Game Producer Eric Fong: "Blu-ray allows us to...not cutting corners"

s8anicslayer - 871 days 6 hours ago

changing discs is so old school, this is supposed to be next gen, from the internals to the encasings of these new consoles, blue ray allows dev alot of space for for their games, plus you don't need an add on that looks like my wifes make box to watch hi def movies if you don't have a stand alone player no matter if it's hddvd or blue ray

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Scrooge - 870 days 16 hours ago

Disk swapping has not been an issue, it's purely speculation. Blue Dragon is the only game on mulitple disks, even Mass Effect fits on one disk. Saying that "no space" will be an issue in the future is reasonable, but fanboys have been saying that since 360's release in 2005, still not an issue. Blue Ray is deffinitley future proof, but so far the DVD9 hasn't officially limited the 360.

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Kratos12 - 870 days 14 hours ago

@Scrooge: You say the space has not limited the 360 so far. But you forget that the 360 is itself limited from doing what the PS3 does. Look at LAIR, HS, KZ2, etc etc. Do you think the 360 can handle those and if it does can it do it on one disc?? So yes the 360 is not limited by space because thats the best the 360 can do!!!

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Vavoom - 870 days 13 hours ago

I mean man, the 360 has done just fine with the disk format that it is currently using. Besides, in most cases before all of this more space bandwagon was being ridden the same game release on both systems dvd9 for the 360 and blu-ray for the PS3 has shown NO advantage for the PS3 as a matter of fact in most cases the 360 version looked better and played smoother. You guys are overplaying the hell out of this more space crap.

Although nothing could ever be wrong with having the extra space, it can also make developers lazy and complacent, they could start not to clean up their code and leave a bunch of crap in the game that would have otherwise made the game leaner and more efficient. All I see the extra space adding to the game is more cut scenes, and more addon bullsh!t that most people wouldn't want anyway.

A bigger concern for me is not how much space blu-ray vs dvd9 or HDDVD has, but WHY does everything being released on the PS3 have to always be delayed or limited to 30 FPS. That is a bigger concern for me. Why don't the developer create these games with less features on the 360 if this is a problem for them. (PS3 version has 50 levels and the 360 has 18 or something like that.)

Bottom line, when you have more space to spread out, one tends to use it; whether they need it or not, or at least feel compelled to use it. If you had an extra room in your house that you really aren't using, you will furnish it anyway wouldn't you, and who wouldn't.

All I'm trying to say is stop making the disc space issue bigger than it actually is.

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Kratos12 - 870 days 13 hours ago

"I mean man, the 360 has done just fine with the disk format that it is currently using. Besides, in most cases before all of this more space bandwagon was being ridden the same game release on both systems dvd9 for the 360 and blu-ray for the PS3 has shown NO advantage for the PS3 as a matter of fact in most cases the 360 version looked better and played smoother."

You are right. So far no games have showed why a BluRay is better than a conventional DVD. But then again this does not mean the games coming out in the future will not show the diff. As for games playing smoother on a 360 or running only @ 30 fps then blame the devs. The PS3 or the Blu Ray has nothing to do with that. If the PS3 first party games can run at 60 fps then there is definitely something wrong with the devs who say it cant be done.

"Although nothing could ever be wrong with having the extra space, it can also make developers lazy and complacent, they could start not to clean up their code and leave a bunch of crap in the game that would have otherwise made the game leaner and more efficient. All I see the extra space adding to the game is more cut scenes, and more addon bullsh!t that most people wouldn't want anyway."

If the devs leave out a bunch of crap and do not optimise the code then again its the fault of the devs. Going by your logic we shouldve never moved on from cartridges to a CD --> DVD --> BluRay format. With extra space and good developers you can have more levels in a game. Uncompressed video and audio.

Bottomline the PS3 looked into the future. Hell Sony always looks into the future. And sony doesnt forget the ppl who support it. Otherwise they would have deserted the 110 million PS2 owners just like MS abandoned the 20 million XBOX owners. I feel for those ppl who bought an XBOX a month or a week or a day ago only to learn that the XBOX will not have any developer support. Who knows they might come up with a new console in another couple of yrs and backstab the 10-20 million 360 users.

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Scrooge - 870 days 12 hours ago

Good point. All those games claim 50 gigs or more, but compression can also be used to make them fit on one DVD. All 360 games are compressed, so maybe those 50 gig games could fit on one DVD. Like I said, the space is still not an issue.

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risk - 870 days 11 hours ago

i will comment on one thing.

using multiple discs you make the game ever bigger then it needs to be.

lets say you use the pallet "xyz" for levels 1,2,3 that are on disc 1
now you need to use the same pallets for lets say a part of the last level 9. you would have to add that pallet into disc 2/3/4 or w.e just to get that pallet visible thus "wasting" space. where as if it were all to fit in one disc it would acctually save more space.

