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

This site is gay, your all gay little butthurt children. OMG!!!111 PS3 PWNZZ j00001!1111111oneone

Back in the early 90's one of my favorite PC games was Privateer - based in the Wing Commander Universe. The game and expansion took a rediculous 40 megabyges on about 25 3.5 inch disks. The more discs/CDs/DVDs etc.. the better! If Microsoft needs to compete with higher storage Discs, they can just create more like in the final years of 3.5 discs before CDs became mainstream.

"And using multiple discs will work *only* for linear games."

what? what on earth does that mean? non-linear == dynamic. do you not understand dynamic content -- content created on the fly? that's precisely the perfect fit for procedurally generated content.

that's exactly people like wil wright's bag, man. that's the whole point of 'next gen.' people get all hung up on 720p or 1080p (not that they're not important, mind you) and they forget that 'next gen' means more than graphics.

i mean, what's the world coming to when the kings of huge, custom, hand-built content (bethesda) are relying on procedural content and dynamic ai? not to save space, that's for sure.

disc space is a non-issue -- for games. movies is a different matter altogether.

even to give you argument the very small amount of credit it deserves, you'd cache all of your non-dynamic 'non-linear' content on the hard drive. no disc swapping needed.

"Say goodbye to huge non-linear games."
yeah. whatever.

more like:
"i don't understand game development."

you're turn, nick.

m3mnoch.

bd: check that. to be fair, it's more like:
"i don't understand MODERN game development."

m3mnoch.

Our argument is flawed from the beginning as Microsoft had no choice as neither BluRay or HD-DVD were anywhere near ready when they started to production on the Xbox-360.
Funny how we all forget that Microsoft is in the software business.

"m3mnoch":

You clearly forgot what a "non-linear" game is, as opposed to an exclusively dynamic game. None of the Zeldas, or the GTAs "are dinamic", or are they, "tech savvy" guy?

Something we know about future dynamic games, is that Revolution will use that technology a lot, which of course will help for lowering the size of games; I don't know how the patent that nintendo holds for this kind of games will have an effect on 360, but you can do the math I hope.

Still, 360 is disadvantaged compared to both consoles (storagewise), and you can't count on every game being able to create content dinamically. Those games that are huge and that can't be made to appear like dinamic games will not appear on the 360 unless they sell HD-DVD games for 360 and make big hard drives the standard for consoles. Oh wait, it's too late already.

Disregarding all this technical bullshit, it's amazing to see how everyone (or not everyone, but we know who is doing it) starts rationalizing "maybe you can add more discs", "maybe you can make new content on the run", "maybe...". All speculation, no proof.

Fact: Developers are already having trouble with the 360 disc space.

Fact: PS3 has plenty of disc space to make games that could occupy up to 6 DVD discs.

Fact: Even the revolution requires less disc space than the 360, so it will come out less affected.

360 might as well compensate with its relatively excellent development tools.

On a final note, just as I don't understand "Modern game development" (as opposed to Classic game development I assume?), you won't understand most of the points I mentioned above, since you think that games are either linear, or dynamic, as opposed to non-dynamic non-linear which don't fit in your world.

Now I see clearly why you think "you're turn, nick" means the same as "your turn, Nick".

if people think MS doesnt know what there doing then you have another thing coming lets face it, there out to get are money and when a lot of money is involved then the stakes are high, so they had to have a good reason not to go with a next gen drive

core238: Good points; I could've very well been playing my 360 while writing all of that and this reply. However, I enjoy debate and trying to inform others, so it’s a type of “fun” for me I suppose. You’re right that going back and changing the medium is not possible, but it is possible to inform people (at least those willing to listen) about why it’s not such a big deal.

m3mnoch: You reminded me of something about FMVs. The millions that are spent on creating CG movies for certain games could be put into improving the game’s overall art assets instead. CG doesn’t come free to developers and a lot of times they’ll outsource the work to another company and end up spending a lot of cash on it. Hiring more quality artists for their company would be money well spent and there is plenty of art talent just vying to get into the game industry.

DankLogic: First off, drop the act. You are not a game developer and if you are then you’re quite inexperienced. You do remember that you linked to your site, correct? According to it, you’re still in college, program in C++, portfolio contains only OpenGL work, have ample retail experience and enjoy web design (which I have to say, nice site). At best, this puts you as a low level intern and at worst you’re a flat out liar. Oh and the only software company you’ve worked for has an out of service website.

I’m not saying that you’re not a smart guy, you very well could be, but your posing and comments in posts doesn’t speak well of you. You remark that we’ve been compressing textures since the NES – what does that have to do with anything? Cars have had engines since 1886; I’ll race my 2005 SLK against your 1905 Renault, let’s see who wins. Then you say that game developers shouldn’t have to worry about disc usage? How silly.

Are you, at all, taking into consideration the need to stream from disc, have fast seek times, load data into memory, and so on? If you are, then you could sure fool me. Like it or not, the disc drive is a “technical ability” of the system. Before you shove your foot in your mouth, PS3’s disc drive will likely be slower thanks to it being a first generation BluRay device. The point is, developers should be thinking about game size from the start and not only for storage reasons – a game developer would know that.

You try to make it seem like a programmer has to sit there and compress all of the artist work themselves by hand. What’s the point of that? You write your tools pipeline, the artists use your tools; if you’ve done your job writing good tools, producing highly compressed assets isn’t very hard for the artist. And also, I’m not sure about OpenGL, but most texture compression that I’ve seen – if used in the proper circumstances – provides near-lossless results.

bd: See above. You’re really showing that you:

1. Don’t bother to read posts longer than 3 paragraphs
2. Don’t have a clue about game development.
3. Hear what you want to hear.

HighDef Edition: Very true. I suppose people are trying to say that Microsoft should have waited. Everybody should realize that Microsoft knew what they could’ve waited for and decided not to. Like I said earlier, it’s the job of hundreds to simulate situations and come up with solutions for them.

bd: Microsoft holds patents on Procedural Synthesis, if that’s what you’re talking about. Here are two of them.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=2&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=GPU&s2=console&OS=GPU+AND+console&RS=GPU+AND+console

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050099417&OS=20050099417&RS=20050099417

I don’t think you get it. You don’t need a “dynamic game” to have dynamic content. Halo 3 could have dynamic content; implementation of dynamic object creation is not dependant on a game’s design or genre. Developers have very powerful tools in their hands that assist them in doing all of this so it’s safe to say that they will make use of it. You would be surprised at how persuasive publishers can be.

Technical bull, is it? Just because you don’t understand it doesn’t mean it’s lies or cover-ups. Do you want to play the fact game? Oh I see that you’ve already started, well let me explicitly label some facts for you.

Fact: You can generate content dynamically as the game is running. Yes, it is a FACT, not technical bs.

Fact: You can break a game up onto multiple discs, there’s no question about that – at all.

Fact: Developers have ways to deal with the storage medium effectively, intelligently, and elegantly if they apply the knowledge provided to them. On top of saving space, certain methods may prove to be quicker than accessing predefined content from a disc.

Fact: Making statements about a console that has yet to be publicly unveiled is not a fact, it is speculation. You keep running back to your “SD takes less than HD” argument, which holds little water as previously stated. Game assets take up disc space, not the resolution games are rendered at. As stated, there are ways to create assets using very little disc space.

The Xbox 360 does have excellent development tools; every developer except Sony will tell you that. Microsoft provided excellent tools many months ago, so they’ve already “compensated” for what you consider to be their weakness. Now developers have to take advantage of that and out of all the developers signed up for the platform, there are only a few making noise. To me, that says that they’ve got to more effectively use the technologies provided to them, simple as that.

I don’t expect you’ll ever change, bd; you are quite engrained in hating the Xbox 360, no matter how many facts are provided to you. Oh, and before you start ranting, don’t bother to say that you have or plan to get a 360 or that you just wish it was a better product or any of the other bs you spew. You like Sony and/or Nintendo, period. That’s great, to each his own, but stop being Sony’s tool and spreading FUD about something you haven’t the SLIGHTEST clue about.

Nick

bd:

look dude. first of all, there are places for some pedantic grammarian (http://redwing.hutman.net/~mreed/warriorshtm/grammarian.htm) to rear his ugly, unwanted head -- intelligent discussion isn't one of them. try to keep up with the conversation at hand and not simply rely on your penchant for trolling.

second, you proved my point on you not knowing anything about modern game design. of course gta and zelda aren't dynamic. have you looked at the horsepower required to become so? ask them (the developers), however, if they'd have rather spent the same amount of dev money on 10 low-level designers doing rote tasks such as applying tree models and varying stone textures and dirt and grunge across levels or if they'd have rather paid 5 programmers to automate the process? especially if it was a technology they could leverage for they're (<-- just for you) next game? of course not. could procedural content and dynamic ai exist on an n64? maybe in some form, but not to the extent we're talking about today. thus, necessitating "modern."

the patent nintendo holds? i'm not really sure we're on the same page here. last time i checked, which was now, of course, microsoft held a patent for procedural synthisis approved last december. so, what are you talking about?

"Fact: Developers are already having trouble with the 360 disc space."
er. you mean, "opinion." nothing i've read so far has said anything like "we're having problems." it's been narcissistic dorks (tho, talented narcissistic dorks) talking about "pre-rendered movies" and "quality acceptable to us." itagaki, with a game engine like yours, you'd think you could manage some in game cutscenes. especially since you can't tell the difference between the pre-rendered video and the actual game.... dude -- back away from the 2 gig pre-rendered cut scene for god's sake. give us some interaction. have you played f.e.a.r.? awesome, awesome interstitials. pre-rendered cut scenes != next gen.

the other two facts? sure. whatever. not that they matter a bit to xbox 360 devs.

on to the non-linear dynamic and non-linear non-dynamic thing. sorry that i didn't specifically point it out. i had assumed some inferring on your part. covered that one with the "costs too much to develop a 30gb game" bit earlier.

follow me now -- terribly stereo-typed generalizations ahead. today's xbox games run about 5 gigs. that 5 gigs of data costs about $10 million to make. multiply that times 6 to get to 30 gigs of data at $60 million. not likely to happen. afterall, there is no "res up" button. hi res geometry, textures, particles, everything needs to be created.

you can't forecast out non-linear (multiple path, branching stories, etc) non-dynamic (the developers handled all instances of possible animation, geometry and textures) to that level without breaking the bank. going forward, some level of dynamic, procedural content is necessary.

like i said, if bethesda is going down that road, you know there's no other way.

so, maybe you have something meaningful to say other than some snarky "hahahaha! you used the word 'dude!' you must be a moron!" comment, i'm here and game to hear it. otherwise, stfu.

m3mnoch.

nick: funny. i thought i was the only one who looked at danklogic's links.

dank: no pretense necessary, man. it's just fine to have an informed opinion. the game developer community for sure needs fresh outlooks. tho, nick's right. pretending to be a dev doesn't do anything but make you look like a schmuck and piss real dev's off. kinda like some dork you met calls himself a "webmaster" because he can "program" html.

you can't help but cringe at that.

ship product first, then, welcome to the club.

m3mnoch.

do the math: 4 discs!! this game must be at least 4 times better than all the others on a single disc.

or?

