TGS07: Lost Odyssey is crazy big: 4 DVDs, 50 hours

This jsut proves the BR as a larger storage absed media for games is pointless, because games can be played the same by spanning across several discs.

This also says that these developers need to stop flooding our games with 10 hours of FMV content, and work more on game content.

Wait, CGI? Who uses CGI anymore? Games nowadays (sans Wii) are nearly just as good as CGI in HD. I mean, why code for a CGI sequence that could easily be accomplished via real-time footage at a fraction of the memory? Just so you can see the few extra stitches on what's-his-names shirt? This is 2007, and CGI is no longer needed to make plot-points interesting or to smooth out characters because their ingame models were 30 polygons max. Hell, some characters have polygon counts stretching into the MILLIONS. The only advantage I see to this is to avoid coding for facial expressions, which could remain stationary during normal, frantic gameplay when they are unseeable unless you pause the game to look at everything. Inexcusable for such a game.

Think of it this way. Eventually games will get big enough to come on multiple BD discs. What then in this case? Will it still be ok if a game came on 6 or more DVD9 discs? At what point is it too many discs?

We we all happy back in the day when a game would come on 12 floppy discs? There reaches a point when there's just too much stuff to have laying around.

I dont think anyone is willing to consider more then 6 discs. However, I dont think the 360 will ever have a game that needs that many. Theres just no point unless its filled with garbage. As for the xbox 720, yes there will for sure be games that take up that much space, however if MS opts for DVD on their next xbox instead of hd-dvd or blu-ray (whichever wins), then they would be really stupid and shooting themselves in the foot for making that decision.

Blu-ray is overrated, games should never take up more than a DVD... WHA...?!?!?!? Flashing back to the transition from CD - DVD gaming are we? One less piece of ammo against Sony for the XBFB's.

Sure no one cared about FF7 coming on 3 CD's. There was no other alternative out there. Man, I cannot believe so many of you are saying that more space is a BAD thing. Pathetic you are.
For the 1st year to 2 years of the PS2's life, I remember hearing the same song and dance about how useless DVD's were for games and that it was not needed. How did that turn out Dreamcast lovers?
Any arguement against more space is completely void of any rationality.
We are not even 1 year into the life of the PS3 yet it is apparent that space is becoming an issue.
Your arguement of it being no big deal to change discs is pathetic as well. Of course it is not a big deal, it is just completely unessassary for this generation of HD games.
What will you say nuttchuggers in 2 years when many, many more 360 games are on multiple discs?
As for compression, the more you compress data, the more CPU power you use for compression which leaves less for powering your games jackasses.
Bioware has said that it was a struggle to decide what to cut to fit Mass Effect onto 1 disc. So, even though it is a big game, I wonder what goodies they had to cut out to make it fit.
MORE SPACE IS A GOOD THING PERIOD.

SOULS, COME UNTO ME!

Yeah, I liked the voice acting in SoulCalibur. It was slightly cheesy, sure, but not what I'd call "bad."

this is microsofts answer to Wii-fit. make games on multiple discs so you fat tards have to get up once in a while. guess what, you get an "achievment" for swapping a disc, you fat f@*k.

I just hate how the "bluray vs. DVD" debate has nothing to do with any bluray games. We just focus on tiny effects of DVD limitation while ignoring the lackluster bluray games thus far. Bluray adds a lot of cost to the PS3 and forced it to be delayed an entire year. That has an effect on games too.

Zaphod,

More space is a good thing. Everyone agrees. $120 cost and a year delay is a bad thing. Everyone agrees.

So, how about you look at it this way. For the same cost as bluray, the PS3 could have a larger HDD, 2Gb of RAM, and a better GPU to compliment the CPU power. The damn system would be able to run Crysis at 1080p. It could have also launched alongside the 360.

If the PS3 had those things, the 360 would already be a distant memory and you'd be one very happy dude.

And just look at these PS3 exclusives so far. There is no way you couldn't make all of those titles on DVD9. The biggest, longest, and best (critical review scores and sales) games are hitting the 360 this year, not the PS3 and its impressive bluray.

Also, you use Mass Effect as your example of a game that could have been bigger. That game is massive. The PS3 doesn't even have anything in next year's lineup that will take that long to complete once. wtf kind of example is that?

MS said DVD was enough to make great games, but did admit that it would bring challenge. If the proof indeed is in the pudding, then it is Sony's job to prove them wrong.

