PS3 Ridge Racer: 9 minutes too long?

Sony could do a press release on how the PS3 causes 3 different forms of cancer with its use.

And Sony fanboys would say that this is as expected and they dont care because the big black box has PLAYSTATION in capitals on the box. So it must be good. Right?

What I want to know is why the hell a racing game is larger than 5GB!

Sounds like a developer issue, not a machine issue. C'mon, guys, Cell has a lot of processing power. Use it for compression and synthesis.

Next, are we going to find out that game downloads are 100MB?

Sony have ruined their own argument for bluray by having this, If you can install 5 gigs or more then why not cant games come on two dvd's? you could install one and run the game from the other giving you 18gigs!

very good option to provide people with...

i don't see myself really using it except to try it out once, but still a good option to give people

@50

Because the point of the install is optional.

@ everyone else, the point of Blu-ray is not for right now, it is for 3 or 4 years from now when devs will love to have the extra space for their games. It loads almost as fast as DVD, because its constant rate of 9MB/s is about the same as DVD's variable rate of 15-3MB/s depending on where on the disc you are (admittedly this leaves more room for dev optimization but still...) Remember when the original PS started using CDs? Remember how the SNES had that CD attatchment (cough X360 HD-DVD)? Remember when Square went over to Sony partly because Nintendo was a dick company to their third parties (still kinda is), but mainly because there simply wasn't enough space on a cart to make the Final Fantasy experience they wanted on the 64? Now I know there is a big difference between Carts/CDs and DVDs/BRDs because you can't have a multiple cart game and you can have a multiple DVD game, but games like FFXIII and White Knight Story are probably going to use up most of a BRD, and thats just next year folks. Remember how like 95% of PS2 games started on CDs, but now they are 99% DVD?

And to Nintendo fanboys:

The reason the Wii's load times will be fast will be because they are using basically a 12x DVD drive (so only slightly faster data loading than BRD) and they don't have to load as much data since they are using last-gen graphics.

@41

There's a difference between caching data and installing data. That's why the 360 needs it for backwards compatibility. Also, many 360 games also do some caching if the HD is detected. Finally, there are also going to be 360 titles that are hard-drive required (FF11 already is).

Just various food for thought.

xbots are just upset cause they have to fork over $100 for a proprietary xbox HDD that cost $15 to make.

SUCKAS!

Let's do some sloppy math... 2x blu-ray reads at 73mbps.. 4 gb of data would then take (4096 / 73) = 56 seconds. That is just pure, constant data transfer. Unpacking and installing will add extra. I know that on a hard drive, unpacking a 700mb iso usually takes my pc about 1.5 minutes. So, i'd assume, for 4 gb install, 1 minute to transfer and 5-6 minutes to install. (yes, i know unpacking an iso and installing something are vastly different)

I think this is a good idea, on paper. What about the people like me though. Me and my gf both play my gamecube. She has about 4 games she likes to play regularly, I have 4 games I like to play regularly. That doesn't even mention that I play, on average, about 6-7 different games per week. So, in an average week, my gamecube runs about 10-11 different games. Plus, im lazy. I don't want to have to uninstall, reinstall, uninstall, reinstall.. which inevitably would happen.

I also believe that this is sony's way of saying that they realize load times for their system are unacceptable. 15 second load time is way too much. I've grown accustomed to my gamecube loading... which on most games in nonexistant.

Good luck to Sony, though... They won't be getting any of my money though.

Oh, and to the person who made the comment about the control system. Wii uses the motion control stuff, but they also have the classic shell and stuff... That seems like more variety than your single ps3 controller.

I think this isn't bad. What's bad is that Ridge Racer is still being made! Sure, the Next Gen starts when we say it does... which will be in a couple years when we release a real GT5 and FFXIII or whatever.

And what happens if the PS3 _IS_ a computer, and we have to download 3 patches for every freaking EA game?

PS3's newest feature is Chandler!

"Can I be anymore of a PC?!?"

Man did I call this. At 9 minutes it seems like a LOT of data needs to be loaded and therefore more significant than people think.

BTW, I played PS3 at Target yesterday. They're at Targets now, I guess. :P

@21 - 140mb save game files... Wow. I think that's the bigger issue here. Why do you need 140mb to save a game? Baten Kaitos for GC only requires 8 blocks, which would be about 65Kb... Also, is that 140mb per save because on a lot of games, i have multiple save states... I use 4 on most RPGs so if i screw up i can go back and not get screwed over. If thats the same case for that game... 560 Mb vs. 260Kb.... Hah!