Elder Scrolls should be a very extense game, because of the multi-option caracter based game, but i think if it uses 4 DVD-9 discs must be as said in the posts to the misuse of xbox 360 hardware and compresion capabilities.

as J allard says, if developers use propertly the xbox 360 hardware capabilities, the must not be any problem about the storage capacity on DVD-9 , because of the use of Procedural Syntesis, the geometry (3d models), Textures and movement patterns are compressed, so it's size is less than normal, Shoud be 1/6-1/2.

everything without sacrifying system resources. learn more at:
http://arstechnica.com/articles/paedia/cpu/xbox360-1.ars

Don't worry, if this generation is any indication of Microsoft's plans, in which they debuted their console last, and drove it into obscolescence first, the next generation won't be in 2010, it'll probably come in 2007. Hurray for fleecing the consumer! Hurray for wasting millions of dollars to ruin yet another market!

bd: See above. You’re really showing that you:

”1. Don’t bother to read posts longer than 3 paragraphs “

Why would I bother to read something that has nothing to do with this thread from every guy that considers himself tech savvy?

”2. Don’t have a clue about game development.”

Oh really? Why is that? Because you are making the false assumption that I don’t know anything about dynamic programming because I chose to disregard your technical babbling, which could have rather been because it has at best little, at worst nothing to do with this thread?

”3. Hear what you want to hear.”

Whatever.

“bd: Microsoft holds patents on Procedural Synthesis, if that’s what you’re talking about. Here are two of them.

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=…

http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=…”

And? Who cares?

“I don’t think you get it. You don’t need a “dynamic game” to have dynamic content. Halo 3 could have dynamic content; implementation of dynamic object creation is not dependant on a game’s design or genre.”

Again, you make the assumption that I don’t know anything about programming, disregarding the fact that I could as well study math, computer science and Actuary and just chose to disregard your posts because it doesn’t matter how you can generate content for a game, PS3 and Revolution will have an upper hand when it comes to storage because all the techniques you mention apply to all three companies, thank you very much.

“Developers have very powerful tools in their hands that assist them in doing all of this so it’s safe to say that they will make use of it. You would be surprised at how persuasive publishers can be.”

Ok, moving on.

“Fact: You can generate content dynamically as the game is running. Yes, it is a FACT, not technical bs.”

LOL, and? I already know that, no need to enter into technical bs (read: technicalities are not necessary in this thread, as opposed to “I DON’T UNDERSTAND LOLZ COZ YU MOST BE DA ONLY ONE HERE DAT KNOWS”).
“Fact: You can break a game up onto multiple discs, there’s no question about that – at all.”

“Fact: Developers have ways to deal with the storage medium effectively, intelligently, and elegantly if they apply the knowledge provided to them. On top of saving space, certain methods may prove to be quicker than accessing predefined content from a disc.”

Fact: If you have a universe that might as well need plenty of DVDs (Even when you compress and use dynamical programming; you know, this is next-gen, not just next res, games are supposed to be a big leap, not just half leap from the previous generation, right?) and the game is not linear (read: you don’t have to follow the path that a game tells you, but rather you do whatever the fuck you want to do, just as in Zelda, GTA, etc.), then we’re screwed because they would have to water the game down, or simply cancel it, or add a next-gen drive to the 360 which would make every early 360 owner very happy.

Of course, you could say: “BUT THAT WOULD BE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE LOLZ!!”, so I say: Why give your competitors a chance to make even bigger games (while using similar technologies but being able to add more content to the disc)? That’s something that I didn’t get from Microsoft’s standpoint. Sure, they wanted to save money (ha, you think they wanted to save us some money?), but that’s pretty shortsighted considering they are Microsoft and can spend even more than Sony.

As I said before (in the actual point of the discussion), Microsoft would have raped Sony if they had added HD-DVD. Now it’s gonna be a “fair battle”, sort of even, because one will have advantages the other one won’t have, and viceversa, which sucks.

“Fact: Making statements about a console that has yet to be publicly unveiled is not a fact, it is speculation. You keep running back to your “SD takes less than HD” argument, which holds little water as previously stated. Game assets take up disc space, not the resolution games are rendered at. As stated, there are ways to create assets using very little disc space.”

Ho-hum, “I keep running back to my” whatever dude, that’s not the only thing I said, that’s on top of everything else, and you criticize me for disregarding your posts when my comments are directly related to this discussion. You are also making statements about how developers will be able to solve 360’s problems when you have no idea what’s going on with Itakagi or Mizuguchi or any other developer that is having problems (as in facts, not opinions memnoch) with it despite applying everything you say they can do. After all, they surely know more about that than some Amateur Joystiq posters, don’t you think?

“The Xbox 360 does have excellent development tools; every developer except Sony will tell you that. Microsoft provided excellent tools many months ago, so they’ve already “compensated” for what you consider to be their weakness.”

That’s exactly what I said I was hoping for, no need to repeat it.

“Now developers have to take advantage of that and out of all the developers signed up for the platform, there are only a few making noise.”

Ok, umm. If two exclusive 360 developers are “making noise” when the round has barely started, you think that speaks great about a single console?

“ To me, that says that they’ve got to more effectively use the technologies provided to them, simple as that.”

To me, it says that the 360 could face some unfortunate watered down games. Let’s just hope it doesn’t happen.

“I don’t expect you’ll ever change, bd; you are quite engrained in hating the Xbox 360, no matter how many facts are provided to you. Oh, and before you start ranting, don’t bother to say that you have or plan to get a 360 or that you just wish it was a better product or any of the other bs you spew. You like Sony and/or Nintendo, period. That’s great, to each his own, but stop being Sony’s tool and spreading FUD about something you haven’t the SLIGHTEST clue about.”

Umm, ok. So I criticize Microsoft for not adding stuff for a product I still want, as opposed to… Oh wait, I can’t say it because it’s BS!! Oh my god! Anyway, I’m criticizing Microsoft for their lack of sight because I wish the 360 would have HD-DVD. Also, I guess I “hate 360”, despite the machine has done nothing to me, and that I want the following games:

Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Gears of War, Halo 3, Dead Rising, and a few fighting games combined with LIVE.

I guess you can regard my criticism as fanboyism despite all that, call me a “Sony and Nintendo” fanboy and not sound like a huge hypocrite at the same time when your website is “Halodev”.

The difference is that I’m suggesting something bad that may happen with the 360 games, and you are taking for granted that it won’t. Also, more space is always better, especially for developers. You know, “just in case”, so the noise stops.

i love lamp!!!

er. sorry. for a minute there, i thought this thread was just about spewing randomness. my appologies. i'll try not to let it happen again.

seriously, bd, what are you talking about? your reply just adds up to a big steaming pile of whiny, arbitrary comments about god knows what.

for example: "Because you are making the false assumption that I don’t know anything about dynamic programming because I chose to disregard your technical babbling, which could have rather been because it has at best little, at worst nothing to do with this thread?"

um. no, dude.
a) this is a technical thread. we're talking about next gen games and the contrarian fact that they won't need as much disc space because of the raw horsepower driving the console. i mean, damn, it doesn't get geekier than blu-ray and hd-dvd, for god's sake.

b) if it was a false assumption that you don't know anything about game programming, by all means, let us know why. looking for some "money where the mouth is" action here. what makes you think you know about "dynamic programming?" aside from the point that not a single programmer out there will refer to their craft as dynamic programming. that's like "wet water." seems to me like the assumption isn't so false after all.

and this gem about microsoft's patents: "And? Who cares?"

my god, man! you brought it up!!! gonna have to start calling you jack thompson here in a few minutes. http://www.vgcats.com/jack.php

"it doesn’t matter how you can generate content for a game, PS3 and Revolution will have an upper hand when it comes to storage because all the techniques you mention apply to all three companies, thank you very much."

alright. now, we're talking with some meat. the other two platforms will have an upper hand how? the cell processor has hardware support for procedural synthesis? nope. the revolution probably will. doesn't really matter tho, because all 3 consoles have plenty of power to get it done with procedural geometry and the like. so, if sony has this big, fat disc with less, not more content on it.... (because they are using a technique like ms's procedural synthesis) well. what good is that? i mean, doesn't it say something when both nintendo and microsoft choose dvd-9 over hd-dvd and blu-ray?

sounds like a lot of huff about nothing to me. sounds like sony is betting the farm on blu-ray. i wonder what will happen if the spec isn't ratified when the ps3 goes into production. not that i think that will happen, but, would they delay their launch? going from first to the party to last to the party sounds like a good way to piss away any kind of market share lead to me.

(note what happened there, bd. opinion, followed up with reasoning -- reasoning justifying my opinion. just thought i'd help you with your future posts. i love lamp!)

...

...

