Xbox 360 with no HD-DVD = mistake
August 17th, 2005
The Xbox 360 comes out in 3 months and so far it is planned to ship with a standard DVD drive. It's simple math why this is a problem.

Let's take the transition from PS1 to PS2. PS1 characters were generally 200 to 1500 polygons max. PS2 characters are generally 1500 to 15000 polygons. That 7 to ten times the polygons. A PS1 only had 3.5 meg of ram. A PS2 has 40meg of ram. That's nearly 10 times the ram. These types of facts generally translate into 10 times the data on the DVD.

So now, with the next gen coming up the new systems both appear to have 512meg of ram. That's 8 times more than Xbox and 12 times more than PS2. So, if we calculate it out, if the data being used is going to go up by 8 to 12 times then if the average game uses a one gig of data that becomes 8 to 12 gigs needed on the DVD. DVDs only store 4.7 gigs of data. That doesn't even count for bigger games like Grand Theft Auto, Gran Turismo, Jak & Daxter, Ratchet & Clank, God of War and any others that probably use 3 gig or more of a DVD just for game data (not for audio and not for movies). Put those games on the next gen and with all the fancy textures, normal maps, gloss maps, HDR environment maps, and high res polygon models they will not fit on a DVD and we haven't even considered adding HD video which Mr. Allard emphasised so much in past 360 presentations.

Checking out some current gen games to see how much data they use. (note, these are guesses looking at the contents of the DVDs)

　Burnout 3 XBox:Burnout 3 Next Gen:
Sound:1.35gig1.35gig
Video:0.3gig0.3gig * ?? to make it HDTV?
Data:0.65gig0.65gig * 8 <-> 12 = 5.2gig <-> 7.8gig
Total space: 2.3gig6.85gig <-> 9.45gig not including HD video
　Halo 2 XBox:Halo 2: Next Gen
Sound:unknownunknown
Video:0.4 gig0.4 gig * ?? to make it HDTV
Data:4.4 gig4.4 gig * 8 <-> 12 = 35.2gig <-> 52.8gig
Total space:4.8gig35.6gig to 53.2gig not including HD video
　Splinter Cell
Pandora Tomorrow XBox:		Splinter Cell
Pandora Tomorrow Next Gen:
Sound:0.4gig0.4gig
Video:1.5gig1.5gig * ?? to make it HDTV
Data:0.7gig0.7gig * 8 <-> 12 = 5.6gig <-> 8.4gig
Total space:2.6gig7.5gig <-> 10.3gig not including HD video
　 Jak 3 PS2:Jak 3 Next Gen:
Sound: 3.2gig3.2gig
Video: 0.0gig0.0gig
Data:0.9gig0.9gig * 8 <-> 12 = 7.2gig <-> 10.8gig
Total space: 4.1gig10.4gig <-> 14gig
　 GTA:SA PS2:GTA:SA Next Gen:
Sound: 2.8gig2.8gig
Video: unknownunknown
Data: 1.4gig1.4gig * 8 <-> 12 = 11.2gig <-> 16.8gig
Total space: 3.9gig14gig <-> 19.6gig

Is this an over simplification, yes but it's not that far off the mark. To give a very concrete example, Tim Sweeney of Unreal fame told us that a single character in Gears of War uses a 2048x2048 texture. Given that next gen characters need at least a color map and a normal/height map a 2048x2048 texture is 32MEG just for the texture of one single character. Nearly the entire memory of a PS2 or 1/2 the memory of an XBox just to texture one single character. Yes, you can compress the texture, you could also compress the texture on the old systems too. The point is even if you compress them their relative sizes are still going to be 8x to 12x in size which means the data is going to grow 8 to 12 times.

Some people will mention not all data is graphic and the non-graphic data will not expand as much. First off, it is still likely to expand. Maybe not 8-12x but more physics, more real world attributes like friction per polygon etc or more A.I. info will increase non graphic data as well but even so, non-graphic data is insignificant in size compared with graphic data. Do you think a 100 artists on a giant EA team are making non-graphic data? No, they are making graphics and those graphics are going to take 8-12x the space on next gen. At best you could probably take those data numbers above and split them 80% graphics 20% non-graphics (probably more like 90%, 10%) then multiply only the graphic piece by 8 to 12. You'll still see they don't fit on a DVD.

So, what does this tell us? 360 without HD-DVD is screwed! Sure the developers will make games for it but there is clearly a limit. Many current gen games converted to next gen would not fit on a DVD and so those types of games are not going to appear for XBox 360.

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Comments: 1 [2]
Agreed

Uh....erm...NURBS! NURBS and dynamically generated textures!!! Yeah, that'll solve the problem!

And with no HDD in the Xbox and near-identical DVD read speeds, HOW LONG will it take to load in even 256MB of data every time you play a game? :/  I shudder to think.

posted by ColinAugust 17, 2005 at 22:01 [ e ]
Or..
They could ship games on multiple discs, if it's necessary. A Gamecube disc only holds about 1.5gigs of data but it's enough to accomodate 96% of the titles out there. The remaining 4% (about 20 games) just include a second disc. I doubt Microsoft would have decided to keep the existing DVD format for its games if they expect more than a small handful of titles to require more space than the format provides.
posted by JaxonAugust 17, 2005 at 22:29 [ e ]
Bottom Line ...
Jaxon, I think you didn't quite see the point Gregg was trying to make.  Essentially (given the Xbox360's specs) the system can push more data (graphics and other) around than the current generation XBox.  Having this ability encourages developers to create higher details/fidelity in the game's data (textures, AI pathfinding meshes, polygon counts).

Because of that it's generally wiser to use a disc format that's larger (with ideally lower access times than the previous generation) otherwise load-times will be a serious bottleneck.

My guess the reason why DVD has chosen over HD-DVD was simply because of cost.  I read an article that there will be two XBox360 versions (priced at $299 & $399) accordingly.  Adding an HD-DVD drive would add at least $50 to the cost of the system.  I don't know how many people would be willing to drop $349.99/$499.99 on a game console especially when (initially) many might be questioning why pay so much more when XBox, PS2, & GameCube games look "good enough".

At least Sony's already coming clean that the PS3 is going to cost a lot.  It had better have blue-ray!!!
posted by globulousAugust 18, 2005 at 1:16 [ e ]
Cost and reliability
I think it did come down to costs in the end but also a reliability issue. HD-DVD is still 1st generation so the drives are, to some extent, an unknown quantity. Microsoft would have a disaster on its hands if the drives started failing after 6 months where as DVD drives are 6th/7th generation pieces of tech and very reliable and cheap.

