So both eNCHANT
arM and Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion are going to fit on one disc after all, and Microsoft has pledged that the
external HD-DVD drive isn't going to be used to games, just movies. Is it safe to assume that DVD-9 discs will
eventually prove to be too small for next-generation games?Currently shipping 360 games average about 49% of the capacity of the DVD-9 format. The total size increase for Xbox games between 2001 and 2005 was 77%. If Xbox 360 titles follow the same path, they will still only occupy 87% of the DVD-9's capacity. By using development tools like Microsoft's XNA package and techniques like procedural synthesis, you can expect developers to squeeze more game into less space than was possible on older hardware.
Either way, developers will be creating many of their games for release on both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Although the PS3's Blu-Ray format wil be able to accommodate 25-50GB discs, faced with increased development costs, developers will probably choose to target the lowest common denominator:%uFFFD the 9GB media the 360 uses.