...

sorry. just trying to make sense of this next jumble you have written down. you know, the part that starts with "Fact: If you have a universe..." and ends with "...viceversa, which sucks."

i believe what you're saying is that if we (generalized we, not literally me and my two dogs here next to me) have a gigantic in-game universe, we will have to water down the game content because of the disc size. sony has no such problem, so they are at an advantage because they have blu-ray.

the answer in that lies with market share. bizarre, yes, but that's where it is. microsoft is going to win the next console war solely and completely because of sony's avid support of blu-ray. here's why:

forecast out one year -- content on the 360 isn't suffering due to bloat because of this fancy procedural synthesis concept. plain ol' dvds are holding up just fine. (god help us if a game or two busts out onto 2 dvds) because of all the inexpensive hardware decisions, dvd being just one, microsoft is able to drop their price for the premium system to $299. just in time for the ps3 to debut at $399 or $499 depending on who you believe. (ow... blu-ray... expensive...) now, last time around, the gamecube hung into the race even with a poor breadth of software simply because of price point. and then, it was only by $50. what do you think little johnny (be serious, we hardcore don't make or break a generation.... *cough* dreamcast *cough*) is going to have under the christmas tree? a $500 ps3 or a $300 xbox 360? sure, sony could drop the price of the ps3 to something more competitive, like, $350, but, they don't have the deep pockets microsoft has. can you imagine sony trying to write off the $3 billion loss over the last few years? trojan horse for the living room or not, they can't sustain those kinds of losses.

my point is, no, it doesn't matter how much content you have, you can always span discs. and, no, sony's reliance on blu-ray is not an advantage, it's a disadvantage.

next.

oh, the "fact" you had about developers being in a bind over the max size of content on the disc? like i said earlier, looking for some justification here. one or maybe two developers out of the 300+ (i'm pretty sure i read 300+ somewhere. if not, they still have a crap-ton of developers on board) signed on to develop for the 360 really doesn't do it for me. from what i heard at e3 and gdc, it was all about the hard drive. the infamous hard drive to memory tradeoff. which, actually makes sense. developers can work around an absent hard drive, especially since most folks will have one anyway or get one as soon as some big game comes out that requires it. you just can't work around less memory. 512 on a console pwns.

the result: yeah, it's still your opinion about the disc size being a problem. (must resist... too easy... phallic!!! okay. better now....)


then there's your badge of honor, that, yes, you do too like the xbox:

"Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Gears of War, Halo 3, Dead Rising, and a few fighting games combined with LIVE."

i'm assuming those are exclusive 360 games you're excited for? you realize that every single one of those games is coming out on dvd-9, right?

m3mnoch.

bd: If you fail to see how my posts are related to this thread, then there’s no hope for you. The entire point of my posts were to explain why the same rules don’t apply this generation as they did last generation to art assets in games. Some are still applicable but you have to take into account new technologies and advancements. I consider myself informed, nothing more.

I stated that you have no clue about game development because posts you’ve made in this thread and all around Joystiq make that abundantly clear. I’m not making “false assumptions” – I’m reading what you write and noticing elementary mistakes in your logic and certain statements you agree to. Like I said, my posts have been on topic and relevant through and through; if you don’t like “technical babbling” go to Gamespot.

Who cares? You were the one stating Nintendo held patents on dynamic games: “I don't know how the patent that nintendo holds for this kind of games will have an effect on 360, but you can do the math I hope.” So I guess I should ask you; who cares? Notice how I added the, “if that’s what you’re talking about,” part to my sentence? Read next time.

You’re right that both Sony and Nintendo will have various compression technologies available to their developers. Since Microsoft holds the patent on PS though, they’ll have to find another approach to that. Also, Microsoft has a much, much stronger software background than both Sony and Nintendo. Microsoft created DirectX and Windows Media; they’ve got a lot of previous experience in compression algorithms and designing solid APIs.

As for the PS3 and Revolution automatically getting an upper hand because of storage capacities, I think that’s something too vague to say. You can give an artist a huge warehouse for him to display his works, but that doesn’t mean he’ll use most of that space or that his art will be better because he used all of that space. Give the artist a nice, well designed art gallery; it’s smaller but accommodates his needs well and he can show off just as much nice work by doing some planning.

I’m just giving facts as you did. Technology solves the space “issue,” that’s something that’s relative to this thread. I like how whenever there’s some news about Sony doing something foolish with the PS3 everybody claims it’s Microsoft’s marketing. How about Sony’s marketing department? Think they’re saints? You know, spreading FUD about the future of Xbox 360 games not fitting on one disc sounds like a good marketing tactic to push BluRay to me.

To make a game universe as big as the one you’re proposing would take a LOT of development: time, money, and a generous publisher. It could happen, sure; but the vast majority of game development companies will not have the resources necessary to make a game such as that possible. You keep ignoring the fact that the more art and the larger the world, the more development costs are required to make the game. Why do you think Half-Life 2 cost millions more dollars to make than SMB 3?

By the time we do see games that are of the magnitude you speak of roll along from more than just a few companies, we’ll probably be at the third generation Xbox – this is a fact for all platforms. For the few games that are this huge, I’m sure smart design could divide the content up into multiple discs without it being an issue. Developers – designers, programmers, and artists – are problem solvers and when faced with a rare challenge they find some way to deal with it.

So the point of this discussion is to dwell on the unchangeable past? That’s what you’re saying, basically. I thought the point of this discussion was to address how developers could handle medium in an intelligent way instead of crying for more space so they don’t need to exercise good development practices. You’re assuming that if Microsoft included an HD-DVD drive that it would’ve given them a huge leg-up on Sony, but there’s nothing to support that – no HD-DVDs are on sale. And guess what, we’ll never know!

Most of the content in my posts answers all your other points. You’ve run back to saying how HD takes a ton more disc space than SD a few times, thus why I said that. Games are not movies; the experience is not fixed to a set number of hours that requires a specific number of MB/sec so that a certain image quality can be maintained. Numerous points have been made on this issue, go back and read if you want some insight.

I don’t have to know what’s going on with a specific developer to say that they have the tools in front of them to solve their space issues. The comments those developers made were quick blurbs they said in interviews, not some long speech about how their games are ever so limited because of their choice to be part of the Xbox 360 platform. You can give an artist the best tools in the world, but that doesn’t mean he will use them all properly at first.

Do you think it speaks great about Sony that so many developers (not just one or two) are making noise about their horrible development tools and disgustingly high base game development costs? Yes, a few developers have commented about being nervous about possible limitations incurred from the DVD medium; however, that doesn’t mean they have yet implemented space saving techniques in their games. The Xbox 360 is new hardware, it takes time to understand and get used to.

So you’re complaining that they didn’t put in something that you wanted in, even though nothing can be done about it now; that’s productive. Regardless of it being something that you as an individual wanted, that doesn’t mean the mass-market wants nor needs it yet. You act like Microsoft must not have known about HD-DVD and they were “short sighted,” yet you fail to acknowledge or understand that certain types of employees are paid to analyze what the majority of consumers wants.

Maybe you don’t intrinsically hate the Xbox 360 and maybe you really want one and it’s games. However, complaining about unchangeable facts of the product will do nothing and the way you constantly disparage Microsoft, you sure come off sounding like an M “$” hater for no apparent reason. You make it seem because the Xbox 360 doesn’t serve your every little desire that it’s a worthless piece of metal and plastic to everybody else.

And yes, I may run HaloDev, but that hardly makes me a fanboy of anything but the game. I own a PS2 and I will buy a Revolution for all of the old school games I love and miss so (except for the terrible PC clones of them). I’m still waiting to see a PS3 game with gameplay before I decide if I want to pick one up, no point in owning a console if there aren’t any games you want on it.

Something bad may happen, yes; however, I’m trying to point out that it isn’t going to be something that’s happening with every game on the system. Games needing to be on two discs will likely be the rarity. And yeah, it’s great to give developers lots of space to put their work on, but that can cause some lazy development habits and discourage optimization for the hardware and load times.

Nick

“a) this is a technical thread.”

For technical threads go to arstechnica. This is a hardcore gaming (sort of) site, not a programmer, much less a hardware site. I don’t see joystiq talking about RAM, shaders and pipelines, I only see them talking about consoles, games, and upcoming technologies (without getting into too much details”.

”b) if it was a false assumption that you … isn't so false after all.”

So if I refer to it as dynamic programming, I cease knowing how dynamic games work? LOL, whatever. I guess we are not talking about randomly generated scenarios on games, we are talking about name calling on programming techniques. My bad.

”alright. now, we're talking with some meat. the other two platforms will have an upper hand how? the cell processor has hardware support for procedural synthesis? nope.”

So, in terms of microprocessors, you think the Cell can’t do something like that or better? OK

“the revolution probably… choose dvd-9 over hd-dvd and blu-ray?”

Nintendo doesn’t need a next-gen disc as much as 360 (I’m not saying they are starving for it, I’m saying it would have been better). Also, Balmer did mention “You think we’re gonna stay a whole gen without a next-gen disc?”, coming from Billy’s right hand, I’d say these are pretty strong words, just like when we heard that Dreamcast would evolve into a DVD player (yeah right).

”sounds like a l….. lead to me.”

Of course they are betting the farm. It’s a lot of risk, and naturally a lot of profit for the amount of risk. If you ask me, of course I wouldn’t invest in them, they could as well die. That’s why I say that Microsoft would have made a great move by adding an HD-DVD. An already weak Sony would have been weaker, and the console war would have ended even before it started.

”(note what happened there, bd. opinion, followed up with reasoning -- reasoning justifying my opinion. just thought i'd help you with your future posts. i love lamp!)”

LOL, yeah, so I assume I can’t back my claims with the fact that a 360 with HD-DVD would have been a lot better, and that Microsoft would have won easily the console war with one, right? I guess you didn’t read everything I said above. It doesn’t matter how technical you get, I wasn’t even talking about technicalities in the first place. I just said that higher resolutions might add weight to the games, among other things, and both you an Nick came in with a flood of messages, disregarding my “among other things”, and my two main points:

1. 360 with HD-DVD > 360 without HD-DVD. You can’t deny that! You can’t deny you’d like a 360 with HD-DVD games and playback better than one without it.
2. Microsoft would have won the battle easily (and kill sony while at it) if they have added HD-DVD. (Why? Read everything I posted above)


”the answer in that lies …here's why:”

Thank you analyst, I’ll tell everyone to follow your wise advice.

”forecast out one year -- content on the 360 isn't suffering due to bloat because of this fancy procedural … you believe. (ow... blu-ray... expensive...)”

Easy analyst, you are going fast forward. A lot of (professional) analysts with better reasoning than yours have said that PS3 will win. Truth is, nobody knows what will happen. I’m gonna get all three consoles, while you are gonna get just the 360 (apparently), so keep ranting. I’m just saying it was a mistake and that I’d prefer if it had HD-DVD and you 360 lunatics go apeshit.

“ now, last time around, the gamecube hung into the race even with a poor breadth of software simply because of price point. and then, it was only by $50.”

And I wonder why it got so much 3rd party support. Hell, some sports titles even look worse on Gamecube than on PS2, even when the cube has more raw power than the PS2. I wonder why that is.