It is thought Microsoft will be adding a HD-DVD add-on before PS3 ships. What will probably happen after that is games start sporting a "HD enabled" or even "HD required" logo across the front forcing gamers to upgrade. It's not the perfect solution but for 1st generation games a DVD (or two) isn't going to put the player off buying the machine.
posted by uk_designer_mattAugust 18, 2005 at 3:37 [ e ]
Ever heard from DVD-9

I think a "ordinary" DVD drive should be enough for all kind of games. As you surely know by using DVD-9 (double layer) you will have also the double capacity. And size was never important to create great games... (C64 with 64kbyte has also great games..).

Nevertheless, I think Microsoft will have other problems to get into the japanese market, but this is a different story..!!

posted by ChikuwadaisukiAugust 18, 2005 at 10:06 [ e ]

DVD-9 doesn't solve the problem.  Only 2 of the 5 examples above would fit on a DVD-9 and that still doesn't count on using HD video.  Add HD and none of them will fit.

Can you make a good game in less memory?  Sure, you can make Pong in 1k. So what?  If you're buying a next gen system you're buying it to see it pushed to the max.  To push it too the max you need storage to hold all the data required to push it to the max.  That means today's top games made next gen quality will not fit on a DVD.

As for the example of using more than 1 DVD, that only works for games that don't need to access all the content regularly (which I already pointed out).  A linear game like Resident Evil 4 works using more than 1 DVD because once you make it to DVD#2 you never have to put DVD#1 back in.  A game like Jak & Daxter or GTA would suck ass if it took more than one DVD because you'd end up having to pause the game every 3 to 6 minutes to swap DVDs since those games access all their data more randomly.

posted by greggmanAugust 18, 2005 at 13:50 [ e ]

By the way, I just got word from the lead programmer of "The Bards Tale" that the data for the XBox version took 5.5 gig and required a dual layer DVD (DVD-9) already

"The Bards Tale" and other games based on the same engine "Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance" use a special technique where an entire level's textures are completely pre-rendered into one enormous level texture the size of the entire level which is then spooled in on the fly as you walk around the level.  This lets their artists use all kinds of fancy lighting and other rendering effects to make the level artwork, very similar to how most next gen titles do characters by building super detail characters and then baking all those details into textures and normalmaps.  Well, Bards Tale does something similar except for the entire level.

Another game that won't fit on a DVD if upgraded to next gen quality graphics.

posted by greggmanAugust 18, 2005 at 15:21 [ e ]
I think the issue will be whether consumers will notice the difference to begin with. Most consumers today, no matter how you look at it, don't know and don't care about next gen DVDs. I'm sure it will sell well at launch, and DVD or HD-DVD will matter not on first gen games. That maybe is what microsoft has taken into account ( and from early reports Nintendo as well). The last thing the average, and I stress average, North American consumer wants is a new Disc Format, not right now anyway.

That then brings into question Microsofts decision to launch this thing now. Changing drives mid production, or changing other features of the console, reeks of Sega in the early mid 90's. Think of where  Dreamcast have been if they had put in the DVD to start with.
posted by bleadlaAugust 18, 2005 at 16:16 [ e ]
i don't think having high capacity discs are that important
resident evil 4 required 2 discs on the game cube and final fantasy 7 required 3 discs on the ps1. dvd capacity is fine for the xbox 360. For gaming this is a non-issue.

Where the xbox 360 does have a problem is in lack of blu-ray support for movies. Many people(I would guess also in Japan) bought the ps2 because it could play dvds(before dvd players became cheap), the same will probably hold true for the ps3. Many people will buy the ps3 so that they could watch porn media on high def(I certainly am excited about this - haha ).

People keep saying that the adoption of high def media isn't going to come as fast as the adoption for dvd, but I would certainly like to get my favorite movies in high def.
posted by guyinAMERICAAugust 18, 2005 at 23:04 [ e ]
Ever heard of DVD-18?
Nowadays quad layered DVDs (on 2 sides, I have several in my DVD-video collection) are becoming cheap to make, and by the time PS3 will be out, they'll be surely cheaper than a Blu-ray disc (and you can run them on a dirt cheap DVD player).
Getting up to flip the disc isn't that different to,say, getting up to change the disc in RE 4, or FFIX.
Moreover Doom 3 which can sport resolutions superior to HD (1600x1200 has a superior vertical resolution compared to HDTV and that's what counts, and BTW I even tried the game on 2048x1536 on my 21" CRT monitor) with normal maps and all (same engine as the forthcoming PC/X360 game Quake 4) lies nicely on a single DVD.
Finally WMVHD video compression takes less space than MPEG2, just download a below 100MB clip from IGN (God of War for example, or PGR3) to see for yourself (the same clip in DVD-Video format would NOT take less space, but would be lower in resolution)...
posted by DaxAugust 20, 2005 at 9:54 [ e ]

PC games *generally* don't have nearly the content of console games so comparing some DVD PC game is irrelavent.  The largest PC game team is probably around 40 people.  The largest console game team is around 200 people because there's so much more content in console games. (more money in the console market = larger budgets = more content)

As for flipping the disc, I already pointed out that that works for RE4 because it's a linear game, but it would not for games like Jak 2, GTA3, Mercenaries since you'd have to do it too often.

posted by greggmanAugust 20, 2005 at 14:26 [ e ]
The future was now ...
Yeah, the average consumer doesn't really care what disk capacity or disk type their games come on; they just want to have a quality experience with their game.  If (somehow) the current-gen games would fit on CDROM and load fast enough, most people out there probably wouldn't care.

As Gregg mentioned, there are some games out there that stream in the game data/content on the fly and it's these types of games that would suffer from not having larger disk capacity *and* faster access speeds.

I suppose one could make/design such games run on several disks, but that would some what ruin the experience.

As a developer though (if possible) I'd rather have everything on one disk since it reduces one aspect of the complexity of making these games.  There won't be any additional time/energy need to test the mutli-disc game, it could possibly cheaper, and besides, it takes less shelf space at home. :)

While I can understand the cost of things, long-term-wise, it seems to make more sense to have larger capacities now rather than introduce that in the future (at least for consoles).

I haven't played RE4 yet, but FF7 for  PS1 is ended up on 3 discs simply because those FMV movies; the game (minus the movies) actually *fits* on one CDROM disk.  I still remember back in the "primitive" days before CDROM became a widely adopted standard when those Sierra games would ship on 10 or more 3.5" floppies ... I also remember when Win95 was on 13 3.5" floppies ... installation was a pain.  When games (and software in general) moved to CDROMs back then, everything was on one disk & installations were faster simply because of the "high" data transfer rates of CDROMs compared to 3.5" floppies disk transfer rates; having everything on one disk is never a drawback. :)

A lot of next-gen games probably won't be using FMV for their cut scenes, since everything will be in realtime ... depending on the situation, cut-scene content/data can be completely different from the data used in-game.
posted by globulousAugust 21, 2005 at 11:06 [ e ]

Adding more, another developer friend chimed with that his current PS2 game, part of a popular series, which is just about to be finished and fills a 4.7 gig DVD.  In fact they had to painfully start removing stuff from the game to get it to fit and that is THIS gen, not next.

