Certain “highly anticipated” Xbox 360 title filling four discs worth of space

Thanks for the links. I'm still trying to take in all the info, but I admit that I wasn't all that familiar with Factor 5's previous work in compression techniques (for anything, let alone Nintendo's systems). From what it sounds like, they came up with some great techniques. I always knew they were talented given what they were able to do with the GC, but it is interesting to read what all they came up with. Do you know if they still have a good relationship with Nintendo and will continue to work with them (at least on their handhelds), or did they pretty much leave Nintendo all together? Factor 5 is one of the developers I'd like to learn more about, especially now that you've showed me what all else they do beside just making games.

As for devs having poor habits when it comes to filling up space, we may have to agree to disagree there. In a way, I guess this is kind of like developing for a system that is difficult to develop for. While it is possible to get great results, that often requires a lot of time and money, and sometimes, it just isn't worth it in the eyes of some developers. You might have teams like Kojima Productions/Factor 5 that excel in these situations (they may even like it), but the average developer would prefer more space/easier development (unless that system has a 100+ million userbase). I guess we'll find out more in the next 5-6 years or so.

BTW, I just realized that I had a typo in my post that you quoted; it should have said "When you have some more time," not just "When you have some more." Considering what we're talking about, it sounded like I wanted you to give some more examples other than Factor 5, which wasn't my intention since you already said you were pretty busy. Once you mentioned Factor 5 as an example, I didn't really care so much about other middleware solutions; I was just trying to politely ask for some more info on them. Sorry for any misunderstanding.

True. After reading those articles, it would be interesting to see what they're able to do on next-gen consoles, or even the handheld formats if they're still willing to do so.

That's true, although I wonder how many people (including developers) will see the Revolution as a true "next-gen" console for "next-gen" games. While it is true that MS and Nintendo (probably) are going with DVD and Sony is the only one going with BR, it might be better to look at it as MS going with DVD and Sony going with BR (two systems going for the "HD-era" and one going for something else). In that case, only one system for each format, and one of them is from a company that sold 200+ million consoles in the last ~10 years.

I don't know if games on BR will necessarily require higher budgets (which would require higher prices). For example, let's say a development team has created roughly 15-20GB of uncompressed content for their game. They could then just release it on a BR disc, maybe even cut down on load times by putting in some redundant data whenever possible; however, without BR, they may have to spend an extra few months trying to compress that into 1-2 DVDs, depending on the type of game. In fact, the design of the game in some aspects might change in order to come up with a solution. Basically the same content budget either way, but going to DVD could lead to an increase in the development time and budget.

However, you bring up a good point on how 3rd parties will treat this situation. I would still like to know whether it is just Japanese-style RPG's that are creating all these reports, or if perhaps a game like Madden 2006 came close to using the full 7GB available. Although in either case, I still don’t know how 3rd parties will treat this. While I imagine they'll go with DVD for both as long as their games don't need BR at all (barely any compression used or something like that), some decisions might have to be made if their games start taking up 10-20GB of space, compressed or uncompressed. Will they just go with DVD(s), or will the PS3 version use BR? If it does, will they bother taking advantage of the space (less compression, quicker load times due to redundant data, more processing power available, etc.)? Again, I have no idea.

As for whether BR will possibly allow for some exclusives, I think that's a strong possibility. It is mostly a rumor at this point, but supposedly BR had an impact in deciding what console the next GTA will be on, although I'm sure money may have also impacted the decision. With several developers trying to copy this design of huge, immersive worlds with little (if any) load times, BR might be the only option they have.

 

Yeah, that's sounds about right. I thought maybe Factor 5 ditched Nintendo and decided to go elsewhere, but after reading some reports regarding their decision to offer exclusive support for the PS3, it sounds like they're also very excited about the future of Nintendo as well. Guess MS is the only one missing out on the Factor 5 love.