“what do you think little … xbox 360?”

We don’t even know the price yet, nor how expensive will it be, so that’s a mute, but assuming it’s true, I’ll grant you that, only because in America people apparently want to get less out of their buck. What will a High Definition user prefer, a High def movie player or a High def game player?

“ sure, sony could … kinds of losses.”

You don’t know anything about this. It’s too early to tell. Sony will make a loss on the consoles anyway. Also, if Microsoft has the pockets, why didn’t the assholes give us an HD-DVD? Wouldn’t that have made it an even more delicious apple to compete, or overwhelm both PS3 and Blu-ray?


”my point is, no, it doesn't matter how much content you have, you can always span discs. and, no, sony's reliance on blu-ray is not an advantage, it's a disadvantage.”

Yeah right; just as the dreamcast was cheaper because it didn’t have DVD discs and you could have spanned GDs. Also, then Revolution has an advantage against both consoles because it doesn’t display High Definition graphics, making it cheaper for everyone, developers and consumers, so they win. I guess people are ignorant, idiots or both for considering more storage better because Blu-ray *might* be costly in the beginning, according to some analysts, as opposed to Sony, which is a liar of course, because they are evil liars and Microsoft is an angel that give us the big X.

”oh, the "fact" you …doesn't do it for me.”

Well, if two of the most important developers talk about it when the console race has barely begun, it appears to be a big deal. Itakagi and Mizuguchi. We are not talking about some EA sports developer here.

“from what i heard at e3… less memory. 512 on a console pwns.”

Exactly, but the dumbasses at Microsoft decided to detach their once standard hard drive, making it even more difficult for programmers.

”the result: yeah, it's still your opinion about the disc size being a problem. (must resist... too easy... phallic!!! okay. better now....)”

OK, it is not a problem. You win. Everyone is a crazy idiot (including important developers) except you. Oh, and except nick. God, you two must be Kojima or Miyamoto to pwn those developers. Well, at least you are admitting that the 360 won’t have enough power to need a Next-gen drive. So maybe people aren’t that wrong when calling it 1.5. Or who knows, maybe it is powerful but it won’t need the next-gen drive, as the next-box will come out in early 2009!

”then there's your badge of honor, that, yes, you do too like the xbox:”

When did I say I don’t? For Xbox fanboys you can’t criticize Xbox if you don’t want to appear like a Sony/Nintendo fanboy. Why is it so bad to criticize a system? Your response is the exact same response as the Nintendo and Sony fanboy response:

“ITS NOT THAT IMPORTANT LOLZ!”

For 360 is the disc space, for PS3 is the online service, and for Revolution the High Definition, when the matter of fact is, everything matters. Why else do you think I’m gonna be buying the cross-platform fighting games for 360 instead of PS3? Why else do you think I’m gonna be buying the non-online cross platform games for PS3? Why else do you think I’m gonna be buying the FPS and RTS games for the revolution? Everything is important. Oh wait, disc space isn’t.

"Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Gears of War, Halo 3, Dead Rising, and a few fighting games combined with LIVE."

”i'm assuming those are exclusive 360 games you're excited for? you realize that every single one of those games is coming out on dvd-9, right?”

So? Games are liked disregarding their format. My favorite game is Zelda Ocarina of Time, and it comes in a cartridge. I still think the first two RPG games I mentioned could fit more in the Epic category if they were the size of a Blu-ray. Sure, “MULTIPLE DVDS LOLZ!! FF7!!” but the point is having a game that is so big and unbounded that you can go anywhere anytime, and for that you need the game to fit in one disc. OK, so you compress everything on 360 and make it fit on a DVD (assuming it wasn’t already compressed). What if you want to make the game 6 times bigger? Yo

i really like spyro the dragon..any thoughts?

the marathon posts are making my head hurt...

“bd: If you fail to …, nothing more.”

I don’t “fail” to see. I already know that. Still it might not be enough. I say might, you say “it surely will be enough”. I’m not even ensuring anything but you are when the round has barely started. Delightful.

Alright, I was exaggerating at saying that it has "nothing" to do with this thread. My point was that the 360 could have benefited more from using HD-DVD since the beginning.

”I stated that you have no clue …..go to Gamespot.”

LOL, nick, how is my logic faulty? Just because I don't agree with you or because we have yet to see how much the current-gen disc has an effect on 360, as opposed to accepting the universal truth that the 360 might succeed at having a 100 GB game compressed on a single DVD-9? I'm saying the 360 might not succeed at that, and you are saying that it WILL, when we both know the same about upcoming games. So whose logic is faulty? I mean, I've never even talked about game development on any other thread. Just because I don't mention algorithms on every thread it doesn't mean I don't know anything about it, but great tactic though: Calling someone ignorant to support your own points. Worthless.

”Who cares? You … my sentence? Read next time.”

It was an example, and ultimately nobody cares unless we see results.

”You’re right that both Sony and … in compression algorithms and designing solid APIs.”

Yeah, and that’s why PS2 lost this round, because they were the hardest to develop for.

”As for the PS3 and Revolution… some planning.”

Well, games have evolved from pong, to pac-man, to Mario bros, to Zelda 64, to Final Fantasy XI. So sure, I might be kind impressed with a small painting because it’s great, but a huge church will astound me. I’m not saying every developer will use that much space, but some will and Microsoft might say “damn, we could have had that too but we were too stubborn”.

”I’m just giving facts as you… BluRay to me.”

And Microsoft is pushing the Media Center and their pwnage of the living room, so it’s the same. Why don’t we stop hating companies for a change? I haven’t said anything, it’s just amazing how Xbox fanboys criticize Sony for being “evil” when Xbox is manufactured by Microsoft.

”To make a game universe as big… dollars to make than SMB 3?”

And wouldn’t technology still help developers to make games huge quickly while saving costs? I’m not saying every developer will, I’m saying some will.

”By the time we do see games that … fact for all platforms.”

Yes, in early 2009 (Xbox 460 or whatever). Don’t you think Microsoft could have beaten Sony easily if they had chosen HD-DVD? I mean, you people are ensuring Microsoft will win, so if they win, why would Blu-ray become a standard? If it does, then Xbox III with Blu-ray would be helping Sony, so the console war would take a long ass time for them to finish.

“So the point of this discussion is to dwell … we’ll never know!”

And Microsoft couldn’t have pushed the envelope off the HD-DVD to make it come out first? They are Microsoft! I’m sure they can; or could have.

”Most of the content… times, thus why I said that.”

And I said that was one among most things, not the only thing that matters, but anyway… you (and the other guy) focused only on that.

“Games are not… if you want some insight.”

I knew that too. That’s why a final fantasy could last 50 hours or more on a disc that can handle “only” 3 hours (give or take) of video. God we are wasting so much time with this. The reason I don’t go into technical detail is because it’s not necessary to mention.


”I don’t have to know…t mean he will use them all properly at first.”

Downplaying the 360 developers’ comments. Whatever.


”Do you think it speaks great…. understand and get used to.”

Ok, so the comments against 360 don’t count, but the ones against PS3 count. Check that. Why don’t we downplay the PS3 rumors about its difficulty to develop for too? After all, the few developers that said something bad also said “quick blurbs”, and they were sucking Microsoft’s tit in the first place (Itakagi, Carmack, Rain, Half Life’s creator, etcetera). Besides, most developers are in love with Revolution, so that must mean that the Revolution will be first place, right?


”So you’re complaining…. it now; that’s productive.”

Indeed, I love your sarcasm too. You know, why complain about anything then? What’s done is done, right? No need to criticize politicians because what’s done is done, and so on, it applies to everything that is done already. Screw free speech, there’s no point in complaining.

“Regardless of it being something that you as an individual wanted, that doesn’t mean the mass-market wants nor needs it yet.”

And when High Definition TVs become cheaper and HD-DVD players come out, people won’t want it? Cool. Then why even bother with bragging about High Definition in the first place? Microsoft made High definition famous, they could have made the same for HD-DVD.

“ You act like Microsoft…. majority of consumers wants.”

I “fail” to see how Microsoft pays to employees for making an analysis? LOL, so does Nintendo and Sony, and they are all taking different paths. So I must assume the best is Microsoft because it's taking the "middle of the road" (to not say mediocre) approach. As opposed to when they launched their Xbox 1, right? You would have told me exactly the same "Microsoft has everything planned, so it must be fine". If I remember well, Microsoft did worse than any other console maker last round, so there’s no reason to think that “THIS TIME THEY ARE DOING GREAT LOLZ!!!” unless I want to become an Xbox fanboy.

”Maybe you don’t…. metal and plastic to everybody else.”

Or maybe I’m a High Definition enthusiast and I just find it interesting that it supports High definition graphics, but not high definition movies! I mean, wouldn’t you freaking love it if it had HD-DVD playback, besides the upcoming great games?

”And yes, I may run HaloDev, but… you want on it.”

Yeah but you start calling everyone a fanboy and expect not to end up like a giant hypocrite by rationalizing everything and ensuring that the 360 won’t have a problem while coincidentally running HaloDev.

”Something bad may happen, yes; however, I’m trying…. and load times.”

If the dumbasses are too lazy for that, then I guess they are too lazy to make a great game and too lazy to see their games become best sellers, which would automatically make us not give a shit about those games in the first place. I’m just saying that HD-DVD would have been better and you two are all on me.

Now I expect you and memnoch to tell me why it "doesn't matter", but I also expect to hear why it is "better" to keep the same discs as last generation, just as the Sony fanboys will tell me why it doesn't matter and it's better to have a non-unified online service, and just as Nintendo fanboys will tell me that it doesn't matter that High definition isn't supported.

By the way, I also want Killer Instinct 3 for 360 (hopefully it is in the making). You think that animated sequences on the 360 could look as beautiful as cut-scenes for each character when you finish the game? Because it is doubtful that so many cut-scenes could fit, unless they just make animation rendered on the 360 hardware, but I don’t know how great would that look.

For those who keep comparing PC games to console games in terms of space: there's no comparison. Don't compare the number of discs, compare the final size on your hard drive. Battlefield 2 is 3 CDs, but is MASSIVE on your hard drive. PC game content is shipped compressed while console content must be accessible directly from the CD/DVD. Heck, even Placescape: Torment was on 4 CDs when it first released, and only 2 CDs in it's later budget packaging version. Nothing was left out: a better compression system was used for the game content on the CD. It was still the same size installed on your hard drive.