He mentioned that one reason is they chose to use pre-rendered video where as in previous games they used real time cutscenes.  He pointed out that one reason they chose to go pre-rendered this time is because they needed to have too many different kinds of characters in the same scene and they didn't have the memory to do that realtime.  He also mentioned that one advantage of pre-rendered is you can play them back instantly where as for a realtime scene you have to load up all the data before you can play it back which is only going to be worse next gen.

He and another friend of mine, an ex-Atari technical director said that for them, another advantage of larger storage is because it allows them to put all localization on one disc which means both much less risk since you can sell the same disc everywhere and it also means much less work and less money because the testing departments only have to test one version.

posted by greggmanAugust 21, 2005 at 20:17 [ e ]
FMV VS Textures...
Mmmmhhh, what surely doesn't take disc space is the number of emplyoees on a team ^_^
You must consider that a large number of those extra employees on console projects (specially Big 200 people teams like square-enix has for FF games) are usually 3D artists hard at work on FMV cut-scenes, that will eventually fill the disc up preatty quickly (see FFX for example), as far as other stuff a PC game actually needs far more assets to accomodate different hardware/quality configurations.  Doom 3, Unreal etc. have several sets of textures, and several sets of normal maps (ie: different resolutions), something that a fixed hardware console won't need (not to the extent of a PC game at least).
If you consider that FMV will be ditched in favor of real time cut-scenes, I believe that this disc problem will result in a non-issue most of the time (specially at the beginning, and surely the long run won't be a problem for MS, read below...).
Whats truly worth considering though, is that Microsoft stated clearly that they want to reduce the console cycle, so the "long run" part of the equation is irrelevant for them;this should cast some light on their strategy since by the time it's gonna really matter (ie. when the HD-DVD-Blu Ray format war is at an end) they will have the successor of the 360 on store shelves, making the PS3 obsolete altogether...
A costly move for sure, but MS seems determined to shell the cash to kill the competition,
Time will tell...
posted by DaxAugust 22, 2005 at 7:42 [ e ]
Nobody want's to spend time in getting the best out of a machine

It's really sad to hear that so many different programmers are bored
to try something new... they always want to have more disc-space,
more CPU power... is this the right way...??? I mean if somebody has
worked in that way on the good old Amiga, the only available game 
would be Pong. I'm not good in programming a Xbox or a PS2, but I'm
sure there is some hidden power, but everybody chooses the easy '
way...  and it's sad but true that "money counts".
Where's the enthusiasm, why do we need a HD-DVD on the Xbox360,
there's always a way to bring those huge games on a single DVD,
but it would took a little longer, and sometimes it needs also
some great ideas to finish it... things that game developers
should have, but it seems that things have changed since I
programmed games and tools..!!

posted by ChikuwadaisukiAugust 22, 2005 at 7:48 [ e ]
FMV VS Real TIME
As stated by Gregg below, this generation went FMV for memory problems (32 MB on PS2 are ridiculous), in the next, thanks to large memory spaces and techniques such as instancing, not to mention extra vertex processing power in general, you will be able to have thousands of characters on screen at once, hence no need for FMV anymore (not for that reason at least).
As for quality, I recently watched a DEMO video for Project Offset (if you haven't go hunt it down!) and it was surely Pre-rendered/Lord of The Rings quality in real time (better than Unreal Engine 3) so no worries there either...
posted by DaxAugust 22, 2005 at 7:53 [ e ]

PS2 not having enough memory and next gen having more, that's not the problem.  PS2 has enough memory for PS2 quality graphics and next gen has about the same for next gen quality graphics.  In either case it's not enough.  I think maybe your not adding things up.  First, in order to play back a next gen realtime cutscene you've got to load up the data, 256-512meg worth.  Welcome to waiting 30 seconds to see your cutscene. Next you mention 1000s of people on the screen, well, as the Unreal guys pointed out, in order to get Unreal 3 quality characters they are using 2048x2048 textures.  That's 32meg per character so you're only going to get 4-6 different characters on the screen before you run out of memory, so much for typical RPGs with 8-9 different characters on the screen during a cutscene.  Plenty of games are still going to want to use FMV.

As for your PC data size example, my point was for same gen titles.  You can't compare HL2 to a PS2 game as HL2 is "next gen", PS2 is last gen.  Compare games that shipped during the first or second year of PS2 to PC games at that time.  PS2 games had 1.5x to 2x more data.  The same will be true this time, 360 games and PS3 games will on average have far more data then then current PC games.  In fact if you want proof that console games use more disc space all you have to do is look at what they ship on.  50% or more of console games have been shipping on a DVD since 2001.  Those that can fit on a CD ship on a CD since CD is cheaper.  Very few PC games shipped on DVD until last year.

Here's another data point.  Half Life 1 is 436meg.  Half Life 2 is 3.5gig, an 8x increase.  I'm sure the next comment someone will make is that Half Life 2 shows next gen fits in 3.5gig.  No, Half Life 2 shows that Half Life 2 fits in 3.5gig.  Given that you have almost zero freedom of movement, as far as data size HL2 is not all the big.  It also shows that sizes are going to increase by 8x.  That means today's 2.5gig game today will take 20gig on next gen.

posted by greggmanAugust 22, 2005 at 10:49 [ e ]

> there's always a way to bring those huge games on a single DVD

Yes, by cutting out the details.  How do you think they make XBox games (64meg) fit on the Gamecube (24meg).

We do push the machines to their limits. Go play Ratchet & Clank or Jak & Daxter any version.  Millions of polys, tons of compression to make them all fit, it's still tons of data.