I know very little about the situation between Silicon Knights and Nintendo, unfortunately. I remember hearing some things about it, but I never really followed it all that closely. And considering that some of the things that I read were probably just rumors that weren't true, I probably don't have a great understanding of the situation. I did a small search regarding their relationship, and it sounds a bit like the Factor 5 situation as well. Other than that, all I know is that SK is making Too Human for the 360, and the short trailer they showed a while back was awesome.

I really need to work on my knowledge for some of these developers.

True, which is why I don't think MS will push for a HD-DVD add-on, at least for games (or they'd be stupid to do so). It was either start with a next-gen optical format or start with DVD; they've made their decision and will be stuck with it 5-6 years from now.

I'm not sure I follow you about the problem with developing for either multi-disc games or developing with BR in mind. Several developers have already stated that next-gen games will require more than the 7GB offered by the Xbox 360's dual layer DVDs. So there appears to be a problem there. Spending a couple extra months trying to compress that down to 1-2 DVD's doesn't help, especially if they game's design does not take kindly to disc-swapping. It just adds more workload that a team must deal with, something they wouldn't have to deal with if they could release their games on a format that supports up to ~50GB of space. In this situation, the game being developed may be more costly if it were developed for the 360 instead of the PS3.

I agree that disc-swapping is nothing more than a minor inconvenience that isn't too much of a big deal, although I wished that it was an inconvenience that would go away as the industry matured. However, as I've said before, there's more to this issue than just disc-swapping. Most of that part lies on the developer side of things, but there are still additional issues, IMO.

I must have misunderstood your use of the term "exclusives." By that, I thought you meant would some developers exclusively develop certain games for the PS3 since it supports BR, not would some developers add some extra content to BR games. As you said, I agree that any extra content in games isn't really that big of deal. The other meaning of "exclusives" has a different impact though.

Finally, thanks for the extra info regarding RE4. I definitely appreciate any type of info like that, and I'll see if I can find that issue sometime.

 

Actually, if I had to guess, I imagine more console developers would be complaining about the lack of space rather than PC developers. So far, I think most of the developers that have either said something good about BR or have mentioned having problems with Xbox 360 DVDs have been console developers (Rockstar, Insomniac, EA and Viviendi...sort of, probably some other non-PC developers). Bethesda, a typical PC developer that is making a game for consoles, seems to be able to fit their massive game on one DVD, half of which is dedicated just for voices. Although since the game is "done" but has been delayed, maybe they had problems doing so and will have to spend some time compressing the game data (just speculation on my part; probably just fixing some bugs or something). I don't know why, but I've always been under the impression that PC developers have been able to fit more on a disc than console developers; maybe since PC developers can count on a HD for their games or something.

To me, I guess it just seems like an unnecessary inconvenience. Sure, we can try to get developers to become so efficient that a next-gen GTA could basically fit on a CD (exaggerated because I like exaggerating ), but why bother when a new storage format can be used that offers 5-6 times the storage capabilities (among other things) and doesn't really add to costs that much? They already have to deal with multi-thread and multi-core development, another "inconvenience" that is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid.

I guess we just see things differently in this regard. I think console manufacturers should try and increase their storage capacity every-gen (or at least stay the same) to go along with a need for more data. It might promote "laziness" or might just rid developers of trying to spend their time and budgets on something unnecessary. They're enough talented studios that will probably find ways to work with insanely difficult architectures and insanely small storage capacities, but I don't think it means they should have to do so.

Well, to be fair, UMD's do have slightly more capacity than GC discs (about 300MBs IIRC), not to mention the smaller resolutions necessary for PSP games. Of course, I'm sure there was a little more to their decisions than just that, as you mentioned.

Agree 100%. Bonuses are just that. If you had to the choice to pick between the two, you'd go with it, but it is far from being that much of a deciding factor for a system.

 

Yep. Ultimately, time will tell exactly what will happen in this situation.