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warfed - 871 days 6 hours ago

yeah it isn't the end of the world, but it's annoying and most developers won't do it they'll just cut corners...

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Hatchetforce - 871 days 6 hours ago

Within a year you will be lucky to get by with two standard DVDs . MS just reiterated that all 360 games will play on all 360s. This means no caching textures and sound on the HDD, no decompressing textures, videos, sound, etc onto the HDD. Two disks won't do it. So at what point in getting up and down off the couch will you get disgusted?

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Fisher339 - 871 days 5 hours ago

Wired controllers, They seem too last gen to stay around.

Is playing with a wired controller bad? no
Is having to change discs bad? no

But both are inconviences that should no longer be an issue anymore.

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Hatchetforce - 871 days 5 hours ago

I understand what you are saying but wired controllers isn't a good analogy. A wire controller doesn't halt the experience. A wired controller doesn't lower the quality of sound and video or even cause entire game features to disappear in a puff of smoke. What we are looking at is an alteration of the game experience that goes beyond a cord and a disc swap. The problem just isn't the disk limits either. With no HDD to depend on, the problem is now amplified because textures that are normally stored in a pool and shared must now be on each and every disk. And it isn't just textures either.

The PGR4 development team opened their mouths and the 360 Damage Control Team couldn't put the genie back in the bottle. They stated day and night versions of the same maps were not possible due to insufficient space on a DVD for textures. Now Bizarre and MS will tell you this was a rumor. Wrong. It would be a rumor if people stated something was said that was not. This isn't the case.

http://www.bizarrecreations...
A member of the Bizarre Staff made the statement on their forums. Bizarre and MS have done their level best to put a positive spin on matters but the issue is out in the open (again).

As game worlds expand, as the desire grows for a seamless realistic experience, so will the capabilities of standard DVD shrink.

People need to realize how secretive dev teams can be. Once a dev team actually brings up an issue in public, it has become a major problem, not a minor nag.

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Vavoom - 870 days 13 hours ago

Just because some xbox 360 doesn't have HDs, doesn't mean no caching. A line of code could easily be added to states that if the HD is present that these things will be cached. Result, both systems can play the game, the one with the HD has a more efficient experience. This is a choice made by the person what didn't want the HD. PC games with is minimum requirements vs recommended components.

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Marceles - 871 days 6 hours ago

N64 came out after playstation...N64 is the first system ever since they chose to stay with the cartridge format and they lost a majority of Squaresoft games because of it. Also, the Gamecube still had less storage. Gamecube disks only hold 1.5 gb which is only 300 mb more than Dreamcast, but less than a DVD still and the gamecube came out after the PS2. Right now, the 360 and Wii are tied in disc storage since they both hold 4.7 gb of space on each game disc. Just wanted to keep the facts straight since you clearly hate the 360 when you should hate Nintendo when it comes to disc space after all these years...

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johnnywit - 871 days 6 hours ago

Nintendo lost nearly all of there third party support with the N64 because of storage space. The biggest loss was when square left but they made the best game ever(FF7)on playstation. I think SNES had more storage than Genesis. Snes had the largest 16 bit game, tales of phantasia which was a whopping 48 megs!!! WOW!!!

@drewdrakes

Get a life man. I was commmenting on his post about the N64 and genesis.I didn't say one thing about PS3 or 360. I could care less about the 2.

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drewdrakes - 871 days 6 hours ago

johnnywit - Sony lost nearly all its 3rd party support with the PS3, so?

In response to this article, procedural programming reduces the amount of space required. Perhaps they wouldnt have to cut corners if they pulled their socks up and made some nice algorithms to dynamically create textures. That would in fact be productive, and efficient. It would reduce space AND could be used to reduce dev time of future games. Because if they did it correctly algorithms could be re-used.

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PS-Wii-60 - 871 days 5 hours ago

N64 was released a cartridge based system because Nintendo and Sony had a falling out of sorts.

In case you didn't know, Sony was developing the cd technology for what was to become Nintendo's next generation console.
For reasons that still aren't clear to this day, Nintendo and Sony broke their relations.

Sony was stuck with the technology they had invested years in.
Instead of scraping the tech and in an attempt to get a return from their R&D investment, they decided to enter the gaming market and release it for themselves under the Sony brand.

And the PlayStation was born.

Since Nintendo was falling way behind in the release of their next gen console they decided to stay with cartridges.
That marked the beginning of the end for Nintendo's console market dominance.

Not that it matters now since they are once again on the verge of taking it all back.