Again, it's simple math, you fill up some percentage of ram with data.  Assume 20% of the ram for code, maybe 30% for workspace and the other 50% for graphic data.  So, on PS2 that was 16 of 32meg.  Now on 360 and PS3 50% is 256meg.  That's 16x.  Squeezing to make large games fit will only make them less pretty.  Or, putting it another way, if you can squeeze and 20gig game into a DVD, then using the same techinques you can squeeze a 80gig game into 20gig and the DVD system still misses out.

posted by greggmanAugust 22, 2005 at 11:16 [ e ]
More is always better
The fact is, a DVD-9 is enough to contain a next gen game the size of HL2 (or Gears of War, or Em-Chant.ARM etc.) and some WMVHD video playback (so no problems whatsoever), but do consider that the 360 (contrary to PS3) WON'T be MS main system for the next 6/7 years.
At this point the natural question is: how many years we will have to wait in order to see games that put GoW and Half Life 2 to shame in terms of everything (it will eventually happen)?
My educated guess is around 3 Years (considering also that PS3 won't appear on the market for another 18 months), granted, more is always better, but the article seems to imply that X-Box 360 games will be somewhat small (even smaller than current generation considering the "disc space VS next gen assets") and that simply won't be the case, just wait 3 more months to check this statement first hand, you'll be asking:"How in the H. did they do that???"^__^) but what I am REALLY talking about here is the "commercial strategy" behind this DVD drive move.
What MS has on its hands, is not the best, but it's good enough, as I said, by the time it's gonna really matter, MS will debut its next stallion which will feature the winner of the NEXT-Gen video format war and plenty of additional sexy specs.
Being too early is a bad move for Sony IMHO, they will risk a lot of money, and considering that aside from SCE the entire company (TVs, DVDs etc.) is on the brink of bankruptcy (heavy losses for over a decade) I don't know if they will survive or bury themselves (it will probably depend on whether Blu Ray will win or not...)
Bottom line, there will be no problems for the 360 in the first part of PS3's life cycle, while the latter will be obsolete (compared to top PCs and the 360 successor) before its disc capacity will mean anything...(never underestimate the Dogs at MS I say...)
posted by DaxAugust 22, 2005 at 14:59 [ e ]
Balancing Act
These days, shortening the console cycle may potentially end up hurting whichever company attempts to start releasing a new piece of hardware every 3 years.  There are 90+ million PS2's out there ... Sony obviously can't expect even 50% of the PS2 owners out there to all of a sudden dump the PS2 in favor of the PS3.  It will take several years before PS3 (or XBox or Revolution) gets to those PS2 numbers ... The simple fact is that since gaming is now "mainstream" most of the these people would be hard pressed in finding justification for buying a new piece of hardware (starting at $299.99) when what they have is "good enough" for the kind of games they play (by their judgement) ... these individuals aren't necessarily hardcore gamers.  If I recall properly, Sony continue supporting the PS2 for at least 5 more years (if not more).  It's like asking people to dump their VCRs or DVD players for a new model every 2-3 years (with only incremental improvements).  After these next-gen systems hit the market, I'm guessing that (with the graphics end of things) there can only be incremental improvements ... nothing visually earth-shattering ... at least not until it's possible to do realtime (60fps or greater) ray-tracing/radiosity solutions in hardware.

As for developers not pushing the hardware limits, I think that's not a fair statement.  A lot of the improvements aren't necessarily visual (as it was back in the Amiga days).  But to use the visual element, look at the visual difference between Gran Turismo 3 and Gran Turismo 4 ... it's the same PS2.

Because game teams are larger and there are more factors that go into making a game (potential sales, etc) it takes a bit longer to be able to get to where a system's hardware is fully being exploited.  On these larger game teams (of the size which you didn't have back on the Amiga and similar systems) it takes time for everyone to get a full grasp of what things work and what doesn't work well on that *particular* system.  Using the PS2 for example, it's a challenge to get the CPU, 2 Vector Units, & GS all working at their maximum without one of those subsystems stalling everything for the rest ... and that alone has nothing to do with gameplay.  On the next-gen systems learning how to to get everything to work in a more parallel fashion (with the multi-core processors) will take time to fully understand.  Programming back in the Amiga while challenging and fun was a lot easier to do than with what the current-gen (and next-gen) systems require.

Given the marketing pressures to ship a title (and make money) at times there's no justification to "max out" the system ... especially if it's a game that's going to ship on multiple platforms.  The optimizations on one system may end up being a performance bottleneck on another.  The cache size of the CPUs on the XBox, Gamecube, and PS2 differ.  Depending on what's going on inside the CPU, the cache size can make a difference in performance.  While Gamecube and XBox have a unified memory architecture allowing their GPUs to pull texture data straight from main memory, the PS2's GS has 4MB of VRAM in which you have to work with (this includes framebuffer memory & textures).  The approach for achieving peak performance on Gamecube or XBox hardware is definately not the same as the PS2.

Usually the titles which really push the hardware are titles that are *exclusively* available on that system ... If that title (somehow) gets ported to another system, it's usually a serious pain to port.

Making a game these days is a pretty complex feat, and if cost/price isn't an issue and there are things that can assist the developer in getting things done more efficiently, faster, and easier, I'm definately all for that.

If "maxing out" the system will make the game more fun and easier for designers to realize their ideas, then I'll dig in and do it.  But these days I'd rather be putting my efforts into areas of making a game that counts (like gameplay) rather than wrestling (unnecessarily) with the hardware.  There's nothing like working one's tail off to "max out" a system only to either have the said project cancelled (for whatever reasons) or have it see not-so-good sales when it hits the market.
posted by globulousAugust 22, 2005 at 22:23 [ e ]
ps3 will dominate
It will be interesting to see how this next gen plays out, but i think its safe to say that the ps3 will dominate(blu-ray & better graphics & backward comp.). the xbox was a great system, but its games library left a bad taste in some people.  I know alot of people who regreted buying the xbox, these same people are not going to give ms their money for next gen system. in 4-5 years from these will be the numbers:
ps2:120+ million
ps3:75 million
xbox: 23 milliom
xbox 360: 10-15 million
rev: 10-15 million
posted by guyinAMERICAAugust 23, 2005 at 0:33 [ e ]
No mainstream market at a $500 pricepoint...
Regarding the future dominance of the PS3 it should be noted that there is a major difference this time: PS2 was cheap at launch (299) and even cheaper as the time went by, on the other hand Ken Kutaragi told the press, that not only PS3 will be more expensive (he says that "people will want it no matter the price" and he is WRONG, only early adopters and geeks alike will get it, ie ME ^__^) but, and this is the INTERESTING part, they will NOT lower the price for a long long time if ever (Kutaragi's words not mine).
If that happens to be the case, Sony is going for a different market this time and casual gamers (the biggest part of the market nowadays) will look elsewhere. Not only that, they risk to still have a high price when the 360 successor hits the shelves(HIC!).
As for launching early "hurting the company"(MS in this case), I agree 100%, it is a move not made to make money immediately, but to take advantage of a stronger economical position to kill a competition that can't afford such an aggressive marketing in period of, say, 10 or 15 years. Big corporations do this all the time, and they keep on doing it till they are left alone in the market or till the market is less crowded.
posted by DaxAugust 23, 2005 at 7:38 [ e ]
My comments above are not about PS3 winning over 360.  My comments are only the DVDs are not big enough for next-gen titles.  There are plenty of other factors that will decide if one or the other dominates.  I currently have 3 PS2s and 2 XBoxes and I'm sure I'll buy both a 360 and a PS3.
posted by greggmanAugust 23, 2005 at 11:11 [ e ]
maybe, maybe not
no one knows precisely what the future holds, but I would guess that the $499 price point won't hurt sony that much. There are many parents who'll buy this after endless hours of screaming and crying from their kids. Also, I don't care how MS prices the 360 for Japan(there are some indications that the 360 will be priced lower than the Us/eur versions), the ps3 is still a slam dunk in Japan for sony(ensuring the ps3's survival). Japanese aren't going to buy a gaijen console if a domestic one exists( But I could be wrong, the ipod has been the best selling mp3 player in japan the last few year even in the face of all the competition from the domestics - sony, jvc, pansonic and the likes)