I don't think they should charge that much either for something like that. Although, you don't necessarily need to do that in order to achieve higher storage capacities with newer hardware, much like you can have better CPUs, better GPUs, more RAM, etc. In this particular case, I'm still curious to see how Sony will price the PS3; it may very well cost no more than the PS2, meaning that BR didn't really cost us anything. For MS, I imagine it would have been a little harder to put in BR, but they may been able to get a great deal done with HD-DVD had they held off on launching so early. Then there's the various proprietary DVD disc formats, which probably wouldn't cost as much as either HD-DVD or BR in some regards. I'm not saying that they needed to put in some new tech that would bring 100GB SL discs, but at least put in something that offers double what DVDs can or something like that. IMO, it is perfectly possible to increase the storage capacity for a console's successor, helping out developers without screwing over consumers.

 

You should have checked it out when I posted about it a while back. I said it was amazing, and I don't that for just anything...except for maybe a bunch of things that are amazing.

I am curious to see how common graphics like that would be. It is coming from one of the best (if not the best) development teams when it comes to graphics (and other things IMO). So expecting visuals like that from say EA or something may be a little too much to expect (although Fight Night 3 looks AMAZING..there's that word again).

On the other hand, I believe Kojima said in the video that things will look much better in the future, which wouldn't suprise me. That was all on a PS3 devkit, which is 800MHz slower than the final PS3 system and either had a 6800 (SLI) or 7800 video card inside, both of which would be quite a bit less powerful than the final RSX (although how much so is still unknown...damn Sony). Then I imagine that the development team couldn't have had much time to work on the demo...maybe 3 months or so at most. IIRC, development for MGS4 hasn't really started to pick up until recently, once all the teams were done with MGS3:S and MGA2. It will be interesting to see what they have at E3.

BTW, back on the subject of the thread, I believe some people have begun to crack the Xbox 360 DVD security. Along with that, they also got some info on how big the game sizes were. Here's some of them:

That's a bit alarming, IMO. That's about 6-7 games that basically filled up the DVD, and none of them were these CGI-filled RPGs with 100+ hours of gameplay.

 

I didn't see anything about analysts in that particular article:

Either way though, some analysts don't know jack about these things. Some analysts thought the PSP would cost $400-$500.

That said, I'm actually pretty sure that non-PS3 BR devices at launch will probably be ~$1000, although I was always under the impression that these devices would do more than just play BR discs. For example, the BR group wants to push BR as a recordable format as much as a movie format, so many devices at launch will probably be able to burn SL and DL BR discs (BTW, I think the BR DL rumor was debunked). Those features are what makes it possible for the PS3 to be sold at a much more affordable price, while the other BR devices might cost 2-3 times more. If it turns out that it would be ~$1000 for just a BR player, then I'm scared to see what these higher-end devices would cost; they'd practically cost the same at that point as the BR recorders that have been in Japan since 2003...doesn't sound that likely to me. I guess anything could happen though, especially if the PS3 doesn't come to NA for a while, and HD-DVD just disappears, possibly making the BR group become a little more greedy than they should be. The technology itself wouldn’t be that expensive, but these companies (Sony included) might be more willing to make up as much of the R&D costs as possible early on.

Coming back to the price of the PS3, I still don't think BR would have that much more of an impact on the PS3's overall price tag than DVD had on the PS2; it might cause Sony to look harder at a $400-$500 price tag, but it won't add ~$1000 to the overall price.

 

It seemed like everyone in this thread agrees with you from what I could tell. If it is just a few epic FF type games that need more than one disc, I don't think anyone really cares to much about it.

However, given the game sizes I posted earlier, it looks like more than just these types of games will be affected. Sports games, FPS, platformers, free-roaming games, racing games, etc., look like they could all be affected by this. Some of these games aren't even 15-20 hours long total (or even have a game length, such as Amped), but they may need at least 2 discs...although I'm not even sure how that would work for some genres.

 

I agree about that, although Amped 3 is still taking up a full disc. I guess maybe I should have said alternative sports games.

It would be interesting to see how much Madden takes up. IIRC, I believe someone at EA admitted that the 360 version was much worse than they wanted it to be, and they're promising a better version next year when they aren't so rushed. I imagine there might be a little bit more space necessary for Madden 07 (or the other EA sports titles) when they add in some more "next-gen" features (EX:ESPN integration)...including the features they took out that were available on current-gen consoles.