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peksi - 871 days 2 hours ago

You're suggesting that environments are created dynamically? Sure that's possible but coders aren't very good artists.

A big process of making such a game is when artists create the environment and make it look real. They store it in vector format with texture maps etc.

But it becomes a huge process if it would be done dynamically. You'd have to include the artists' creations into the dynamic creation process. Modeling and implementing it would be a real pain in the ass. And because you cannot cache the dynamically stored geometry to the HDD it would have to reside in the memory or would have to be created in real time. This would take a heavy toll when considering performance.

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sa73917 - 871 days 1 hour ago

Whilst I don't agree procedurally generated content is 100% the answer it is possible to produce exceptionally good looking game assets using this method.. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wik... (even better download it and play it).. There are plenty of games where sections of the content displayed on the screen could be happily populated using this method whilst still allowing for the artists to draw up the more "critical to the game" content..

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Mu5afir - 870 days 17 hours ago

I think he was talking about the respective console, not an evolution off all consoles together. Nintendo < SNES < N64 < Game Cube < Wii in terms of storage evolution, each console had more storage space then it's predecessor. However, the 360 still has the same DVD9 format it did, when it was first implemented on the original Xbox.

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Dragon Boy - 870 days 14 hours ago

I wouldn't call the Nintendo & Sony deal a falling out it was more of Nintendo backstabbing. The truth is Nintendo and Sony were working on a console that would have had cartridge and CD slots for games which was too be called "Nintendo Playstation." Nintendo got nervous and felt CD were the way of the future and since the technology was produced by Sony, Sony would be getting the largest share from the console. So with out telling Sony they workout a secret deal with phillips they announced it to the world.

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Marceles - 871 days 6 hours ago

No more room being on a disk means developers can't go all out on a game. If anything cutting corners = disappointed developers who have more ideas for a game but they can't be fulfilled because a lack of, in this case, disc space and hi def audio and video capabilities. Some developers are just saying "oh well we'll make it do what we can with what we have", but now some devs are starting to want the challenge to create a bigger game and not settle for less

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SofaKingReetodded - 871 days 6 hours ago

so how many layers and passovers of code do you force into the dev cycle before you start running out of money? Time better spent on just developing game content than thinking of ways to squeeze onto 9 yr old tech.

I smell HUGE bs here.

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Mu5afir - 870 days 17 hours ago

Cutting corners means, PGR not being able to have a new set of texture for night effects. So, they had to make "dawn" and dark weather effects to cover up the limitations.

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Sarick - 870 days 18 hours ago

I admit Blu-ray offers a lot of storage now but in the near future I can see it needing compression too. I'm assuming in the future games will get bigger and more complex.

What will happen to all these DVD storage limited games if blu-ray developers start cutting corners to fit games on blu-ray?

Before you say blu-ray will never get filled up remember in the past when some tech said 640kb is more than enough?

(This is a pro blu-ray comment sorry if it confused people)

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Mu5afir - 870 days 17 hours ago

Blu-Ray has compression, but it's not about the compression. It's about the amount of data space you get with Blu-Ray. Why give developers a limited storage medium like DVD9? When you can provide them with a larger storage device. More space is ALWAYS better, how anyone can argue against this boggles my mind.

@ Sarick

Sorry for the late reply, I was getting Vonage setup.. xD

Anyways, you are talking about the "future" and stating that the Blu-Ray format will one day get filled up. Which is very true, technology gets old and sooner or later they become obsolete.

But the argument being made regarding Blu-Ray isn't if it's going to be obsolete in the distance future, but if it's a viable medium now. I have read your comments over again, and I find them to be too "near" sighted that is why I tried to respond to you.

Sorry if it seemed like I was attacking you or something.

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Sarick - 870 days 12 hours ago

Mu5afir, I don't see why you wasted a reply to me when you just confirmed my exact statement. I'm saying that there will come a time when blu-ray is to small and it will also hit a wall like some devs are pointing out now with dvd9.

With PS3's 8 year lifespan that wall might be closer than we think. My point about compression is if or when blu-ray gets filled up and needs compression like dvd9. What will people be doing with the dvd9 limited consoles to compete?

If some devs are having trouble with space now what are they going to do when even blu-ray isn't enough space? I don't understand why you called me out on this my position is on par with yours and is transparent. I'm all for extra space please tell me how that statement says otherwise.

My last message backs up the person I replied to.

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Genki - 871 days 4 hours ago

Which brings to light the fact that GPU RAM isn't exactly optimal for a CPU, and with that you have yet another dilemma on your hands.

Both systems have strengths and weaknesses folks...can we leave it at that?

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JCDenton - 870 days 18 hours ago

PS3 and 360 has same amount of memory, only X360's (unified) memory architecture is more flexible.