Furthermore, Sony has 8 billion in the bank, its not going away any time soon. Microsoft has 50 billion in the bank, its definitely not going away any time soon. I think both companies now realize this and also have come to the conclusion that console purchases are not an either/or thing and are pricing them accordingly.
posted by guyinAMERICAAugust 23, 2005 at 11:36 [ e ]

please don't turn this into a PS3 vs 360 debate.  My point is not that PS3 is better.  My point is I'd like 360 to be as good as it can be and I believe in order to do that it needs HD-DVD (or Blu-Ray)

another developer friend pointed out that 360 has a 12x DVD, XBox had a 4x DVD.  360 has to load 8x as much data to as XBox with a drive only 3x faster, that means it will take twice as long to load up memory on a 360 as it did on Xbox.

posted by greggmanAugust 23, 2005 at 12:33 [ e ]
money
Ok a last comment on economics than I'll suggest a possible solution for the load times: I didn't say that Sony will disappear now, but it might exit the console business in 10/15 years due to outstanding and unsustainable debts; that is because It doesn't matter what you make a year if what you owe is far superior (this is Sony Electronics situation right now) MS has no debts whatsoever, so they can keep pushing the accelerator for the next 20 years and kill SCE if they want.
As for Japanese buying only japanese products it is true only up to a certain extent (as guynAmerica also said) funny enough Microsoft had the same experience with the Dos/Windows platform in the past, where NEC owned the PC market with their PC-88/98 series of computers, and after 12 years of fights was killed by MS which now owns the Jap market with a 95% share...
posted by DaxAugust 23, 2005 at 13:30 [ e ]
Loading times and effective storage
Now for load times: I believe that you can load up around 200MB of data in the 360's Ram at the same speed it took the original X-Box to fill up its entire ram. 200MB are enough to let the gamer start playing while the system is streaming the rest in the "background" without letting the player notice anything.
The same goes for cut-scenes: in your tipical RPG a party of 3/4 characters (as they usually fly on some sort of airship and the rest stays on board) reaches a certain point where something happens via a cutscene, the fact is, you don't have to load the assets all over again as the actual background, characters and whatnot were already in ram as you reached the climatic point. The monster(evil character/ super duper air ship etc.) that might come out at this point can be streamed into ram in the background.
If there are to many characters on screen you can use WMVHD, but ONLY in these occasions (as shown in Jade Empire, not all the cut-scenes must be either Real-Time or FMV, there can be a mix of them, limiting the space taken by compressed video to a minimum).

As for storing Data, there are certainly ways better than other as RE 4 tells us: this game as far more assets than the majority of PS2 games (whether DVD-5 or DVD-9)  on a single 1.5 giga disc (95% of the game in fact lies on the first disc) how did they do that is beyond me, but there's certainly some magic at work...(heck they can probably fit 12 RE 4 on a DVD-18)
posted by DaxAugust 23, 2005 at 13:31 [ e ]

Here's another analogy.

PS1 shipped with a CD drive.  Do you think PS2 would have been able to deliver the games it has if it shipped with only a CD drive?  PS1 -> PS2 was 10x the memory and 7x the storage.  Now MS is trying to tell us that 360 with 8x the memory but only 1x the storage is going to work!?  NOT!

posted by greggmanAugust 24, 2005 at 12:33 [ e ]
what about ram?
is 512 enough? i'm expecting the graphics they showed at the sony e3 conference(unreal + killzone). gregg, if what you say is correct and textures are that huge, then obviously even with the computational powers of cell and x360, we won't get that level of detail because of the ram bottleneck.
posted by guyinAMERICAAugust 25, 2005 at 0:56 [ e ]

This post confuses me, I'm not that technically inclined... but I've been owning pcs that are gaming pcs for years. My ram has been expanding for years, games have been requiring more ram for years, but the space isn't going in insane multiples as you say. Heck, I have a gig of ram in my machine and most of the games I buy that required that much ram still just come on plain cds.

I always thought that compressions techniques get better as time goes on.

Like how Planescape torment was release on 5 cds, but then the re-release the excat same game with excat same data was only on 3 CDS.

posted by confusedpersonAugust 25, 2005 at 2:52 [ e ]
Ah yes, but using Blu-Ray might be a mistake as well
Great essay. I was inspired to turn your question around, and look at whether or not Blu-Ray is a good idea for the PS3:

http://spaces.msn.com/member
s/grammerjack/Blog/cns!1peCH
L_zjY_VAAoE21WVgU4Q!125.entr
y

(My conclusion is that using Blu-Ray is quite risky, but still the right thing for Sony to do. But that's partly because Sony wants to establish Blu-Ray as a video format, not just because it makes for a better game console.)
posted by JackPalevichAugust 25, 2005 at 12:32 [ e ]
Bigger Games already at launch...
By the way, at the end of the article I read:"Many current gen games converted to next gen would not fit on a DVD and so those types of games are not going to appear for XBox 360."
If you do the above calculations for one of the BIGGEST XBOX 1 games (The Elder Scroll 3: Morrowind, specially in its game of the year edition) it would certainly get crazy, in fact following the above reasoning it would be the best candidate as "game most likely NOT to appear on Xbox 360", the fact is, the immense and graphically heart stopping sequel (Oblivion) is a launch title.
If you add to this the simple fact that launch games hardly represent a System true power, we can safely say that we will see games superior to Oblivion in the followig years, turning this Disc-Drive "problem" into a complete non-issue. (I believe that Oblivion alone just does this...)
But anyway, 3 months to go, we'll see for ourselves soon enough...
posted by DaxAugust 25, 2005 at 13:50 [ e ]