I never played any ps games that had multiple discs. I could imagine, as someone said earlier, that having multiple discs would lead to very linear game play. Linear for an RPG is gay.

i'm sure most of the space is taken up by cut scenes. I remember ff2-3 were around 30 hours on a cartridge.

If the game is good, then it's good. but i don't think it will be an open world.

If they had done the cutscenes with the ingame engine instead of CGI, this would've been a 1 disk game.

stupid japanese developers with their stupid FMV cutscenes. when will they learn nobody gives a shit about prerendered videos. stop wasting all of the disk and use the freaking engine you took years to develop! its the whole point of a game! every other game can fit easily on 1 disk if these lame videos arent used. even mass effect and the orange box easily fit on a single disk with space to spare. hell, orange box has 5 games! (hl2, hl2:ep1, hl2:ep2, portal, tf2). Get it together or people are gonna be annoyed and not play ur games.

"4 DVD's < 1 BD"

so 36GBs is smaller than 25GBs, I had no idea. I think your refering to dual sided blu ray disc that are currently not being manfuactured for commercial use. asshole.

Than please provide a link to dual layer blu ray movie or game or even a company that uses dual layer blu ray discs to distribute content.

I am not a game programmer (however, I am a programmer, so theory and concept is the closely the same). I would like to make a few comments about this.

1. More space does not necessarily mean lazy programmers. I recently wrote a query that in simple terms had to find all the duplicates of an item that is linked to another item, and then merge them together (add/subtract them). That means it had to run through every record to find all the items linked to other item, then run through every one to find duplicates, then merge those together. It was doing this in the same table as they were stored. This however, while keeping the program "smaller", was killing the processing. Due to the lack of power, it was more efficient to make a temporary table, copy all the linked items in it. Then search for the duplicates, merge them in the temp table, and then write back to the storage table. Not having the temp table makes the program "smaller", but takes a lot more cpu power. Where as I simply made the program "bigger", and the program then runs more efficiently.

The way this relates to games is simple. Yes they can make the game "smaller", but can the cpu handle the extra processing of the code. Sometimes it is all around better to make it "bigger". Compression plays a big part in this theory.

2. Just because it has 3-4 discs does not mean the game is linear. I would probably take a guess that the major of the game's "world" is on every disc. The audio/music/video is just changed for each disc. When you have to switch discs, it is only checking to make sure you have the right disc (this is my theory, btw), only to prevent the game from crashing when it tried to access a file of audio/music/video that just wasn't there. Like if there was a was to disable the disc check, I would bet money the game would run fine, until it hit one of the missing audio/music/video files.

3. Audio/music/video is the biggest hog of disc space. Uncompressed or high quality video takes up a huge amount of space. Lets remember that a DVD9 can only hold like 2-3 of high quality video(not 100% on the exact amount of time). To get more you have to either lower the resolution or increase the compression, both of which decreases the quality. Since this game will have multiple audio tracks that is twice the same for voice acting. I am sure it will have a lot of movies, so that takes up chunk of space as well.

4. Movies versus In-Game. I agree that the quality of in-game visuals have gotten to the point that CGI movies are almost no longer needed. Lines of code for in-game cut scenes will take up a fraction of what a CGI movie would.

5. Blue-Ray is better. If I recall correctly I read an article that when a game is put on a BR a lot of files/code are duplicate to speed up the access time, because the BR is not as accessed as fast. If this is the case, then the 50gb that a BR can hold is not 50gb of usable space. I can say how much is usable, because I don't know how much/when the code/data has to be replicated.

Right now is a transitional time. The xbox 360 not coming with a high capacity optical drive means that the transition will take longer. But the future of gaming is not that large games come on multiple discs.

The future of media in general is larger storage capacity to accommodate larger amounts of data. it is not unreasonable to make the argument that a single disc is more convenient than multiple smaller discs. However, there is a threshold of tolerance. For example, I'm sure that many of you would think it stupid to buy a game that consists of 20 cd's. well, the more graphically intensive games get, the more dvd's will be required and the shorter the play time will be between changing discs. Think progressively.

Conversely, multiple discs is not a strong argument to prove a game (or console) inferior.

Zaphod Beeblebrox:
You sir, are a blu ray god. I stand humbled before you. lol

i guess i'm the only one who actually LIKES the FMV content. especially in the latter final fantasies, i looked and will look forward to them when playing.