I am a console game developer. I can tell you from experience that fitting onto a DVD can be challenging after a while. When you're trying to raise the bar on graphics or sound, you almost invariably end up increasing your texture resolution, color depth, sampling bitrate, etc. It's not much per texture, maybe, but multiply that by tens of thousands of textures and it adds up. Compound that with the fact that you sometimes CAN'T compress as much as you want if you want to make sure that your content is readily available given the WORST specs for your intended target (meaning, if the laser on the PS2 or XBox is failing). You can't use time to decompress audio, textures, or video on the fly if it's taking 100 more miliseconds to get off the disc. Even on new hardware, we spend a decent amount of time at the end of development trying to optimize placement of files on the disc for fastest reading (make them sequential, put larger files near the center of the disc so that they can take advantage of the faster spin rate, etc). Yes, even the time difference in read speed from the outer edge of the disc to the inner edge is important... if you can't get the data off the disc in x miliseconds, then you can't use compression method Y because it takes an additional Z miliseconds over a slightly less efficient algorithm and you needed that texture streamed off the disc 20 ms ago. Those little time slices begin to add up and annoy the end user. While I agree personally with the arguments for in-game cutscenes and the like, it's ultimately NOT up to me to make that decision. As a developer, it's my job to take what someone ELSE (the game designer) wants and make it happen as closely to their vision as possible, and to stay within budget (so maybe we can't license codec X).

I just wanted to put some of this info out there... there's more to it than "the developer wasn't good enough" or "if Battlefield 2 is only 1 DVD, then no Xbox 360 game can be more than 1 DVD".

nah. i'm done with you. it's like debating an 8 year old. all of your comments are some chandler-esque "i make jokes when i'm uncomfortable" stupid responses.

for example:

"OK, it is not a problem. You win. Everyone is a crazy idiot (including important developers) except you. Oh, and except nick. God, you two must be Kojima or Miyamoto to pwn those developers. Well, at least you are admitting that the 360 won’t have enough power to need a Next-gen drive. So maybe people aren’t that wrong when calling it 1.5. Or who knows, maybe it is powerful but it won’t need the next-gen drive, as the next-box will come out in early 2009!"

what in god's name is that? who was talking about us being smarter than developers? that's not a response addressing the fact i pointed out about microsoft going to the developer community before they even put the thing into production asking them what they wanted. they said we want ram more than a hard drive and a hard drive more than disc space. they chose the features of the xbox 360.

if you actually knew anything about software development, you'd know that both sony and nintendo have a long history of combative relationships with their developers. microsoft, on the other hand, works harder than any other company i know of to put the best tools possible in developers' hands. they understand that to make a platform, you have to have deep third party support. their main business is about building platforms.

that's why they, unlike sony and nintendo, solicited developer opinion on their hardware.

dude. it's not us pwning the developers, it's the developers pwning you. every time you open your mouth, you just make it painfully obvious how little you know about game development.

and, then, your generalist statement, "Only stubborn idiots think that more is worse."

have you never heard of the whole "quality, not quantity" thing? let's see:

blu-ray/hd-dvd pros:
1) it's big so you can fit giant games no developer in the past has ever had the resources to fill on it -- just in case you need it.
2) it's the sole differentiator between the ps3 and the 360.

blu-ray/hd-dvd cons:
1) it's untested and not yet a ratified standard, unlike dvd-9.
2) spanning content across discs has been done in the industry forever so, the disc space isn't critical.
3) it's crazy more expensive than dvd-9, which, wouldn't be a factor if sony had launched a year ahead of the 360. instead, it's cost is going to be greatly exaggerated because it's the other way around.
4) it's the sole differentiator between the ps3 and the 360. so, if it doesn't work, sony is in the can.

well, then. yep. looking back at that list, i'd still pick dvd-9 for my format for launching a console. maybe, i'd think about hd-dvd or blu-ray if i were getting off the ground in 2007. but, not in '06 and certainly not in '05.

only a STUPID idiot would assume more is better simply because it's more.

and what was that about the dreamcast and dvds? how is that relevant? a dreamcast disc isn't an industry standard. so, let's see. yep. the blu-ray isn't an industry standard either! so, not only is it not even standardized, but it's more expensive to put in the hardware too! thanks for making my point for me. wow. i never thought of that one.

good lord. a goddamn, unthinking 8 year old.

the only reason your still here is your bizarre attraction to aggro. nick and i have stretched out the conversation as far as it can go, i think. you're just turning to jelly now and spouting nonsense.

like i said. nah, i'm done with you. you've spewed trollings and "i'm rubber. you're glue. whatever you say bounces off me and sticks on you!" all over the page. the evidence is there. you just look like some crazy, desperate fool.

makes no difference to me anymore. i made the point i came to make. you can try to goad me back into the conversation all you want. i'm tired of you. if i wanted to argue with a child, i'd try to get my son to clean his room.

your hemorrhaging is all over the page, so i don't feel the need to stick around.

m3mnoch.

good points, duckpuppy. if you don't mind me asking, what console do you develop for? i was under the impression that the xbox read from the outer edge of the disc and in. specifically to increase those read times.

also, are you excited about the new generation consoles all having multi-threaded cores? does it make sense to have a whole core dedicated to decompression and disc maintenance? i mean, there's enough memory to buffer it, so it should be possible.

just looking for some of your opinions.

m3mnoch.

Does anyone know if for the release of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy, if they were able to fit all three games onto one DVD?

If so, that might tell us quite a bit about older compression technology, which is good news for new compression methods.

This is fun! Isn't this fun? I think it's fun.

Well, I've enjoyed watching this thread grow over the last couple of days- definitely helps me get through an other mundane work week (law firm, very boring).

From a casual gamer perspective, blu-ray does seem like a good thing because of the "more space" issue (casting aside the HD format for movies). However, Nick and m3mnoch have brought up some relevant points that casual gamers tend to overlook. Nevertheless, bd ["bd (formerly b)" and just "b"] may be just as correct about storage space come 2009- regardless of all the compression and codex, more space may be inevitable. Not that using 2 disks is an issue (unless you vehemently abhore PC gaming), but when it comes to bragging rights, which apparently is important for console players, presently PS3 has the upper hand, provided that blu-ray does catch on.

Another point was brought up that 5gigs of gaming is 'x' million dollars, so developers would not make a game much bigger because of costs. Well, maybe by todays standards, but with procedural synthesis, etc., it'll be easier to produce and more cost effect too, so one would conclude (er, assume) programing space size will increase because technology allows them to do so. [Not that I want to give bd a bone as he is typically an ass (see: Ridgeracer thread, PS3 delayed til `07 thread), but he has improved vastly over his counterparts Mark B, Dmitri, Clint, et al.]

But, my magic 8ball is on the fritz, so my future predicting abilities is in a stupor. Msoft didn't screw the pooch with not adding a HD-dvd drive. Sure, there may be a possible minor hassle of swapping disks, but quite frankly, we've been doing it for years and it doesn't bother me- the casual gamer.

grindstone.

you have a fantastic point there -- the casual gamer. we can debate all we want, really, about technology, strategy, marketing tactics, but those casual gamers really don't care. like everyone always says, it's the games, stupid. 5 gigs doesn't automatically make a great game. 50 gigs doesn't automatically make a great game. i mean, hell, look at hexic and geometry wars. not exactly the epitome of "next generation."

in the end, size really doesn't matter at all.

tho, i am really glad we were able to entertain you for a couple days. not that i ever really thought we were "making this an uninteresting thread because too few know what we are talking about."

your other comment reminds me. something else i really keep meaning to mention that really wasn't talked about enough - .kkrieger.

i know they've become the poster boys of procedural synthesis, but, seriously, check it out. nick linked to it earlier.
http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger.html

absolutely unreal. they are a few guys from the demoscene who entered and won a 96k game contest. the entire thing is under 96k. stop and look at that. yes. "kilobytes". as in, you can fit 14 copies of it on a 3.5 inch floppy disk. it ripped like a tidal wave through the game developer community last year.

how crazy is it that 2 screenshots are bigger than the entire game is?
http://kk.kema.at/files/gfx/full4.jpg
http://kk.kema.at/files/gfx/full5.jpg

everything there is procedurally generated. the textures, the sound. the music. and, that size includes the code to run the engine too. all of it totaled weighs in at 96k. who the hell needs 30 gigs?

now, picture that kind of technology with the backing of several million dollars and a couple years of full team development. what kind of on-the-fly content is possible?

hell. why not just generate the entire game - missions, quests, enemies, land, structures? oh. wait. that's what wil wright is doing with spore.

yeah. having all this extra processor available for consoles (people don't realize how much power is wasted on a pc with compatibility issues or even just the base os) is unheard of. previous iterations of consoles just didn't have the stank to pull that off. now we can.

we very much are on the cusp of the next generation of gaming. all platforms, not just the 360. i'm so freakin' excited to see what developers build with this stuff. i mean, look at some of the cool titles out for the xbox 1. it was "the beast" of this generation and that thing is a damn celeron 733.

m3mnoch.

Memnoch, you need to chill, this is hilarious.

“nah. i'm done with you. it's like debating an 8 year old.”

Only one that has actually debated with an 8 year old can tell.


"OK, it is not a problem. You win. Everyone is a crazy idiot (including important developers) except you. Oh, and except nick. God, you two must be Kojima or Miyamoto to pwn those developers. Well, at least you are admitting that the 360 won’t have enough power to need a Next-gen drive. So maybe people aren’t that wrong when calling it 1.5. Or who knows, maybe it is powerful but it won’t need the next-gen drive, as the next-box will come out in early 2009!"

”what in god's name is that? who was talking about us being smarter than developers?”

It’s just that you are thinking that naming the solutions that programmers will use are enough when two of the most important developers are already having problems when fitting a game on a disc. Their words, not mine, look it up, the news are here on Joystiq.

“that's not a response addressing the fact i pointed out about microsoft going to the developer community before they even put the thing into production asking them what they wanted. they said we want ram more than a hard drive and a hard drive more than disc space. they chose the features of the xbox 360.”

What do you want me to respond? Good for them, and isn’t it good to have disc space anyway?

”if you actually knew anything about software development, you'd know that both sony and nintendo have a long history of combative relationships with their developers.”

Actually Nintendo has alleviated that by now, and Sony got many of the developers that Nintendo used to have for having easier/cheaper development.

