[Evangelo2]

Do you guys think that hard drive installs can solve possible storage problems for games requiring more than a DVD can store? Users can now install multiple DVDs tot he hard drive and not have to swap disc in theory?


Not sure how important this is since games don't currently need that much space but I can imagine an Elder Scrolls or Fallout type game with a MUCH bigger area and details/textures

-Evangelo2

 

[PvtChurch]

In theory yes, in practice no. Considering the still vast number of people who have Arcade units with no hard drive and the majority of us poor schmucks that only have 20gb drives it's just not feasible.


Storage space isn't the restricting factor anyway, Fallout's textures look amazing and the only thing that's gonna make em look better is more powerful hardware. As for bigger game spaces, how big do you need the game space to be? I think there's a misconception in the game industry that bigger=better. Fallout and Oblivion are friggin huge games packed to the brim with a ridiculous amount of content. Storage isn't stopping that world from getting bigger, practicality is.

 

[fjtorres]



Quote:
Originally Posted by PvtChurch /forum/post/15498098


Fallout and Oblivion are friggin huge games packed to the brim with a ridiculous amount of content. Storage isn't stopping that world from getting bigger, practicality is.

And both games are well away from filling a single dvd.

Three points to consider in the debate on game storage:


1- It *costs* money to create the content that goes onto the disk. Digital designers and artists don't come cheap. One way the Bethesda games fill those massive worlds of theirs is by reusing environmental components in more or less reasonable fashion.


2- There is content and there is content; look at most of the current-gen plus-sized games and what do you find? Gusssied-up old school game design with on-rails player environments that often are close to 2.5d than real 3d, speech balloons instead of spoken dialogue, and lots and lots of pre-rendered content, often of mixed quality. Some of that bulky pre-rendered cgi is actually inferior to what the current gen HD consoles can produce on the fly. In other words, it is up to developers to properly use the tools available to them and just because they *choose* not to doesn't mean there is anything wrong with the hardware.


3- Content compression costs cpu power; the 360 comes with hard-wired functions to reduce content size but not all developers use them. As above, it is up to developers to keep up with the changing hardware capabilities and gamers' tastes and expectations.


Anybody see any value in building a listing of the storage size of the top current-gen games? To see which, if any, actually crowd the 9gb limit. (If one isn't to be found elsewhere round these parts...)


So far, all the games I am aware that require multiple DVDs are CGI-heavy jrpgs...

 

[RTRic]



Quote:
Originally Posted by PvtChurch /forum/post/15498098


In theory yes, in practice no. Considering the still vast number of people who have Arcade units with no hard drive and the majority of us poor schmucks that only have 20gb drives it's just not feasible.


Storage space isn't the restricting factor anyway, Fallout's textures look amazing and the only thing that's gonna make em look better is more powerful hardware. As for bigger game spaces, how big do you need the game space to be? I think there's a misconception in the game industry that bigger=better. Fallout and Oblivion are friggin huge games packed to the brim with a ridiculous amount of content. Storage isn't stopping that world from getting bigger, practicality is.

That just means that those without a hard drive can't take advantage of it and would have to switch the disks. The poor shmucks with the 20gb drives will have to be more choosy about what they put on the hard drive. I like the idea of playing off the hard drive. Sony already has full game downloads. I think MS should do it as well.

 

[PvtChurch]



Quote:
Originally Posted by RTRic /forum/post/15502105


That just means that those without a hard drive can't take advantage of it and would have to switch the disks. The poor shmucks with the 20gb drives will have to be more choosy about what they put on the hard drive. I like the idea of playing off the hard drive. Sony already has full game downloads. I think MS should do it as well.

I think what he's proposing is making games bigger in scope so the data spans multiple discs, the workaround being you'd install all discs but one and then play off the last disc. Much like many PC games do. For games like Fallout the disc swapping method would not work, can you imagine having to insert a new disc everytime you venture into DC?