Just because some impressive titles ship at 360 launch does not means the developers that created those titles didn't cut the size of their design down 75% to make them fit on a DVD.

posted by greggmanAugust 25, 2005 at 21:58 [ e ]
where are the smaller than prev. gen. titles though?
Yes, but you said that the games will be smaller than previous gen due to disc space VS Next Gen Assets, Oblivion will be bigger than any of the games you mentioned in the article though, what gives?
My educated guess is that better compression techniques (in software, as shown in RE 4 you can put a gozillion things in a small space, something that hasn't been done EXTENSIVELY BEFORE) better compression hardware (new generation 3Dc and TC that allows bigger textures/normal maps to be stored in very little disc space all with a level of efficency NOT AVAILABLE BEFORE), procedural materials generated by math instead of bit-map data (ie lots of pixel and vertex shaders, again not done EXTENSIVELY BEFORE) procedural Trees and vegetation (as implemented in Oblivion thanks to SpeedTree technology, NOT AVAILABLE BEFORE) and much more, allows them (and all the other developers) to bring games BIGGER than previous gen on the 360 (and not smaller).
Now, when you say that you can do even more with a bigger drive, I'm with you, but when you say "Many current gen games converted to next gen would not fit on a DVD and so those types of games are not going to appear for XBox 360"  you are not counting with the tech advancements I mentioned earlier but MOST OF ALL you are not noticing that the launch line up (and the first 6 months schedule) covers already all genres with BIGGER titles (or as Big as prev. gen. in the worst case scenario), that will make the end consumer very happy and MS very successful.
Sony on the other hand, between not owning the Graphic Chip's design, the pricey memory module from RamBus, more expensive CPU and the Blu-Ray Drive will be loosing twice as MS per console sold IF they sell at twice the 360's price, now that is what I call a BIG mistake...(MS will will be just fine worry not ;) )
posted by DAXAugust 26, 2005 at 12:53 [ e ]
(Gregg was nice enough to comment on my PS3 Blu-Ray article... thanks Gregg!)

Gregg, what you're suggesting (that DVDs are not big enough for next gen game consoles) simply isn't true. There's no iron clad ratio of game console RAM or power to required game media storage. Look at games like .kkreiger, which pack a multi-level 3D fps shooter int 96 K bytes of space. Game content is _very_ scalable. However, developers are busy, so they will do just enough work to fit into whatever media they have available. As a result, any time you measure game size, you will tend to see that developers are using the entire media that's available to them. But you can't tell just by measuring whether or not they're using it wisely, or whether or not they could have made the same game using less media.

DVD's (at 9 GB ) are close enough in size to HD media (at 30-40 GB) that I doubt that the smaller storage space is going to prevent some as-yet-undiscovered type of game from being written for Xbox 360. (Unlike what Nintendo ran up against with the cartridge vs. the CD-ROM, where people could stream data off the CD to create far more complex levels far more easily.)

The situation would be different if PS3 came out first, and already had established market share. In that situation developers might not bother designing their games to fit on DVD. But instead, because Xbox 360 comes out first, cross-platform games will be designed to fit on DVD. Given the cost difference between DVDs and Blu-Ray discs, it seems likely that cross-platform games will be DVD-based even on PS3. (Or if there's a Sony TRC requiring extra content, it will be fluffy non-gameplay-changing content like higher-rez texture maps and HD cut scenes.)
posted by JackPalevichAugust 26, 2005 at 13:50 [ e ]

Phew, Jack you summed me up well there.

I find it difficult to believe that it's just because "pc programmers are garbage" and they have less staff and pcs are more complex, that ram requirements are as high as they are for Big budget pc games that only come on few cds. Ala Doom 3, half life 2, Battle Field 2

And compression techniques still will get better

posted by confusedpersonAugust 26, 2005 at 15:26 [ e ]

I'm not saying the launch titles will not blow you away. They probably will. I'm saying exactly what I said above, today's top games ported as is with graphics upgraded would not fit on a DVD so in order to have those types of games on 360 there are only a 3 possiblities

1) 360 titles will have to repeat more graphics than PS2/Xbox titles.
2) 360 titles will be smaller in scope than the equivilent PS2/Xbox title
3) 360 titles will have alot less detail than the system can handle in order to fit it all on the disc (ie, Xbox quality textures instead of 360 quality textures)

"magic happens here" is not an option.

NOTE: Do NOT turn this into a PS3 vs 360 thread. Don't even mention the PS3. That's not the point. I know this is not going to happen but I want MS to ship with better storage.

Think of it this way. If you had bucket that held 1 liter of water (ram) and a water tank that held 10 liters of water (storage). And to feed a child (supply data for a level) it took 1 liter of water then you could feed 10 children. If you upgrade the children to adults (and an adult needs 3 liters to be fed) and you upgrade the bucket (a 3 liter bucket) but you don't upgrade the storage (it's still 10 liters). You can't feed 10 adults! You are S.O.L. No amount of magic will make that 10 liter water tank feed 10 3liter needing adults. You need a 30 liter water tank.

In the same way, if you have 40 areas in a game that each require 50meg of graphic data that requires 50meg*40areas = 2gig storage. If you now upgrade the power of your machine and need 400meg of graphic data per area 400meg*40=16gig. It's that simple.

I agree that maybe you could decompress geometry on the fly but the truth is we are already doing that. PS2 uses compressed verts which get uncompressed directly by the DMA chip as they are passed to the VU. The VU has also been used to generate spline based geometry on the fly in Moto GP. Even with that compression though, in next gen people want to use Precomputed Radiance Transfer per vertex as well as other vertex channel data increasing the data needed to be compressed. You can also compress textures, Xbox already does this.  Unfortunatly 360 needs much larger and more types of textures (normal maps, glow maps, ambient occlusion maps, etc etc etc). In otherwords, on the fly decompression is unlikely to solve the problem.

Actually there's a very simple solution:

Make Halo 3 require a blu-ray/hd-dvd upgrade after which all 360s from that point on will ship with blu-ray/hd-dvd. Every 360 early adopter will upgrade, problem solved.

posted by greggmanAugust 27, 2005 at 2:38 [ e ]
If I may make a bad pun, your analogy doesn't hold water, because water is a physical substance, which can't be compressed or synthesized on the fly, whereas most of the data reqiured for a game can be both compressed and synthesized on the fly.

You suggest that games are already compressing and synthesizing data as much as possible on the current generation consoles, so all the extra space has been squeezed out. But the next gen brings both dedicated hardware (the WMA audio decompression hardware on Xbox 360 allows a significant improvement over the ADPCM encoding used on Xbox) and increased GPU/CPU power for compressing and synthesizing other data types.

