Resistance: Fall of Man (PS3 Launch Title) Takes Up 22GB

While the MGS games have a lot of cutscenes, they're all from the in-game engine, so they don't take up that much space (compared to CGI cutscenes anyway).

What rumors with HDMI and piracy? I haven't seen anything to suggest that the $500 SKU won't play movies in HD resolutions (in 720p/1080i...possibly 1080p as well if you have the right setup). And for whatever reason that happens, I don't see why it wouldn't happen to the 360 and its HD-DVD add-on as well; it would basically be a ~$200 brick. That would be great.

Why would the manufacturers pressure Sony to do anything about this? Especially since BR's success relies heavily on the PS3. I'm not that familiar with the issue of the Xbox not being allowed to play movies in 480p (unless you meant the accessory for the Xbox, in which case, I thought that was because of licensing issues since MS wasn’t in the DVD Forum…Sony doesn’t have that problem).

 

A little update on this matter with minor details on why Resistance takes up 20+GB:
http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac

If my math is correct, then 300MB x 40 "levels" = 12,000MB, or ~12GB just for level data (compressed too)...almost twice the amount available for 360 games. I wonder how noticeable that will be. Maybe just a ton of multiplayer maps...I don't play many FPS games on consoles, so I don't know what the norm is as far as the amount of multiplayer maps (or single player for that matter). I guess for anyone who has played say COD2 (preferably for the 360), how many maps/levels are there in the game, and what are they like?

BTW, they have vehicles in the game, but they aren't available in multiplayer. They said it didn't work out (took the fun out of things), but that is a little disappointing IMO. I love vehicles in these types of games, and I don't even play online, which is probably the best way to use them (2-3 people working together in a tank or whatever). Some are speculating it might be added later, via a microtransaction (yea microtransactions!).

 

So are you anticipating that movie studios will go back on their word, and invoke the ICT flag on most/all movies prior to 2010/2012? That's a possibility, but I don't see it happening (require HDMI and a good portion of HDTV owners will be left out of the market...and that market is already pretty small). If I'm not mistaken, in Japan, it will be illegal to enforce this until 2010 (probably part of the reason why studios decided to wait on using the ICT flag). I assumed you meant that the $500 PS3 might not be able to play HD movies 1-2 years after release, not 6 years later (when the PS4 will be due, or close to it). Considering the amount of pull Sony and MS have with both products, I doubt they'd put out products that would playback HD-movies for only a short amount of time (again, especially since the success of both formats rely heavily on these products).

This has been an issue for a while now (and not only for the PS3), but it seems like it won't be a problem until 5-6 years from now. When that times comes, anyone with a $499 PS3 or 360 HD-DVD add-on will probably also have a Blu-ray/HD-DVD player with HDMI (or could get one cheap).

I suppose piracy could change things, although it would have to be pretty severe and happen quickly. I would think the prices for these products ($600+ for a slow burner, ~$20 for a disc, etc.) and the sizes of the movies (20GB-30GB minimum, up to 50GB in some cases) will keep pirates from doing too much damage early on (plus the anti-piracy stuff, but I'm sure that could be broken eventually). That's assuming pirates actually care about pirating HD-movies (they could just as easily keep on pirating DVD movies, unless they just REALLY care about HD). Of course, if pirates were able to do all that, I'm guessing enabling the ICT flags wouldn't really help much (just another hurdle for them to get over).

BTW, I would like to say that I got my previous comments concerning the $500 PS3's playback of movies in 1080p wrong. IIRC, it cannot play 1080p movies without HDMI. That's part of the new AACS agreement or something IIRC (has nothing to do with the ICT flag). I got that confused with the ability to play games via 1080p w/o HDMI, which is possible. Technically speaking anyway. Chances are that not many people will be able to do so (they must have the correct setups, as I mentioned earlier). 720p/1080i will still be fine for either though.

 

Then why not enforce it on day 1 (which was months ago BTW)? Even when this issue was a lot more complicated, several movie studios said they wouldn't do this until a few years after launch, when piracy would become an issue (like Sony and Universal said in those articles I believe). And we know how anal Sony is about keeping their content from being pirated.