 

[Asanab76]

 http://www.pcworld.com/article/15097...the_cheap.html

 

[Daekwan]

Three things:


1) I absolutely agree the whole bigger is better issue is exxagerated when it comes to a games size. Simply because PC games seem to be doing just fine on DVD media. Just because a certian medium gives you more storage ability.. does that mean developers will spend the extra time to fill it?? Time = money in every business. And if these games are racking up million dollar budgets to just fill a DVD with a 10 hour single player campaign.. imagine how much MORE the budget is for putting out a game that is 20, 30, 50 gigabyte with a 20, 30, or 50 hour single player campaign. So far most of the additional space we have seen BR used for, is for additional/lossless audio and cutscenes.


2. MS would be silly to NOT allow you install a whole multi-disk game to your harddrive. And let you use just Disc 1 as verification you actually do own the game. It makes no sense to require someone to continue switching disks, if they have already verified they own the game. To own the multi disk game, you had to have purchased Disc1.. So if you have Disc1, you also have the others. As someone else said, thats the way its already done on PC. And MS definitely has the biggest PC background of any console manufacter.


3. HDD storage will continue to get bigger and cheaper. So why wouldnt you want people to use it. The more they use it, the more they will WANT to use more it. When the 360 was first introduced in '05:


20gigs was all you could get and it cost a whopping $99.

18 months later. You had 120gigs available for $179.

Today you can 20gigs for $29, 60gigs for $99 and 120gigs for $149. Definitely not industry equal prices, but the HDD's are indeed getting BIGGER and CHEAPER.


I imagine within in a year (probably holiday season). We will again see the HDD's size and price change. 20gigs will be soldout, 60gigs will be $59, 120gigs will be $99 and maybe something like 320 gigs will be $179.


MS isnt stupid. They make great profits off the sales of accessories. But the HDD in particular is something that becomes more and more important each day. If you WANT people to purchase MORE off marketplace, then you have to keep making the HDD's bigger and cheaper.

 

[PvtChurch]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan /forum/post/15508267


Three things:



2. MS would be silly to NOT allow you install a whole multi-disk game to your harddrive. And let you use just Disc 1 as verification you actually do own the game. It makes no sense to require someone to continue switching disks, if they have already verified they own the game. To own the multi disk game, you had to have purchased Disc1.. So if you have Disc1, you also have the others. As someone else said, thats the way its already done on PC. And MS definitely has the biggest PC background of any console manufacter.

No doubt, but again I think the OP was proposing making bigger multi-disc games that would require you to install one or more discs to the harddrive. Since he cited Oblivion and Fallout as examples I'm assuming he's thinking along the lines of making games like those that are bigger with more stuff and then making up for the fact that there are multiple discs by installing them to the HDD. MS is never going to let that happen with the number of people out there with 360s who can't do that. It's one thing to have a linear game that spans several discs (ala Lost Odyssey) and have the option to either do a full install up front or swap discs as you go; that would be great and incredibly convenient. But developers can't say "O we have all this stuff to cram into our big open world game, let's put it on multiple discs and require an install" because not everyone can do that and it's just not feasible to expect someone to swap discs in a game like Fallout or Oblivion. As I stated earlier can you imagine if Fallout was on 2 or 3 discs and you didn't have the harddrive space to install it so you had to swap discs everytime you entered a different part of the wasteland?

 

[number1laing]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan /forum/post/0


I absolutely agree the whole bigger is better issue is exxagerated when it comes to a games size.

This generation is funnily enough the first I have ever heard gamers say this. Before it was always about giving developers the most amount of space to work with within reason. But once it became Xbox's not even full dual layer discs vs. Blu-Ray, oh wait not even full dual layer discs are good enough....

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan /forum/post/0


Simply because PC games seem to be doing just fine on DVD media

Well, PC games are obviously working under a different set of rules. 360 games can't fill up the fill dual layer DVD, they max out at less than 7 gigs. For another, PC games are compressed to fit on the disc. The hard drive installs are often over 10 gigs nowadays.