By the way, even for straight ports of Xbox 1 games to Xbox 360, without any change in code or data, there is ample scope for a better results. This is due to:

1) The CPU and GPU are faster, so the frame rate improves. (This is a form of improved temporal compression, I suppose.)
2) Free 4x AA multisampling for many games.
3) Better pixel pipeline processing (floating point vs 9-bit-per-pixel, and texture gamma correction.) gives nicer colors.
4) Better filtering / scaling to HD resolutions.
posted by JackPalevichAugust 27, 2005 at 12:08 [ e ]

Your missing the point.  It doesn't matter how much we compress stuff.  The point is most teams want to fill all the memory.  In fact I've never worked on a game in my 20 years in the industry where we didn't use all the memory.  The only reason we use real time decompression is to fit more data in memory but that still means we fill the memory.  We fill 40meg on the PS2.  We fill 64meg on the Xbox.  If we compress we get some percent more textures and some other percent more geometry in memory but we still read the same amount of raw data off the DVD.

So, all this decompression talk only means that when we fill 512meg on a 360 we'll get more out of that 512meg than if we didn't compress.  The suggestion of on the fly decompression assumes that we'd compress the data and then not use all the memory saved.  That's not how it works.

It's not "we have 512meg of data but there's too much for the DVD so lets compress it on the DVD".  It's instead, "we want to display 300 textures but there's only room for 200 in 512meg so we compress the 300 and now we get 300 in 512meg".  We will still LOAD 512 meg of bits off the DVD though.  That 512meg of bits is 8 times more than 64meg of bits we loaded up or Xbox.

posted by greggmanAugust 27, 2005 at 13:36 [ e ]
I think your original thesis was that the new generation of consoles needed more data on their optical disc format in order to provide an improved gaming experience. Given that an HD screen at 1280 x 720 is 3 times the pixels of a 640 x 480 screen, it would be natural to suggest that next-gen games will need at least three times the storage for textures and geometry to fully utilize the increased screen space.

I'm just pointing out that improved compression (e.g. switching cut scenes from MPEG or BINK to WMV9, switching audio to WMA) will allow more data to fit on the DVD. (Yes, I know not all game data is equally compressible.)

I'm not sure why you're mentioning RAM size, or in-RAM compression. It's true RAM might also be a bottleneck, but since Xbox 360 increased RAM 8 times while only increasing screen size 3 times that means that overall RAM pressure should be decreased this generation.)
posted by JackPalevichAugust 28, 2005 at 14:14 [ e ]
Ah, OK, I remember you mentioned wanting additional texture maps (e.g. normals, specular, displacement), so I can see that it's likely that per-screen-pixel texture budgets will go up this gen.

The PS2 was pretty darn successful with blurry little 64 x 64 textures, though, so perhaps we don't really need the 2048 x 2048 textures that Tim Sweeney is advocating.
posted by JackPalevichAugust 28, 2005 at 14:22 [ e ]
It's always a tradeoff...
Bigger optical disk = less work to get what you want in the game to fit on the disk.

Less work = more time to work on gameplay, or to ship the project earlier (e.g. on time), or ???

HAVING to do less work is good.  The end.

It's as simple as that.

A much scarier question is how are game companies going to be able to finance games with team sizes going up (yet again) for next generation.

Much greater team sizes = much greater costs.

This is bad considering that the installed base will be low at first...

Sure, we've gone through similar console changes in the past, but this one has Apocalypse written all over it...

 - anonnanana
posted by anonnananaAugust 30, 2005 at 5:54 [ e ]
From the horses mouth ...
"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."

http://www.gamespot.com/news
/2005/08/30/news_6132218.htm
l?part=rss&tag=gs_news&subj=
6132218

.kkreiger while impressive is not a commercial game compared to something like the Halo series.  There are tons of old research papers on generating data procedurally, but very few game devs have had the time to implement these things *and* get it under a level control to where it can be used for full-scale commercial production of content; that's going to take some time.

I believe Spore has procedurally generated data, but from the looks of the screenshots it seems that it's at least 1-2 generations ahead of what .kkrieger does ... I'm sure Spore's not a 96k game either.

I think you guys are missing Gregg's main point which the above mentioned Gamespot article greatly brings to light.
posted by globulousAugust 30, 2005 at 22:12 [ e ]
Quoting a developer saying that they're going to ship a 2 DVD game is hardly proving your point. In fact, it proves the oposite, which is that it's possible for developers who choose to use more data than can fit on one DVD to use multiple DVDs.

There's no fundamental reason why procedural geometry and other forms of comression can't be used in commercial video games. It's just a tradeoff. Until now developers have found it more convenient to use large textures. This generation they may choose to use more procedural data. (It's not like Cell can't handle procedural data -- what else are the SPEs good for, really?)

I don't think anyone disagrees that all else being equal it would be nice to have more optical disc storage. However, in the real world you have to make tradeoffs, and the tradeoff Microsoft made will give them a cost and time-to-market advantage. So it is incorrect to call it a mistake.
posted by JackPalevichAugust 31, 2005 at 13:41 [ e ]
I don't see how that developer's comments/concerns don't get across the point Gregg was making.  They're saying that because of the amount of content in their game it may run into 3 discs.  Using your argument, one can also say that CDROM should be adequate for this and the next-generation machines since developers should just find ways to procedurally generate and/or compress their data ... though adding a CDROM to any of the current (or next-generation) systems while cheaper could hurt the console manufacturer simply because consumers can't watch DVD movies on their consoles.

I'm sure that the developer started working on Enchant Arms at least 1-2 years ago *before* they had any XBox360 hardware to work with.  Given the climate of the market within the games industry, I think it would have been very risky for them to have started to build a game for hardware which they initially didn't have devkits for, and thus couldn't fully judge the performance ... especially if they attempted to procedurally generate data on the fly PC hardware of 1-2 years ago or those early XBox360 devkits.  It's quite possible that they may have assumed that the XBox360 would have a larger disc capacity than what the current generation systems have.

While there are some tools for procedurally generating texture data (Genetica), I don't know of any that can procedurally generate complex looking character data that would match what an artist can do by hand (with the correct texturing and materials applied) or procedurally generating believable cities (also with the correct textures and materials applied) ... though there are research papers that discuss methods for procedurally generating city data.

There is information is out there to do these things, but it's not a simple matter of "everyone should just generate the data procedurally" ... Even the folks behind .kkrieger acknowledged some of the difficulties they ran into ... fortunately for them, they didn't have any tight market deadlines to meet and didn't have to spend too much time on gameplay.