Would they get a 1:1 copy doing that? I recall a story about someone who "cracked" the copyright protection for these formats by just hitting the print screen button repeatedly during the movie, but that didn't get them a 1:1 copy IIRC.

And despite that, still no anti-piracy action from the movie studios.

BR/HD-DVD will probably be it for a while. It is debatable whether we even need them (HD being the only reason basically). Any newer format most likely wouldn't be able to really offer any sort of improvements that would warrant such a move (from a consumer standpoint anyway). The next upgrade would occur when we can get higher than 1080p (assuming it is worth it), but it will take a while to get the tech mature enough to do so (the tech to do 1080p isn't even really mature if you consider how many people can take advantage of it).

Shrinking it down that much would kind of defeat the purpose, wouldn't it? I'm no expert on how this stuff works, but I would think people who pirate DVD movies like this will sacrifice picture/sound quality in order to just get the movie (they probably don't even care if there are some slight downgrades in quality). I would think a 10GB AVI video copy of these movies would look (and sound) like CRAP compared to the "real" versions (especially if the movies are using VC-1 or AVC, which are very efficient). I think it would take a lot of work to get a quality transfer that wouldn't seem that much different to someone comparing the two on a ~40" 1080p screen (with a 5.1/7.1 sound system). It might even take a lot of work to get a version that would outdo the 540p versions of these movies (still a decent bump in quality over DVD resolutions).

It might work out eventually, but how long will that be? Not sure when all this became possible for DVD, but DVD did launch in 1997. If that stuff started becoming a big problem in 2002-2003, that would be about the same length occurring here with BR/HD-DVD (at which point, if it were a problem, they would then enforce the ICT-flags...if it would help).

It just seems like it would be so much easier to just pirate DVD movies (especially since DVD came out without working out some piracy issues that some companies knew about). If these studios are scared that people will be able to watch their movies without paying for them, then they'll just have to deal with it. Even with the best protection, someone could just record the movie via a camcorder (maybe a HD one). If these studios are scared that people will be able to watch their movies in the quality that they were designed to be seen without paying for them, I don't think they'll have to really worry about that for a while.

Right, although AFAIK, only a few TVs accept 1080p via component...actually, depending on how you count a "few," there are few TVs that support 1080p period.

I doubt it. It will probably be $60 like the majority of next-gen titles. Only reason to charge more would be if development cost significantly more than other titles. I guess it could come with an accessory, which could up the cost of the game like some current-gen games (which got as high as $90 or even higher IIRC...Guitar Hero is $70 I believe).

I guess Sony may just want to screw with us and charge more for games on BR, even though BR movie prices have only risen just a little bit (and it makes WAY more since to overcharge for those).

 

If they can't get it close to 1:1, then there isn't much point to making a copy. Again, why go through all that trouble to get a 720p copy (which I think would be difficult to do, despite what you said), when you could just have 540p from the BRD/HD-DVD or 480i/480p via DVDs (upscaled to 720p/1080i/1080p)? In fact, with the MMC stuff going on with both formats, it might even be easier to pirate these movies, although in down-scaled forms.

So basically only PCs would be able to play these movies? I'm assuming DVD players and normal HD-players wouldn't have the power either (or at least, the HD-players wouldn't know how to handle the pirated copy). How many people even watch movies on their PC? Especially those that are best seen on huge screens and with a great sound system.

I don't doubt that this stuff will happen eventually, but I don't see it happening (and working so flawlessly) so soon. The timeline that the movie studios have set seems about right (2010 at earliest). It probably will take another year or 2 before these formats even start hitting the mainstream consumer, and I imagine pirates won't both until these become mainstream products.

Plus, as mentioned earlier, even if pirates had this stuff ready tomorrow, the studios would still have to keep on supporting HD-movies (720p and up) via component in Japan (remember, it would be illegal to do so until around 2010 or so). We're even in the same region code as Japan, so I'm not even sure if the studios could somehow block us in America and somehow not block those in Japan.