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Mu5afir - 870 days 17 hours ago

Having unified memory is NOT a good thing. The Ps3 does NOT have lag between it's CPU and memory usage. Since the RSX already has dedicated memory, it can access the other portion of the memory if needed. This is how your PC WORKS. The 360s GPU / CPU have to share the same RAM, that means developers have to constantly play around with the amount of RAM to be allocated to a particular task. This creates lag between the CPU / GPU and in turn lowers the speed of the data pipelines and creates a bottleneck.

The Ps3 has XDR some of the fastest memory ever created, it is lag free and can be accessed by the GPU and CPU. The CPU only has access to the XDR memory, while the RSX has access to all 512mb of memory that includes the GDDR3 and XDR clocked at 3.2ghz.

Unified shaders, and unified memory is not the same. Remember that.

I am out of bubbles, give me more.. XD

@ JCDenton

Allocating memory between the GPU / CPU creates lag. The GPU / CPU must constantly calculate the amount of RAM they have between each other. This is a big hassle for developers also, this isn't how PC RAM is allocated and neither is the Ps3s.

There is a constant balance struggle as to to allocation of memory. This is why modern GPUs have their own RAM allocated to their chip sets, so they don't have to (unless necessary) allocate memory from the CPU.

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JCDenton - 870 days 13 hours ago

I'm not confusing unified shader architecture with unified memory.
Anyway, I really don't see how unified memory is a bad thing. Developers can allocate memory however they want - to fit their needs in particular situation. There is no lag here.

PS3 has 256MB of system memory (RAM) and 256MB dedicated to GPU. You can't use GPU memory to store anything other than geometry and textures/shaders. On the other hand, PS3's RAM works at very high frequencies - 3.2 GHz... So, my point is that PS3 and Xbox 360 are pretty much neck-and-neck when it comes to memory related tasks.

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Genki - 871 days 4 hours ago

"its proven by and far so far that the only reason companies are saying that blu ray is needed beyond being paid by sony to do so is that they use uncompressed every thing and dont optimize their code."

Where has that ever been proven? Please enlighten me. If you're going to use Resistance as an example, don't bother, I know about the filler, and that stuff only utilized less than 1% of total asset space.

Besides, In all honesty, I don't think there's one game on PS3 that's been released that couldn't fit on a DVD. All games have been using compression, just some much less than others, yes, that includes Resistance, Lair, Uncharted, and any of the other flagship PS3 titles.

No company needs to prove why they need blu-ray, it's right in front of your face. More space = more opportunities, plain and simple. Blindly defend that if you REALLY want to, but that's the way it is. I can't understand why you would want to undermine the usefulness of having more space. Just think of your precious advanced compression techniques when Blu-Ray hits the wall, as it inevitably will, like ALL PREVIOUS media formats have.

I'm not an audiophile, so I won't argue the uncompressed audio bit, but it still remains, and there's no two ways about it, that uncompressed is better than compressed.

Anyway, I'm not trying to engage in a pissing contest, apparently you missed when I said both processes have their tradeoffs...which should tell you that I think both have their advantages and disadvantages.

I'm not one of those fanatics that thinks that DVD will damn the 360 to Hell you know...I'm sure it'll be just fine by the end of it's run. The gamecube turned out to be a good system, I don't see why the same can't hold true here.

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EZCheez - 871 days 3 hours ago

But it really is amazing why people like WilliamRLBaker argue about the necessity of Blu-Ray. We would still be using cassette tapes and putting floppy discs into computers if people like him were in charge. It really is amazing how people seem to have such a problem with MORE space. These people must live in tiny homes.

Also, would you still be arguing if this were about HD-DVD, because I'm betting you don't have a problem with that format right?

WilliamRLBaker, you have to remember that back in the day a 200MHz Pentium computer was overachieving too. Things evolve, thank goodness. Let's appreciate that fact.

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Maldread - 870 days 20 hours ago

Great comment with 11.2. You summed up my thoughts well, and in a very accurate way.

As this is coming from Game Republic which works with Sony exclusively from what i remember, i can understand if people are sceptic about their "Blu-Ray gives us more opportunities comment", but come on, use common sense, more storage is a good thing. I agree that it`s not been shown yet with the PS3 games, but upcoming games will show the benefit of it. With that said 360 games, will still look and play great, as Genki said.

Bubbles for you Genki.

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Mu5afir - 870 days 17 hours ago

WilliamRLBaker computer science 101, any type of compression requires the processor to decompress. The more you compress an object, the more processing power it takes to decompress it.

Try it out yourself, encode Xvid and h264 encodes and try to play both on a OLD P2 computer. ;)

I am out of bubbles, give me more.. xD

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