“microsoft, on the other hand, works harder than any other company i know of to put the best tools possible in developers' hands.”

That’s how they won last round I assume.

“they understand that to make a platform, you have to have deep third party support.”

That’s how they won Japan last time.

”that's why they, unlike sony and nintendo, solicited developer opinion on their hardware.”

So Nintendo didn’t, that’s why they will have the hardest console to develop for right now… Oh wait. Is that what we were talking about anyway? I thought we were talking about HD-DVD
“dude. it's not us pwning the developers, it's the developers pwning you. every time you open your mouth, you just make it painfully obvious how little you know about game development.”

Yeah, Itakagi and Mizuguchi, the ones that want to reserve their comments and the ones that will complain in the future are pwning me.

”and, then, your generalist statement, "Only stubborn idiots think that more is worse."”

Well, so I guess you would choose a console without a Next-gen movie player even if the Next-gen movie player was for free? That was the whole point up there, buddy.

”have you never heard of the whole "quality, not quantity" thing? “

And more space doesn’t mean a game could potentially get more quality?

“let's see:

blu-ray/hd-dvd pros:
1) it's big so you can fit giant games no developer in the past has ever had the resources to fill on it -- just in case you need it.
2) it's the sole differentiator between the ps3 and the 360.”

You can watch high definition movies too. And you can still have 6 times the content, you know, just in case. Sure, few developers will use it, but I’m very eager to see how those few will use it. I would have been very eager to see how a 45 GB (or even 60 GB) game could have been used in a game made by all the Microsoft Game Studios combined to ruin Sony’s shit (An ?-Halo game, per se).

”blu-ray/hd-dvd cons:”

”1) it's untested and not yet a ratified standard, unlike dvd-9.”

The dual layered Blu-ray was already successfully tested by Sony for recording a 1080p “Charlie’s Angels” movie (Shittiest movie ever, by the way). Panasonic is mass-producing Blu-rays already. Microsoft could have pushed the envelope out of HD-DVD to get the format they support earlier than Sony. You didn’t read everything I posted, did you?

”2) spanning content across discs has been done in the industry forever so, the disc space isn't critical.”

For games like Zelda and GTA, it could be. I’m not saying it will be, I’m just saying that every system will exploit their strengths, and that Microsoft could have had even one more strength. Too bad.

”3) it's crazy more expensive than dvd-9, which, wouldn't be a factor if sony had launched a year ahead of the 360. instead, it's cost is going to be greatly exaggerated because it's the other way around.”

Microsoft could have subsidized it to kick the living shit out of Sony. Again, you forgot to read what I wrote above.

”4) it's the sole differentiator between the ps3 and the 360. so, if it doesn't work, sony is in the can.”

Yes, if we don’t include the chipsets, it’s the differentiator for PS3, which will play High Definition movies, aside from potentially getting games with more content. Who knows, maybe when the costs for Blu-ray go down, cross-platform games will include several free videos or cut-scenes or art or whatever the developer wants to add for free. Why is Microsoft bragging about High Definition capabilities if they don’t add the High Definition movie player? I mean, do you not agree with me that it would have been great if Microsoft subsidized it, and that Microsoft could have easily won the war that way, even if it cost them another 5 billion dollars (which they have)? After all, analysts could be wrong, just as they were last time with the first Xbox and just as they are most of the time.

And don’t you think that the recently forged relationship with Square could have brought every final fantasy that has been out since 1 to 12 in a single disc? I mean, that’s another use you could give to those discs. Multiple last gen games in one disc, or multiple games the gen before the last one in one disc! That could have highly benefited the 360 since they are the youngest competitor in the market and it would be swell to bring some of the greatest back catalogues, like MGS, Resident evil 0 to 4, etc.

”well, then. yep. looking back at that list, i'd still pick dvd-9 for my format for launching a console. maybe, i'd think about hd-dvd or blu-ray if i were getting off the ground in 2007. but, not in '06 and certainly not in '05.”

Well, High Definition movies could have come out faster to HD-DVD, i.e. 360 if Microsoft would have pushed the envelope on it. You did know that support for that format waned thanks to PS3, right? Well, not only it wouldn’t have waned if 360 had an HD-DVD, but the tide would have moved towards HD-DVD thanks to 360. After all, isn’t it very popular right now? Wouldn’t it have been even more popular for adding it and maintaining the same price? Wouldn’t High Definition enthusiasts been more excited about it? Personally, being the High Def enthusiast I am, assuming I didn’t have one already, would have bought an HDTV if I had the ability to play HD-DVD / BR movies, not just for games.

”only a STUPID idiot would assume more is better simply because it's more.”

Cool it Shatner, we don’t read in the same voice you think when you type. Anyway, “only a STUPID idiot” wouldn’t want a next-gen player for free.

”and what was that about the dreamcast and dvds? how is that relevant? a dreamcast disc isn't an industry standard.”

People felt more compelled to get a PS2 for its DVD ability out of the box. The Dreamcast never evolved into its promised DVD playing ability, and even if 360 does, it won’t have HD-DVD games, and since it didn’t include HD-DVD player in the beginning, the support won’t be as strong as it could have gotten.

“ so, let's see. yep.”

Uh ok.

“ the blu-ray isn't an industry standard either! so, not only is it not even standardized, but it's more expensive to put in the hardware too! thanks for making my point for

Sorry, I accidentaly deleted something. Here's the correct form:

“ the blu-ray isn't an industry standard either! so, not only is it not even standardized, but it's more expensive to put in the hardware too! thanks for making my point for me. wow. i never thought of that one.”

Sony is subsidizing the player, and it’s up to the game developers to use BD discs anyway.

Grindstone:

Yes, I've been an ass, I'm sorry if I ever was to you, and I'm trying to improve. That's why my ex hates me :-/

Anyway, what you said includes some of what I was telling m3mnoch, but I guess he conveniently decided to ignore it.

DuckPuppy: I respect that consoles are neither PCs nor visa versa. That said, I still don’t find many PC games to be very large when installed and it’s safe to say current large PC games still don’t use very heavy compression. Operating system and other application overhead, as well as an audience with wide-ranging system specifications, is a development curse compared with the fixed development specifications of a console; don’t you agree?

I’m just trying to point out, as you well know, that developers know everybody will have the same core system specs when developing for a console. You can raise the bar over what you can do with the PC development environment because there are far fewer uncertainties. I’m not trying to say that games can’t take space or that packaging a game to perform well when streaming from a disc isn’t a challenge; I’m just talking about space saving techniques.

You mention Battlefield 2, I happen to have it installed along with a few other games – I grabbed their file sizes (not size on disk); if files are listed below the game, those are the ones I counted in my numbers, else it was an entire game folder.

Battlefield 2: 1.78 GB (1,918,453,521 bytes)

Half-Life 2: 3.36 GB (3,613,604,764 bytes)
half-life 2 content.gcf,
source engine.gcf
source materials.gcf
source models.gcf
source sounds.gcf

Counter-Strike Source: 1.30 GB (1,400,571,508 bytes)
counter-strike source shared.gcf

Anyway, you get my point. They’re not that huge when sitting on the disk drive after installation. And yes, for anybody that’s curious, I have played through the games under Steam so all my content is 100% downloaded.

I think we have different terms of “developer,” as I consider the game designer to be a developer as much as the programmer. I was simply stating that if developers – game designers – would shy away from throwing millions of the budget into video that’s going to be stored at 720p, they would have more space. I know you as the programmer don’t have much say; I was speaking of those forces in the company which decide your task list.

On a slightly related note, I’m pretty positive that the Xbox 360’s video codec is provided in the cost of the development license so there’s no need to pay extra to use it. I know you weren’t saying that, just thought I would mention it. Same goes for the audio coded with the on-board decoder.

Grindstone: I think we should do a road show, this thread is pretty entertaining. I fully expect that casual gamers go with the clich?hat bigger is better because typically that’s true. I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to have seen an HD-DVD drive in the Xbox 360; that would’ve been great; I’m just saying that there are reasons behind Microsoft choosing DVD and there’s no changing that decision now. As mentioned above, there are intelligent ways to deal with disc space.

I’ve got no doubt that, in time, more space will become inevitably required for making a game. I just don’t think that time is 2005, 2006, or even a few years after that. No, I don’t have a crystal ball, but if you look back to games in the late nineties, most were on a single CD with a lot not even filling that up. Now, eight years later, we’re seeing games that push 5 CDs or 2/5ths DVD. Games will use more space in the future, but it won’t happen over night or as the result of one console.

Yeah, having HD-DVD movie support would’ve been nice, maybe. I really don’t think it’s something that I’m personally going to miss. HD-DVD’s specification isn’t approved, neither is BluRay’s and that makes both a liability to integrate into your development process so soon. I don’t own any HD-DVD or BluRay movies; how about anybody here? Also, I don’t care how much money you throw at an issue, there is no way that first generation next-gen media drives will be more reliable than 8th generation DVD drives.

An application’s (game’s) code compiles into a relatively small executable, for all that it does. A technique like procedural synthesis implemented in a game that wanted to have thousands of unique objects generated on the fly probably wouldn’t see more than a 250KB (if that) jump in executable file size. The files that provide information to procedurally generate an object are typically going to be small – you could have instructions for 1,000 procedural models in the space it would take for one pre-made model.

Note that not everything above was directed specifically at you. I know that you didn’t specifically say or imply a lot of what the above responds to, so don’t feel like I’m attacking you :)

bd: Christ bd. I was going to post a reply addressing your posts which make comments contrary to points that have already been made; then I realized that no matter how much time somebody spends trying to tell you something, you will only read and remember what you want. Seriously, I've tried to be nice over the course of this thread, but you are ABSOLUTELY a ridiculous poster, no two ways about it.

I wish you the best of luck in however you choose to continue discussing this topic with yourself; I will no longer be reading your posts under normal circumstances.

Nick

"bd: Christ bd. I was going to post a reply addressing your posts which make comments contrary to points that have already been made"

For example?? Nobody responded to all the topics I mentioned. You Nick, just responded with methods that the programmers may as well use to alleviate the damage caused by smaller discs, so I replied that I hope that those developers that are having trouble don't know those methods yet, so when they realize those methods exist (maybe you can give them a call and help them out, after all you are pretty tech savvy), 360 games actually fit on DVD-9 till 2009 (till Xbox 3 launch I suppose). I

On my other topics, I mentioned how HD-DVD would have been swell for 360 and how would they have beaten Sony if they had added it. The only statements I found that replied to that is

"360 would be expensive"

So I replied that Microsoft has enough money to subsidize it and kill Sony with it at the same time.