Any other specifics on game save space requirements? That makes me laugh.

Are you cereal!!??

This path Sony is heading down makes me kind of uncomfortable. Seems like everyone is taking sides on "the console war" meanwhile Sony's main compatition is fast becoming the PC.

Is the PS3 the most advanced console this generation, or is it a cheap shitty gaming PC?

To be honest, i can't decide.

Sorry, that was unfair, i should have said "middle of the road" gaming PC.

It seems that most people are missing the point to this whole thing:

These installs are needed because load times from disc are slow. If the average game requires between 5 and 9 gigs of information to be downloaded to the HDD to have tolerable load times, then there you might only be able to install 3 or 4 games on a base unit which leaves little room for other stuff. Even on a premium unit, the space will disappear fast.

It's good that they give you the option to install a good chunk of data. It's bad because if Sony went with a DVD, they wouldn't need to worry about this at all. And if you don't know that PS3 has Blu-Ray because Sony is trying to win a format war, you are severely kidding yourself. The PS3 would be every bit the same machine with a DVD drive.

@57 76mbs per second is not 76 megabytes!!!

1 mbs = 125kb therefore 8mbs = 1mb so the transfer rate is 9.5mb per second

4096 / 9.5 = 431 seconds = 7.18 minutes.

Put it this way if bluray could transfer at 76mb a second it would be faster than reading it of a hard drive!!

SOME FACTS

The lowest data rate on a 12x DVD drive is 8.2MB per second, this is more than the maximum a 2 x bluray drive has of 8MB per second.

The fastest a 12 x DVD reads the disc is at 16.50MB per second or rather twice as fast as a the PS3's blu ray drive.

Also dont forget that the fastest part of the DVD disc is the outside which, as it is larger, also holds the most information, in addition the DVD disc is dual layed so again more information can be put on the outside of the disc while the inner part of both layers can be ignored unless the game requires it.

This means the average accsess speed of 360 games can be around 14-15 MB per second while the PS3 is stuck at 8MB.

This is why PS3 load times are too slow for this generation of memory intensive games and that Sony have decided to offer installs to reduce load times.

Try this mini url for more info

http://miniurl.org/002

SOME FACTS

The lowest data rate on a 12x DVD drive is 8.2MB per second, this is more than the maximum a 2 x bluray drive has of 8MB per second.

The fastest a 12 x DVD reads the disc is at 16.50MB per second or rather twice as fast as a the PS3's blu ray drive.

Also dont forget that the fastest part of the DVD disc is the outside which, as it is larger, also holds the most information, in addition the DVD disc is dual layed so again more information can be put on the outside of the disc while the inner part of both layers can be ignored unless the game requires it.

This means the average accsess speed of 360 games can be around 14-15 MB per second while the PS3 is stuck at 8MB.

This is why PS3 load times are too slow for this generation of memory intensive games and that Sony have decided to offer installs to reduce load times.

Try this mini url for more info

http://miniurl.org/002

Another significant reason why Load times are a problem for the PS3 is accsess times.

Blue ray discs adjust the speed of the disc depending on where the data is located, this is why data flows at a constant rate.

This constant changing of the speed of the disc means that accsess times are a real issue especially for games where thousands of individual files are accsessed.

QFT GreenGrunt!

the point of Blu-ray is not for right now, it is for 3 or 4 years from now when devs will love to have the extra space for their games.

4 years from now is when the first preliminary PS4 devkits ought to be making their way into developers' hands. So just when they really need that extra capacity, along it comes.

Giving developers access to Blu-Ray in THIS generation (and asking consumers to pay a premium for it) seems premature.

@53 - The Hard Drive is included in the Premium System. So you don't have to fork out the money for it unless you buy a tard pack (core). And even then its totally optional and still cheaper than the PS3.

Hmm, PS3 can do 9 MEGABYTES per second transfer...a 10x dvd drive can do 13.21 MEGABYTES per second.

2X Bluray is slower than usb 1.1.

A lot of f*cking stupid anti-Sony fanboys on this blog...

I swear every freakin' piece of Sony new is twisted and contorted to feed some kind of massive fanboy/media agenda to bring down Sony just because it's currently the leader of the market. Seriously, WTF, get the f*ck over yourselves. You are all insignificant and hold no power over the market. You are wasting your energy.

All 3 consoles will have their strengths and weaknesses. But if you foolishly think that PS3 is not going to badass, you are in for a rude awakening. The tide is already turning. Once you get hands on time with it, you all are going to want it (just like the other 2 consoles). So, what the hell is everyone bitching about? It's getting uber tiring. I can't peruse the blogs or news media anymore without getting insanely twisted, biased, and spun information constantly flung at me. I thought the internets was supposed to solve the problem of biased news source. Now we have more than ever.

