Why Blu-ray carries no practicallity this generation.

PS3 fanboys bring up Blu-ray in 360 vs PS3 debates, without considering ALOT of factors. They always argue that developers can use the extra space for bigger and better games. Something to that effect....


WELL.

Let's talk about Blu-ray for gaming. In general, more space is a GOOD thing. I have no doubt about it. But the 360 doesn't need Blu-ray...PS3 developers usually use the space sometimes to store textures since the RSX isn't powerful or efficient enough to handle the full workload. And since the RSX doesn't have something like the eDRAM chip that the X360's GPU has, developers sometimes use a process called "data duplication" to make sure the game doesn't run slow. (GTA4 on the 360 took up 7 GBs while on the PS3 it took up 20 GBs) The 360 doesn't need the extra capacity, because the Xenos can compress textures with little to no quality loss and save sometimes up to 5 times the space. The ONLY benefit that the X360 would gain with blu-ray for gaming would be if a game has alot of pre-rendered cinematic cutscenes, like FFXIII. Pre-rendered cinematics take up ALOT of disc data even when compressed. Approximately 32 GBs of FFXIII were just for cinematic cutscenes. Luckily most games these days use INGAME cutscenes which use up considerably less space. Every now and then there is a game that will use more than one DVD for Xbox 360 games because it legitly has alot of game content. Forza 3 is the most recent one I can think of that had 2 discs. But even then the second disc was an optional installation disc for more content, meaning that there is no real disc-swapping involved.

So the basic 3 advantages of Blu-ray for gaming are:

1) You can store uncompressed textures on to the disc thanks to the 50 GB capacity. But the Xenos is very efficient when it comes to memory uses so most of it's RAM can be dedicated to decompressing textures in realtime.

2) You can store alot of cinematics on the disc. HD pre-rendered cinematics eat up alot of GBs. As stated before FFXIII has like 32 GBs of cutscenes out of the 40 GBs of total data. Ingame cinematics don't eat up as much space.And that's what most games use.

3)HD Sandbox games need alot of space for the big open-world(s) they offer. But developers could do either 2 things, one would be to make the game require and HDD so that way they can stream redundant game engine assests to save some space on the disc. Or they could go the way of Forza 3 by making 1 disc be the main game and have the 2nd disc be for extra content and environments that doesn't generally have to flow with the main storyline.

Blu-ray in terms of movies? Well the 360 has plenty of other alternatives to movie viewing. You can stream Netflix in HD and there is also the Zune Marketplace where you can watch full 1080p movies with surround sound. Another obvious one is that you can watch upscaled DVDs in 1080p if you are not too picky with 1:1 TV resolutions. These are great alternatives to Blu-ray, ofcourse I wouldn't say they are better than Blu-ray, (but I would much rather watch an HD film WITHOUT having to leave my coach) . It should be noted that you do get extras on a Blu-ray disc you can't get off of an internet download, but in terms of practicallity it doesn't do much.

Sources:

Data Duplication:

http://gaming.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=7715

More on the Xenos GPU:

http://www.beyond3d.com/content/articles/4/2

Example of a PS3 exclusive using most of the Blu-ray space for textures:

http://www.destructoid.com/god-of-war-iii-eats-up-35-gigs-on-a-blu-ray-disc-164577.phtml

Gaia's nose is 1 GB of textures...only his nose.

Harddrive Streaming:

http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-entertainment-features/33419-future-xbox-360-games-may-require-hard-drive

http://news.filefront.com/future-xbox-360-games-will-require-hdd/

You know your stuff man. Another great post from ya.

xSTONEYx187x wrote:

You know your stuff man. Another great post from ya.

Thanks.

Very good post. Everything was completely true.

Yeah brilliant post! I fully agree. And yeah, I'd heard about that data duplication thing before. good that people haven't forgotten it lol

Yeah space on a disc is overrated. If anyone else downloaded fallout 3 to your hard drive, notice it was only around 5.2 gigs? The game seemed pretty large to me.

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Kojima had to make cuts to fit MGS4 on a DL Blu-ray, forfeiting the English/Japanese VO for the respective EU/JP release, if someone wanted to listen to the other language
but then it's Metal Gear Solid

great post and thread u really know ur stuff

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Uncharted 2 is the best example of what I just said. The game is 25 GBs in size but I'd say roughly two-thirds of it is just uncompressed textures. I mean seriously what about Uncharted 2 merits a whole single-layered Blu-ray disc interms of content and gameplay. The game isn't even an open-world game like Mass Effect. It's completely linear and doesn't have THAT much content or replayability to consume even more than 9 or 10 GBs of space. Naughty Dog has lied to the internet by saying what they have done is not possible on the 360. Ofcourse it would be improbable since the engine is built from the ground up to run on Playstation hardware. Another lie that Naughty has spread is that X360 games can't use the HDD for data caching or streaming to reduce load times. This is EXACTLY what Halo 3 does to reduce load times, it's one of the advantages to having a HDD. And developers have the option of requiring HDDs for their game.