Quote:
Originally Posted by fjtorres /forum/post/0


Anybody see any value in building a listing of the storage size of the top current-gen games? To see which, if any, actually crowd the 9gb limit. (If one isn't to be found elsewhere round these parts...)

None of them do because the 360 discs are smaller. As it is, games have been coming out for around 2 years which "crowd" that limit.

 

[Daekwan]

Proof is in the pudding. Where is the amazing leap in graphics, gameplay or gamelength from using other forms of storage that offer more space that DVD?? The PS3 has it share of great looking titles.. but are they really that much better whats available on the DVD. After all BR is offering 5x the storage. (Oh im sorry, using ur math correction.. its only 7 gigs available on a 360's DVD). So BR is offering 7x the storage.. then why dont the games look 7x better? Hell why dont the games look even twice as better.. if storage is SUCH an issue right now.


Look.. I'm not a fool.. only an idiot would argue more space would NEVER be necessary. I understand the benefits of a HDD or BR for additional storage. But its pretty easy to take a look around and see the space DVD offers is doing the job just fine compared to competitors.


I am all for using the HDD on the 360. Its there. I paid for the HDD space. Twice as a matter of fact. Because I own both a 360 Elite with 120gigs and a 80 gig PS3. If I didnt want the benefits of using a HDD.. I would have gotten a Arcade 360 & 20 gig PS3. So either start giving me the benefits of what I paid for. Or stop playing up its proposed advantages.


Alot of things/ideas look great on paper. But from what I've seen so far.. it seems that same little DVD that people like you, see as somehow hendering games.. is doing just fine producing games that look, play and very much equal to everything else on the market. To include the PC and PS3.

 

[Evangelo2]

Hey Guys,

Space can be used for other things besides games as well. Maybe cinematics rendered in 1080p (I would say lossless audio possibly but I dont think the XBOx supports this even over HDMI). I know some japanese RPGs (not that I personally play them) have a lot of cinematography cut scenes and these can take up a lot of space. It really just elliminates one of the advantages that the PS3 had initially which was more disc storage.

-Evangelo2

 

[WiseGuy2k7]

Using a HDD for fable 2 has solved my freezing issues. Though i did have to sacrifice almost all my space to do it..only got 20gb

oh well worth not having a fable 2 freeze the whole unit

 

[number1laing]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan /forum/post/0


So BR is offering 7x the storage.. then why dont the games look 7x better?

The vast majority of games are written to fit on the 360's DVD. So if I am writing a game for both platforms, I am not going to make one version to fit on DVD and one to fit on Blu-Ray with tons of awesome stuff. Hell even if I was writing a game for 360 and PC I'd probably just throw in some high res textures instead of make a bigger game for the PC fans. Most PS3 exclusives take much more space than the DVD allows, FWIW.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Daekwan /forum/post/0


Alot of things/ideas look great on paper. But from what I've seen so far.. it seems that same little DVD that people like you, see as somehow hendering games.. is doing just fine producing games that look, play and very much equal to everything else on the market. To include the PC and PS3.

Of course devs get it to fit, because millions of dollars are at stake. But what are we missing from our games? I dunno. Kind of hard to prove whats not there outside of what people have told us voluntarily (and a few devs have mentioned stuff). But like, lets say you are making a big dinner and you have a budget of $100. You will buy $100 worth of food. If given $150 you could make a few more things. But the guests would never know that what they were missing. Of course, you could argue that you couldn't use that extra $50 anyway. Well maybe but you might really want to use $10 or $20 of it, at least its there. Jumping back to the original point, just because BD is 50 gigs doesnt mean you have to fill it all.