If sony had it so you had to install PS3 games to play them, that would of been the dumbest move on there part. Good thing it's optional since the installation of Ridge Racer 7 would take up a quarter of the $500 Playstation 3's HDD and a sixth of the $600 Playstation 3's HDD.

Matt:
USB 1.1 is 12mbit/second. That's 1.5 megabytes per second.
2X BluRay is 72mbit/second. That's 9 megabytes per second.

2X BluRay is SIX TIMES as fast as USB 1.1.

Look no matter what the speeds are, 12X DVD is on average less than 1.5X as fast. So if something takes a long time on BluRay, it'll take only a somewhat shorter long time on 12X DVD.

So PC gamers for a long time now enjoying these next gen feature consoles are offering.

I don't know if anyone mentioned this, but would it be possible to load those five gigs while playing/surfing the menus? I think it's a fine/interesting option. The games look to load fast from the disk from a few videos surfacing around the net, so I'm not worried about that, but for some games to be even faster would be sweet, if it is a game you play a lot, then, yeah you could save WAY more than 9 minutes... Relax people and go play some games! :-)

Here is a novel idea...why don't we wait two weeks and find out for real what a loading PS3 game is really like, instead of throwing half-baked assumptions, impressions, and general fanboisms at the issue?

Just did some additional math. You may be asking yourself, "Why would the PS3 need games to be installed?" Because the Blu-Ray drives are unnecessarily slow.

The Xbox360's decision to go with the well-developed DVD format is going to be the decider here. It turns out that the 360s drive will access the data a lot faster then the PS3's, an incremental amount.

Now that I think about it, The Xbox 360 is faster than the PS3... Much faster. The Xbox 360 has a 12X DVD drive, which reads at 16.0 Megabytes a second. Source = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360 The PS3, on the other hand, has a Blu-Ray Disc drive, which is capable of reading 36 Megabits a second for the cheaper model, and 72 Megabits a second for the 1,000+ dollar model. Source= http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu_Ray#PC_data_storage Now, a MegaBIT is roughly equal to, what, 1/8th of a MegaBYTE? Source = http://www.crucial.com/library/mb_vs_mb.asp So, take 36 Megabits and translate it to megabytes. Divide by 8, that leaves you with read speeds of about 4.5 megabytes a second. Take 72 Megabits and convert to Megabytes: that leaves exactly 9 Megabytes a second, optimistically.

Tally:
Xbox 360's 16X DVD drive: 16.0 Megabytes a second.
PS3's 1X Blu-Ray Drive: 4.5 Megabytes a second.
PS3's unlikely 2X Blu-Ray Drive: 9.0 Megabytes a second.

We have a clear winner. We'll see unnatural load times, like with the other 'brilliant' Sony format, the UMD disc. That's why the install is necessary. How can the PS3's ultra leet processor do with only digesting a quarter of the needed files a second? Please.

So ask yourself: Is switching a game disc every so often really that bad? Microsoft was doing a good thing in not making HDDVD their standard before the technology was produced. DVD is the fastest, most affordable removeable media that still has ample space available. Blu-Ray is definitely not the best thing for gamers. Sony is pushing the format, making the consumer pay for it, and it's bad for gamers. Wake up.

It would take a 1X Blu-Ray drive an hour and a half to fully read a 25 gigabyte Blu-Ray Disc. Think about that.

"37. OMG!

You guys are so blind to the obvious! The "ONLY" reason they have this option is because the PS3 load times are "WAY" too long without it!!!

It can't be more simple tha"

lol, than making a coherent comment on a news blog?

You know i have seen a few post's about people saying whats wrong with having more options for gamers. Then why didnt the ps3 have a add on for blu ray instead of trying to force it onto gamers. Just face it if you want a ps3 you will always have to sit through long load times or long install times to help prevent long load times. I dont care about 1080p so why do i have to be forced to sit through long load or install times cause of blu ray....

Im pretty sure all these consoles have ups and downs. being a hardcore gamer, it seems to me the best idea is just to get a job kiddies and buy them all... if all you clowns would try that instead of trashing one system or another, thus limiting yourself and looking pretty close minded in the process, there wouldnt be much need to say retarded things like "ps3 sucks" or "everyone who plays nintendo is an 8 year old fanboy"... might as well try them all. every system always has dozens of games worth playing if you are a true conniseur, in my opinion.