"360 discs would be expensive"

Just as a lot of people have mentioned, the use of DVD or HD-DVD is at the discretion of the developer, so few would use it.

"HD-DVD is late and would have delayed 360"

That doesn't mean that if 360 would have used it, it could have been delayed. It could mean that, but Microsoft has enough money to push the envelope out of HD-DVD so it can come to the market faster, but you did read that, right?

And when I said that a Microsoft subsidized HD-DVD player would have fitted nicely with Xbox 360, I got:

"I don't want a free next-gen player".

So you've said that I have logic flaws, maybe because I still think that the compression algorithms and programming techniques you mention *may* not be enough to help 360 developers to fit certain games when important developers are saying they are having trouble (and I suppose they know everything you know by know, otherwise why would they consider themselves game programmers in the first place?) or because I’ve given solutions that are not of your like (or that you didn’t read) for making an HD-DVD 360 price competitive, as opposed to following logic itself?

I mean, are you are ensuring me that nothing like that is (or could have been) possible, you are complaining about my complaints, when I’m just concerned for those developer complaints; after all, (and excuse me for the tangent) in the stock market, when somebody announces something like that (developers having trouble), the stock market could go apeshit, and the commentaries you said wouldn’t exactly alleviate everything. The developers are still having problems with all that. Maybe I’m not so closed minded for keeping the possibilities in the air, and you are for saying something will, will not, or couldn’t have happened, wouldn’t that make you closed minded? Especially when you say my logic is flawed, and that I’ve ignored most others comments without telling me which, I want to know which so I can address them (probably again, but anyway).

You didn’t address the issues I mentioned, and the people that did that addressed those, didn’t say much as I still replied with solutions to my proposals, or they still didn’t solve the fact that developers are complaining. They just speculated.

he shoots! he scores!!!

good god. laughing. so. hard. crying. must stop....

ah, hell. good lord but we're laughing at you over here. not me anymore, tho! thanks to you, i have a shiny new (well -- new to me.) 5 dollar bill!

christ. so funny.

heh.

lemme explain:

so, my posts on here started out pretty innocuous. but then bd flamed one because of some dumb spelling/grammar error. oh, i knew i had an idea then.

so, in post #151, i dropped in the "grammarian" reference to see what he did. sure enough. not a peep about spelling errors for the rest of the thread! ha! i found a sock puppet who thinks he's not a troll! i showed ben and jake soon after.

tried it again, while explaining to ben and jake what i was doing, with #158 and the "i love lamp" post. to see if i could actually break you of that random, unsubstantiated crap you were writing and make you actually back up your claims.

i thought the result (#160) was proof! you went from picking select slices of a post apart to picking - every - single - sentence - apart. i said, "his version of backing up his claims." ben wasn't really buying it. i guess he had more faith in you than i did.

so we made a bet. i told him, i could hook you with a provable double-whammy. i could get you to drop your retarded "LOLZ!" crap and goad you into character attacks -- with the same post.

ben agreed. he was thinking you were too smart and light-heartedly posting. jake was the third party, unbiased judge.

little did ben know!

so, in #164, i led with the "chandler" from friends reference. (picking on basic human defense mechanisms is soooo easy.) followed up with a particularly sharp and critical body. closed with the double-closure thing. with just enough poke-in-the-eye i was thinking.

tho, i have to admit. last night, going to bed with nothing posted from you, i was afraid ben was right. i was afraid you had wised up and just ignored the thread. hell. i even put 5 singles (didn't have a 5 laying around anywhere) in my wallet specifically to pay him. ah well. no biggie.

i was afraid i had pushed too hard. made it too obvious with the double "i'm going away" "anyway, i'm out of here" thing. thought it looked too much like bait.

to my surprise this morning there was my $5 post of love from you! woot! i dictated your whole thread to you! ha! i told you how to post! freakin' hilarious.

and your post? all bile and brimstone. not a "LOLZ" stream of crap to be found. and that personal attacking stuff? priceless. "bad father", "raped by arstechnica", "busier than you" and all. by the way, nice flame warrior links. where'd you find them? oh yeah. I GAVE THEM TO YOU! hahahhhahhahhahahhahahhaa....

oh? what? you need to piss? okay, you can go. i'll give you permission.

...

back?

so, anyway, dude. bd. don't let people tell you what and how to post, man. for god's sake. are you a man or a lemming? if you're a grammarian, go with it. tho, if your only valid argument is to pick on someone's spelling in a forum, you might just consider not posting.

oh, and you can probably just take your LITTLE bag of "ha! m3mnoch, i thought you were going away!" you had ready for your reply and put it right back on the shelf. seriously. predictable sheep you are.

while i'm dictating your posts to you, i figured i'd help you out here. pretty much, you have two options:

1) just go away and not post. after all, i said i was going away. everyone will just think you did too. saves face with the public for you. (which, by the way, is your big weakness. the court of public opinion. that's how i was able to drag you along. any reasonable man would have just dropped out and disappeared.)

or

2) post anything. no matter what, tho, whatever you post will basically admit to everyone that you actually read my post. and, no matter what you write, whether it's a flame of me or just ignoring me altogether and responding to nick, will just be seen as the "so?!?!?!" of the 8 year old we all know and love.

just a bit of advice. whatever the case, don't worry too much there, little guy. you're doing just fine. we'll still clap for you at the finish.

anyway. for real this time. i'm out of here. it's been fun (and lucrative!) to hang out. see you guys later.

m3mnoch.
burning defenseless trolls in newsgroups since 1988.

"So you've said that I have logic flaws, maybe because I still think that the compression algorithms and programming techniques you mention *may* not be enough to help 360 developers to fit certain games when important developers are saying they are having trouble (and I suppose they know everything you know by know, otherwise why would they consider themselves game programmers in the first place?) or because I’ve given solutions that are not of your like (or that you didn’t read) for making an HD-DVD 360 price competitive, as opposed to following logic itself?"

Simple. I love when the answer is so clear.

m3mnoch and Nick,

Both of you come across as "self-proclaimed geniuses".

In other words, you two are legends in your own minds.

bd did a great job of explaining himself and made some good points, while at the same time defending himself against all your mumbo-jumbo bullshit.

All you two succeeded in doing was to come across as a couple of huge-ass nerds.

I come back from vacations, and Maeldron just made my day with lots of laughter! Awesome!

"Mark B: It's funny how you pointed out the bd made good points to back up his arguments but I guess your eyes froze up trying to also sort through all the BS he was spewing and failed to realize that both m3mnoch and Nick backed up their point of views with actually facts not just fanboy rhetoric. But I do know how you fanboys like to stick together so I understand you backing up bd."

Well, hypocrite, you are sticking together with the other fanboys, so why even mention it? If one criticizes Microsoft. That doesn't mean one is a fanboy, or is that so? Mark B has PS2, Xbox and DS, so would he be a fanboy? In your mind, he is; ridiculous.

Also, you should point out where is my "BS", without repeating verbatim what I was told and effectively responded. I backed everything I said, and Nick and m3mnoch backed everything? They didn’t keep it on topic in the first place. They didn’t respond to every issue I pointed out, and most importantly, their posts could as well be resumed with the few URLs they mentioned. That or my post above, which resumes their whole set of threads.

I love it how the Microsoft apologists are the biggest hypocrites.

"bd: You held a conversation with yourself that last post, kinda impressive in a sad sort of way...I applaud you (clap, clap)"

It's sad, yet funny, how gullible you and many others are, considering you ate and believed every single one of m3mnoch's words (assuming you aren't m3mnoch hiding). Most smart ones caught that as a mockery of nick's and m3mnoch's opinions, as Joystiq could as well delete every single one of their posts, and resume them in that "self talk".

Also, the only reason I posted that “self talk” is because Joystiq wouldn’t let me post the actual response I had for m3mnoch, because it was “too inflammatory”. Hell, Joystiq didn’t let me post most of my original messages because it would have been the third (and probably last) time I get banned, so I had to water down the content of my messages; funny, because m3mnoch thinks I changed my way of typing, disregarding the fact that I wasn’t writing like that with anyone else in the first place (neither I wrote exactly the same in every message anywhere in Joystiq). I just decided to go easier on him, just to keep things on topic (well, as I said, I didn’t have much choice anyway).

I thought the original response I had (as opposed to my “self talk”, lol) was pretty funny, but since Joystiq is pretty selective to who and what they let post (that’s what happens when you have a brain) to the point of scanning every message, there was no way I was gonna post that, so I somehow made that not so inflammatory mockery to get it under their radar; that’s what happens when you get banned twice and about to get banned forever. Ironically, the same thing happened to the only Xbox fan with a brain, so he had to stop telling everyone the harsh truth. I didn’t like some of his opinions, but at least he remained on topic and made some sense, as opposed to trying to impress gullible people (like the last poster, for example) with jargon. I couldn’t care less anyway; maybe the ego boost he just got will work for him to some day stop being a tech-savvy wannabe and become a mediocre developer.

"You said that no one here asked for Nick to educate them and he just took it upon himself to do so...well people are hear reading about this aren't they, I guess those people felt the need to be educated, he could be wrong it what he was saying but hey that is what these forums are for, to express an opinion or thoughts or facts on a given subject."

First of all, Nick was acting as if he was doing us a favor, when in fact he is just an amateur at best; he manipulated the info the way he wanted. For example, did you know that procedural synthesis will be worthless for some games? Or at least, it won’t be enough for making a game fit on a whole disc. Sure, an FPS can take advantage of that, or an RPG which is full of forests (such as Oblivion); that works great. But for games like GTA, or especially “The Getaway”, where you have a perfectly detailed city like London, you can’ just generate the city out of the randomizing algorithms. Neither does that work for a (great) fighting game, and you know which fighting game developer is having trouble with the discs already, as I mentioned above. A great fighting game that renders each character with a huge amount of details, that has a huge amount of characters, with a ton of exclusive moves, and a great storyline for each (like Mortal Kombat, or how it should be), would be difficult to fit in one disc. You can rarely use procedural synthesis on those kinds of games. Also, could you imagine a fighting game on two discs? LOL, no, that would be impossible, unless you want to be changing discs each time you play. Sure, the hard drive could be useful, if only it was bigger and the developer could rely on them; oh wait, it is not even a standard on the 360.