I really honestly don't care too much about this overall. I just think its lame how Xbox fans seem to just think that the march of file sizes, which has been constant from day one in computing, halted in November 2005 because a DVD is now good enough. Of course its not. Game sizes have always grown greatly between launch and the last game released on the platform. I remember SNES, early games like Super Mario World were 4 megs, later games like Yoshi's Island and Chrono Trigger were 32. On N64, I think the latest games were like 8 times the size of the launch titles. So this just happens as a platform develops. Except on Xbox, because developers started hitting the limit the first year. Of course they are leaving stuff out.

 

[PvtChurch]



Quote:
Originally Posted by number1laing /forum/post/15510205


This generation is funnily enough the first I have ever heard gamers say this. Before it was always about giving developers the most amount of space to work with within reason. But once it became Xbox's not even full dual layer discs vs. Blu-Ray, oh wait not even full dual layer discs are good enough....

I'd just like to point out that when I said bigger does equal better I was talking about the games themselves, not storage space. Obviously more storage space is always more desirable and it's kind of foolish to say bigger isn't better. I was talking about games, there seems to be this belief that game worlds need to keep getting bigger and bigger and for some reason game A is going to be better than game B because it's XX% larger. It's kind of like the idea that more players in a multiplayer match makes it more fun when in fact that's not the case, sometimes bigger just equals too much.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Evangelo2 /forum/post/15510489


Hey Guys,

Space can be used for other things besides games as well. Maybe cinematics rendered in 1080p (I would say lossless audio possibly but I dont think the XBOx supports this even over HDMI). I know some japanese RPGs (not that I personally play them) have a lot of cinematography cut scenes and these can take up a lot of space. It really just elliminates one of the advantages that the PS3 had initially which was more disc storage.

-Evangelo2

In that case then ya multiple discs with an install option is a great idea. That way devs can add more "stuff", people with harddrives can install every disc up front and play the whole game off one disc, and people without harddrives or who don't have enough space can still play the game just swapping discs as the game progresses. It really only works with linear games like JRPGs and shooters though. Case in point I would love it if I could install all of Lost Odyssey onto the harddrive and then play the whole game off the HDD never switching discs.

 

[fjtorres]



Quote:
Originally Posted by number1laing /forum/post/15511207


Most PS3 exclusives take much more space than the DVD allows, FWIW.

You familiar with the concept of bottlenecks?

The idea that a mismatch between capabilities of one subsystem keeps a different subsystem/capability from being used to its full potential?


Well, the 360 and the other HD console both have different bottlenecks.

It is well documented that the other buys are limited in how *fast* they can get data off their optical media and use different strategies to deal with the issue; some replicate the same data in different parts of the disk, trading off game size for data access speed. Others simply *mandate* total or partial game installs.


This isn't the proper forum to discuss the bottlenecks/limitations of the other console but I would suggest that the reason there is no significant difference between the two platforms is not that we, the gamers, are being sold lowest-common-denominator games but rather that the bottlenecks of either system cancel out the advantages and the two boxes are in fact interchangeable in overall performance.


I would offer up the idea that the current games are the way they are not because the hardware dictates it hut bevause the developers are limited by time and cost constraints.


Finally, let us remember MS polled developers to find out how much space they expected to need and which traits they most valued in a console, *before* finalizing the 360 spec-sheet. As a result, the 360 was optimized for average current-gen throughput, not peak performance, unlike the other system. Between the EDRAM video cache, the 12x DVD speed, hardware-assisted data decompression, and dedicated hardware scaler for arbitrary video scaling, the 360 is designed to move data *fast*, not just in bulk. Think of it as the difference between moving cargo via train versus via barge. The barge carries bigger loads but it is slower and it is more limited in where it can take that data.


If you want to move a lot of low-value large bulk cargo barges are great, but if speed is important, rail or truck is always much better. Which is why roadfill is moved by barge and drugs and electronics move by rail or even air.


Bottom line is there is no such thing as a silver bullet; no single trait that makes all that much difference.