory, and every game had to design around this. (Not to mention cross platform games had to conform to the 360 which could be HDD-less...ugh.). The BD drive had to be relied upon to stream directly from it, in order to maintain compatibility with the older models.

With the PS4, even the minimum realistic drive size of 250GB is bigger than the biggest BD. They can absolutely rely upon having the space for a full install for all games, and design accordingly. Given that all games are going to be available digital, every game needs to have a fully installed option/version anyway.

Given all that, the simplest thing is to just design one version of the game - a fully installed one, that's playable with a partial install. The disc needs to be nothing more than a local cache of the exact same thing you'd download from the PS store, only much faster (6x BD drive is roughly equivalent to a 300mbit Internet connection).

The BD drive then ceases to be the weak link it would be even at 20x. A HDD is still 10x faster at random access, it'd be crazy to constrain their design to accommodate slow BD speeds, when they've got a huge and much faster HDD in every box. Faster BD drives in later models could then provide a faster install, but getting a game to a playable state shouldn't take more than a few minutes even at 6x, since they'll need to keep the minimum playable state pretty tight to accommodate much slower Internet downloads. Once it shifts to the background install, BD speed is basically irrelevant.

It'll be a nice feature to tout for the PS4 slim in 2016 - 20x drive, SSD - super fast full installs and loads, but full compatibility.
Edited by bd2003 - 3/21/13 at 9:40am

IMO. They only put a drive in there for home theatre and blu ray reasons. Otherwise I'd imagine they would have went without one entirely.

Not if they want GameStop, target or Walmart to push and sell the PS4. The all digital future is here if you want it (and Sony wants it too), but they're still beholden to retail if they want wide exposure.

Not everybody have ultra high speed connections especially when you have some games being over 20 gigs and then their are some people with bandwidth caps. It would have been completely crazy for the PS4 to not have a Blu-Ray drive in at least 1 of the units for people who aren't ready yet.

In my little town, our Internet isn't great so Internet only isn't something I would do. That's why the newest rumors about the always on Xbox isn't something I would want. During our springs, the winds get pretty bad and will knock out our Internet for a while, and not being able to play something would piss me off.

Retail is a must, next gen games will be Huge and your average global internet connection will suffer hard to download it. Not to mention that there are many people who still like to have the physical game and manual for their collection, me being one of those lol.

Plus we won't know how Sony will manage discounts if games were digital only which could end up being very bad for us consumers, if they'd be as crazy as Steam sales then awesome, but their current pricing for digital games isn't a good purchase at all, some games that are sold for $40-60 on the PSN store can be had for around $10-30 at times from places like Amazon for example.

A 6x drive transfer speed almost matches the system bandwith we've heard about, so anything faster is redundant anyway now that I think of it.

An optical drive that reads 100GB and above discs is future proofing since 4K/UHD content, like an average length film, will not fit on the current 50GB discs we use now. I guess they could rely on downloading 100GB files, but nobody's internet service is ready for that and probably won't be for many years.

I've got reliable internet but if either console requires always on, no way I will consider it. Look what happened when psn got hacked and was down or the christmas when live was down for a week. You can't play any of the games you bought on the console you purchased? You have a brick sitting there? How about in 10 years if you want to play an old game? You are basically forfeiting all ownership of the content you purchase. You would buy the console for the right to lease games that you can only play under the right circumstances. And look at how Sony pointed a target on their back by removing other OS, going with such a heavy handed drm will certainly do the same.

I consistently hear about the state of the industry and how console gaming won't be around forever. So the plan for a struggling industry is to go full out anti-consumer? Let's not make console gaming more convenient and give our customers what they want, let's screw them all over instead and see how many are dumb enough to stick around.

The funny part is, consoles that got hacked and pirated to hell were the most successful for Sony lol (PS1, PS2 and PSP).

PSP was a successful hardware seller, but software sales never was as big as the hardware base would support. Wonder why...

What system bandwidth spec are you referring to? I can't think of any part of the I/O subsystem that's so constricted. SATA 6gbps can handle 20 times the bandwidth of a 6x BD drive. USB 3 is 5gbps, almost as fast.
Edited by bd2003 - 3/21/13 at 11:08am

Wouldn't it be cool if this hyper cloud / downloading / uploading was done by making the PS4 part of a peer-to-peer network like Napster.

If you are about to download COD5, guess what, you'll be getting half from the guy next door and the other from the guy down the street.

I'd prefer it if my PS4 didnt hijack my upstream bandwidth and slow my whole house down so Sony can cheap out on bandwidth.

Entitled Gamers, Corrupt Press, and Greedy Publishers. A great article over at gamesindustry.biz. It touches on what I ranted about earlier.

A few quotes:

Yeah. I didn't think of that. But then again I can't imagine why they'd need all those stores if they had the ability to push them out directly to the customers. Seems selling the console itself would be the only factor. But I don't see why that'd be to hard.