After that, you come here and say that I don't back any of my comments (wrong) when you did not even bother to read them and point out which comment isn’t backed. Then you apologize for Nick to say "Isn't this thread for opinions lolz?"

Ironically, Nick agreed with almost every one of my points, if not all, although “just partially”, which is what I was aiming at anyway. I never said I hold the absolute truth, as opposed to the feelings reflected by him or m3mnoch.

"What you don't seem to understand is that what you said about Nick is 100% true about you too."

And so can be said about you and almost everyone in this forum, pal. M3mnoch basically criticized me for “changing my ways”, when in fact I didn’t change anything, I just constantly write different (although I admit my original messages were gonna be too inflammatory; fortunately for him, joystiq wouldn’t let me post comments like that anymore). You know, some of us have enough gray matter to write different every time.

Yet, he did exactly the same thing he criticizes me for, but it took me a single comment to burst him into flames. Not only that, but he also criticized me on “personally attacking” when I was only pointing out the facts, and attacking me first when he started to quote me on BS he invented such as “I don’t know anything about MODERN game development” (as if putting the word *modern* in caps would work for something), when he doesn’t even know what a pro knows, and he did exactly what Nick did (manipulated the info to his convenience to convince/control damage), so it’s worthless to talk about game development for 360 if you aren’t a 360 developer. He applied the triple hypocrisy there, if you didn’t realize.

Your whole post is the most hypocritical post in this thread as I’ve been pointing out; unbelievable.

"You are sitting here pouring out your poor little heart..."

Cute! Aren’t you too? Besides, we (or at least I) express our brain’s ideas here, but in your case I understand why you say that.

"....about your beliefs about the Xbox 360 dropping the ball for not doing HD-DVD,"

Not beliefs pal. It's already obvious that developers are struggling. Don't you read the news?

"...what you don't seem to realize is that the people who developed the Xbox are in fact far smarter then you..."

HAHAHAHAHA, you obviously don’t know what you are talking about. Bill Gates is the smartest guy in Microsoft, and I go to the point of doubting that he outsmarts me; not to brag or anything, I’m just saying facts here, but let’s assume that’s true; or better yet, maybe you were talking about “there are people in Microsoft that know more about the games market than you”. If that was true, then Microsoft would have won this console war already, and by a long shot, no need to wait for 360. Also, if they were so smart, how come they took so much time to develop a console which is basically the same as the last one, only with relatively more power? You know, an Xbox “supersized”. It is the least marginal increment ever made on a console. Worthless, laughable comment anyway.

Hell, Microsoft’s history can be resumed in “how to cheat your way to become a billionaire”. Their success is based on selling something that resembles the competition with the shittiest quality for a dime, and once the competition is dead, charge a ton. After that, find a new market, and repeat the process. Operative Systems, Web Browsers, Internet Messengers, Videogame consoles, Media Centers, Media discs, etcetera. Anyone can do better than that. Of course, they have the knowledge now, but who wouldn’t after 20 years of owning every market (with money, not talent of course).

"...and if they didn't feel the need to add in the feature it was because for their vision of the Xbox it didn't need it. Simple as that.."

Or maybe because they wanted to cut costs, as Jay Allard mentioned that they would never lose as much per console as they did before because it was a bad idea (For them, failing to realize that you only need games)? Or because they were equally shortsighted as last time? Both, I’d say.

So you tell me which company analysts are better? Nintendo’s for concluding that they can profit with revolutionary games? Sony’s that they can conquer and profit in many areas of the consumer electronics market by offering everything included in the high definition package? Or Microsoft for offering a half boiled egg, which competes with their media center, doesn’t play high definition movies (from mass produced next-gen discs), and doesn’t solve every problem for developers as they initially wanted? Maybe Microsoft’s after all, since they know that they can ruin another console (and another market) and keep buying exclusive games with money, not popularity nor hardware and win the console war in two more rounds, instead of winning it last round or this round.

Hell, Ninja Gaiden was preferred by fans to come out on the Gamecube in a poll around the end of 2001, second place for PS2. That’s what Tecmo was doing back then to see where they would have published Ninja Gaiden. So either Tecmo likes to piss off their fans or… well, you know what happened. I can’t wait for that to happen to Final Fantasy, Devil May Cry, and Metal Gear Solid.

“We have to assume as a world wide leader that Msoft knows what they are doing.”

Hahahaha, this is great. Only an idiot would assume that after having “TEH BEST CONSLE EVA!!11” and making a 5 billion loss and counting, “Msoft” knows what they are doing. Or maybe they don’t have as much balls as they thought and want to beat Sony in a slow way. Hell, even if HD-DVD lost the format war, they could have made it a gaming standard for Xbox, just as the Gamecube discs. After all, producing HD-DVD discs is relatively cheaper than making Blu-ray discs, so it wouldn’t be as costly (if it was) to Microsoft, as it would be Blu-ray to Sony if Blu-ray loses. Hell, if Blu-ray loses, nobody will want to keep using blu-ray discs, as they could become the next N64 cartridges. On the other hand, HD-DVD, even if it loses, could be seen as DVD with updated production kits.

"...I don't remember anyone coming here and asking you to educate them either."

At least I don't act like I'm doing all of you a favor. *cough* Nick *cough*

"So maybe you should do some soul searching, buy a gun and kill yourself."

That's the best thing you can think of? Wow, talk about IQ in JoystIQ

"Seriously, you are just stealing productive members of our societies air. "

I won't even point the irony in this comment. This is the most hilarious part of the message.

"Yes I realize personal attacks like that are the very bottom of the food chain when posting in forums but seen as how you are a bottom feeder yourself I figured I would post comment you were sure to understand."

Translation: I know I can't make a valid point, and that what I'm doing is stupid, but I'll resort to hypocrisy anyway.

"Have a nice day, make sure to put your whole head in front of the shotgun..."

Well, you need practice on that to actually be telling me what and *how* to do it. Unfortunately for you, some of us can't even do that. You know, non-Xbox fans have fully functional brains, and therefore have big heads. If I ever meet a person with your head size, I'll let you know, though. I’ll tell him your advice, expert.

Maeldron, you made my day.

I forgot: Just as consoles can generate content "on the fly" without using so much disc space (in some games), developers can cut costs with tools/algorithms to create content in a really fast way (for games that may need it, or that may not be able to use procedural synthesis as much as others), being able to fill several DVD-9s in the same time it was possible to fill just one.



That is unavoidable unless developers want costs to rise and reach eventually another videogame crash, and nobody wants that. Since game prices have risen already, you can expect developers to use the technique I just mentioned above more and more frequently to keep the costs down while creating the amount of content desired.



Microsoft just wanted to cut costs for themselves, read the news, the interviews, etcetera. Too bad they wanted to make the development process easier, which is not so compatible with cutting costs as it seems. No hard drive to rely on, and apparently not enough disc space despite the amazing tools developers have in their hands. Good luck anyway to the 360, since i'll be getting one sooner or later.

Reality:

A 30GB+ game will probably be a rare occurance this generation. Production costs for a project that huge would be astronomical. Even so, disc swapping is not a big deal depending on the genre of game. If intgegrated well, it wouldn't be an issue at all. More discs often appeal to consumers as a "deal" or a "great value". Multi disc DVD collector editions sell like hotcakes and gamers drool when they see 5+ disc PC games (which are still on CD's- how '90s is THAT?). I personally would love to have the 12 disc LOTR DVD set, but at $100+ after taxes, I haven't been able to convince myself I need that particular "great value" just yet, lol.



Current Gen Evidence:

But seriously, if MS opted to nix the "not yet available next gen optical drive" due to cost and allocated those resources to other areas of the console (such as the HDD, CPU etc.), I'm a happy camper. For the same price, I'll swap discs all day long for a console with beefier performance specs. Last time I checked, the GC had the lowest storage space media this generation and RE4 looked just as stunning as most PS2 or Xbox games.



Conclusion:

There are always ways to get around these issues and MS has been aware of the limitations of DVD-9 from the getgo. They have therefore designed a system that can decompress on the fly as well as developing tools that will aid in compression techniques. If all this still isn't enough, the last resort would be multi disc games, which are hardly unheard of nor have been met previously with any negative feedback from the gaming community as a whole.

Indeed spartacus! A huge game will be rare, but there will be some of those, at least for PS3. As I said, each console will take advantage of their strengths, which is obvious. For the games that the techniques are not useful, you *could* use two discs. Yet, there will be several games that have to be specifically on one disc. Sure, the developers will water down the game for 360 if it's a cross-platform game and it won't matter (much), but if it's a game that is around the 20GB (with procedural synthesis, or a game that can't use it), and that has to be in one disc, the 360 will be screwed.



This issue has been exhausted.

bd:"I come back from vacations, and Maeldron just made my day with lots of laughter! Awesome!"

Translation: It took me two weeks to type this, I wish I had a life.



bd: "This issue has been exhausted."



What is exhausting is the amount of time it had to take you to type your response. If I was you I would want the two hours of my life back, your so-called life at least.



Maeldron



ps this took me 10 seconds to complete

"Translation: It took me two weeks to type this, I wish I had a life."



Actually, let me translate it for you correctly: "Since I was too busy this last two weeks with work away from home, I don't have time to respond immediately." Way to be original.





"What is exhausting is the amount of time it had to take you to type your response."



LOL, you've been waiting a lot, haven't you? Oh man, so much life have you got.



"If I was you I would want the two hours of my life back, your so-called life at least."



LOL, it took me 15 minutes, I'm a fast typer you know. It's my hobby to bash dumb Xbox fanboys in my free-time, so don't worry about my busy life.



"ps this took me 10 seconds to complete"



You have so much life, that you even meassured the time you took? Impressive. More impressive is that you did not even address anything related to this thread; unbelievable.

Introducing the next 3rd party add on for XBOX 360, The X-JukeBox, holds 100 disc of mixed media, DVD Games, Music, Movies ! Link them together for more storage !

Now tell me, why hasnt this been made ? It would sell and multi disc games would be no problem. Heck Id buy 2 or 3 of them myself. Make one for my computer while your at it, with dvd-r,rw,+, -, etc./cdrw while your at it. Ill take 2 of those as well

Bill G., waddayathink ? Just put my name in the easter egg credits somewhere