It's very easy to say everyone should start using procedurally generated data, but it's hard to do in practice.  At least from what I've seen the tools to facilitate procedural content generation are still in their infancy and will take some time to get to a point to where they are mature and intuitive enough to create complex data that doesn't visually look too regular *and* be easy enough to control/direct how the procedural algorithms generate the data.

With the cost of making games these days, in the short term most dev studios will create their content in a traditional manner simply because it's an approach that's well understood ... and in the short term perhaps that's the cheaper solution (from a development point of view).

The average consumer probably won't care that the XBox360 has a DVD drive in it.  In the long term, only the market will tell if the decision Microsoft made was a good one or not.
posted by globulousSeptember 1, 2005 at 3:27 [ e ]
Bigger games period.
It's not a matter of "games that will blow you away", the point Gregg makes is "DVD=MISTAKE" and that, quite simply, it's not true.
Less capable than blu-ray? True
Mistake? It's Not.
MS has its well thought out reasons for this decision, and it will make a positive difference for them.
Could the 360 be better with an HD-DVD drive? Most Certainly.
Will we see games smaller then previous gen? DEAD WRONG, we will see BIGGER games (that will ALSO Blow us away, but let's stay focused on the "BIGGER" part).
A 2048X2048 texture might take 32 mb of ram, but (as JPEG works) I write it to my HD/DVD in a 5MB file (actually saving disc space, so 10 textures may take 50 megs on disc instead of 320MB).
This file needs decompression, and decompression needs time, hence the need for dedicated decompression hardware (something that happens after the 5MB file is loaded into ram).
The 360 has 2 separated Hardware units, one for TC and one for Normal Maps (the latter called 3Dc in ATI's mumbo, at any rate X-Box only had TC, and of inferior quality/efficency at that), comparing the compression capabilities of the PS2/Xbox to the 360 is like comparing a Saturn to a Ferrari (and saying they are basically the same).
You don't need genetica to create a material that's not made of bit-map data, the Ureal 3 engine has an artist friendly editor (as in "no programming involved") built in, and covering mountains with this kind of materials looks extremely good (take a look at the mountain in the last demo featured in 3DMark05 which is also a Pixel-Shading test in the pro-version).
Main characters won't be a problem, while secondary characters can be instanced saving a Godzilla sized chunk of memory on both disc and ram.

At any rate, since this is getting long, let's put it this way: If in the next 24 months we will see smaller games (or bigger sized games with Xbox quality textures/graphics) than Gregg is right.
If we will see Bigger games which ALSO (and I repeat, ALSO) feature next generation textures/models/world size etc. than Gregg is (was by that time) DEAD WRONG.
See you then! ;)
posted by DAXSeptember 1, 2005 at 14:18 [ e ]

I would say that example of the developer shipping on 2 DVDs does lend credence to my point because THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A FIRST GENERATION TITLE FOR ANY SYSTEM EVER THAT DIDN'T FIT ON THAT SYSTEM'S STORAGE.

Games like FF7 which took 3CDs were 3rd generation PS1 titles.  All first gen titles fit just fine on a CD. The fact that a title already in development for 360 is requiring 3 DVDs shows that 360 is bascially screwed because there is no room for expansion.

You'll see the difference then GTA4 doesn't ship for 360 because it won't fit (or because it looks like shit because they had to compress everything to crap).  You'll see the difference when PGR4 requires 3 DVDs for all the cars and tracks forcing you to swap discs everytime you switch tracks.

posted by greggmanSeptember 2, 2005 at 17:04 [ e ]
you all are lame a$$es...
Gregg is right.  Games will need all that space. Art and Hd-def movies take up tons of space. I have a 80 gig drive with about 12 gigs left. that's 68 gigs of porn, mp3, movies, games, applications and jpgs. Remember, at one point, some people thought 640k of ram was enough. At one point, when I was upgrading from a 85meg drive to a 385 meg drive(this was on a 386), I throught to myself, "gee, I 'll never run out of space now! how in the hell could I ever fill this up?" I said the same thing over and over, from 386mb --> 1 gig ---> 8 gig ---> 18 gig ---> 40 gig ---> 80 gig. It never stops. Code will get more complex and take up more space, but its the art that will take up the most. In fact, it is the art that make games so expensive now. All the additional costs is because of hiring artists.  Check out the textures for some of these games like gears of war and project gotham racing. They're detailed and will require space.

I'm sure compression can help, but that's a lot of cpu cycles being wasted decoding images on the fly and this would make games run slower.  MS is dooooooomed! Dooooooommmmmmmeeeeed! Well, not really, M$ still has more money then most countries, and they still have extremely sharp people at the company.  Just none in the xbox division.
but xbox 360 is doooommed! Dooooommmmmmeedddd!

not only that but this generation is doooommmmeedd! how many people are going to pay $499 for a ps3? I can't imagine many. The game industry is going to have some problems with the next gen.
posted by guyinAMERICASeptember 3, 2005 at 3:37 [ e ]
(greggman, was that actually you posting on Sept 2? The post doesn't seem like something you'd write. You're usually more practical.)

Hee, hee.  Xbox 360 is doomed because one developer is using 2 DVDs for a launch title, and that's never been done before. That's pretty funny. As if it were an iron clad rule. No console has ever launched with a good RPG either. If that game is fun then people will buy it (and the 360) no matter how many DVDs it comes on. (RPGs are largely linear in nature, so it's little hardship to have to swap DVDs. If I recall correctly FF7 made me swap disks two or three times total.)

Face it, the PS3 is the odd-man-out next-generation. All other next-gen game platforms (Xbox 360, PC, Revolution, Mac, Indrema, portables, cell phones) will have DVD-sized  storage or less. GTA 4 will run fine on one DVD (or could trivially be built to use one DVD per per city, for 3 or four DVDs total, and maybe four DVD swaps per player during the entire game play experience). As a result, the extra single-disc capacity of the PS3 drive will not translate into noticably improved gameplay for most genres.

You'd have to have a genre that was both data heavy, and didn't have the concept of levels, or areas. Or maybe had two competing sources of data. So maybe racing games, which have both car models and cities. In that case the best thing for Xbox to do is use the hard disk as a cache. That might greatly improve the experience for that kind of game. (You'd cache the cars that you "own", and still swap discs for the city data.)

Remember when PSP and DS came out, how everyone said the DS was doomed, because it didn't have the superior specs? But look at the how things have turned out -- the superior specs aren't translating into fun games.

How can you look at that recent experience and say the Xbox 360 is doomed? You just can't tell for sure.
posted by JackPalevichSeptember 3, 2005 at 11:12 [ e ]
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