Besides, Alan Wake has better texture quality than Uncharted 2, and that's supposedly when compressed.

No first or second party Sony developer seems to be talking about how the RSX holds back the PS3! But they sure like to brag about Blu-ray! As if they have a choice but to use it!

Sorry for long reply.

Alan1994 wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Uncharted 2 is the best example of what I just said. The game is 25 GBs in size but I'd say roughly two-thirds of it is just uncompressed textures. I mean seriously what about Uncharted 2 merits a whole single-layered Blu-ray disc interms of content and gameplay. The game isn't even an open-world game like Mass Effect. It's completely linear and doesn't have THAT much content or replayability to consume even more than 9 or 10 GBs of space. Naughty Dog has lied to the internet by saying what they have done is not possible on the 360. Ofcourse it would be improbable since the engine is built from the ground up to run on Playstation hardware. Another lie that Naughty has spread is that X360 games can't use the HDD for data caching or streaming to reduce load times. This is EXACTLY what Halo 3 does to reduce load times, it's one of the advantages to having a HDD. And developers have the option of requiring HDDs for their game.

Besides, Alan Wake has better texture quality than Uncharted 2, and that's supposedly when compressed.

No first or second party Sony developer seems to be talking about how the RSX holds back the PS3! But they sure like to brag about Blu-ray! As if they have a choice but to use it!

Sorry for long reply.

Np, But there still isn't any denying that Uncharted 2 took up all the memory storage of the Blu ray disc.

Bluenose wrote:

Alan1994 wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Uncharted 2 is the best example of what I just said. The game is 25 GBs in size but I'd say roughly two-thirds of it is just uncompressed textures. I mean seriously what about Uncharted 2 merits a whole single-layered Blu-ray disc interms of content and gameplay. The game isn't even an open-world game like Mass Effect. It's completely linear and doesn't have THAT much content or replayability to consume even more than 9 or 10 GBs of space. Naughty Dog has lied to the internet by saying what they have done is not possible on the 360. Ofcourse it would be improbable since the engine is built from the ground up to run on Playstation hardware. Another lie that Naughty has spread is that X360 games can't use the HDD for data caching or streaming to reduce load times. This is EXACTLY what Halo 3 does to reduce load times, it's one of the advantages to having a HDD. And developers have the option of requiring HDDs for their game.

Besides, Alan Wake has better texture quality than Uncharted 2, and that's supposedly when compressed.

No first or second party Sony developer seems to be talking about how the RSX holds back the PS3! But they sure like to brag about Blu-ray! As if they have a choice but to use it!

Sorry for long reply.

Np, But there still isn't any denying that Uncharted 2 took up all the memory storage of the Blu ray disc.

But theoritically if the game engine was multiplatform and took advantage of the Xenos's architecture and incredible decompression abilities you can probably fit the game on one disc. As stated before Blu-ray isn't an "advantage" for the PS3, it's practically the PS3's eDRAM.

You got it, the FANBOYS dont realize that Microsoft included things like eD-RAM & 12x DVD-9 & Compression so they didn't need Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

LMAO The Sony PR machine claims another brainwashed victim.

Alan1994 wrote:

Bluenose wrote:

Well actually it does have a role in some games that is on the Ps3 because its a true fact that Uncharted 2 couldn't have been don on the 360.

Uncharted 2 is the best example of what I just said. The game is 25 GBs in size but I'd say roughly two-thirds of it is just uncompressed textures. I mean seriously what about Uncharted 2 merits a whole single-layered Blu-ray disc interms of content and gameplay. The game isn't even an open-world game like Mass Effect. It's completely linear and doesn't have THAT much content or replayability to consume even more than 9 or 10 GBs of space. Naughty Dog has lied to the internet by saying what they have done is not possible on the 360. Ofcourse it would be improbable since the engine is built from the ground up to run on Playstation hardware. Another lie that Naughty has spread is that X360 games can't use the HDD for data caching or streaming to reduce load times. This is EXACTLY what Halo 3 does to reduce load times, it's one of the advantages to having a HDD. And developers have the option of requiring HDDs for their game.

Besides, Alan Wake has better texture quality than Uncharted 2, and that's supposedly when compressed.

No first or second party Sony developer seems to be talking about how the RSX holds back the PS3! But they sure like to brag about Blu-ray! As if they have a choice but to use it!

Sorry for long reply.

QFT Brilliant post.