Mass Effect Takes up only 6.74 GB

Crazyglues - 760 days 21 hours ago

LOL.... Priceless...

Agree(6) | Disagree(1) | Report

cloud360-7th_account - 760 days 21 hours ago

This game is only pssible on DVD and not Blu-Ray.

Only games that have awesome sound and graphics and lenght are possible on Blu Ray

Agree(12) | Disagree(37) | Report

Odion - 760 days 20 hours ago

kinda like your 6 hour Heavenly Sword, to my 60 hour Mass Effect?

Agree(41) | Disagree(18) | Report

Jenzo - 760 days 20 hours ago

"Only games that have awesome sound and graphics and lenght are possible on Blu Ray"

How come Oblivion was possible on both DVD and Blu-Ray?

Where are these Blu-Ray titles you are talking about? I have'nt seen any yet. Guess what. GTA IV fits on DVD as well.

Agree(16) | Disagree(6) | Report

sjappie - 760 days 20 hours ago

I think he was being sarcastic. Oh, I guess not after reading his 2nd comment.

Crazyglues, thnx for the award, I'm sure I'll find a nice place for it on my mantle.

Agree(5) | Disagree(0) | Report

socomnick - 760 days 20 hours ago

Dvd and blueray are both capable storage formats for this generation. Blueray seems to hold more but in reality devs just spread out the files uncompressed onto the ps3 to help with load times because blueray loads so slow.

Agree(12) | Disagree(4) | Report

hazeblaze - 760 days 19 hours ago

Just wait til you guys play the game and then try comparing the environments and sound to games like Heavenly Sword and Uncharted.

In EVERY vid shown of Mass Effect we've already seen that the environments are pretty bland... even on the ship. The graphics are gorgeous but there's not a lot of detail... and that's the difference.

Not saying it's a bad thing... for a game with as many worlds to explore, it would have taken MUCH longer for them to fill each one up with the level of visual or audio detail of HS, R&C, or Uncharted. I've been saying this for MONTHS... the game looks great & can't wait to play it, but it lacks the detail of a lot of games we've already played. Even Bioshock's level design included more detail than we've seen in any of the ME vids. I still think gameplay can make up for a lack in visual/audio detail but fanboys shouldn't act like the small space is not noticeable in the detail of the game.

Also, when I refer to audio, I am refering to environmental ambience. There's a ton of dialog in the game and the usual combat sound effects. But the other games mentioned include environmental audio for a realistic ambience... may be present on some of the worlds but it hasn't been shown off on any of the vids yet. That's the kind of stuff that gives games more immersion.

EDIT: @GODOFTHUNDER. You're stupid. For one, the PS3 doesn't even cost $600 anymore. Second, it'll be less than $300 in less than 1 years time. And third, games are ALREADY taking advantage of the extra storage space that blu ray offers... of course games on the 360 aren't going to take up extra space... b/c THEY CAN'T. For UBI to say they were having to work to get Assassin's Creed to fit on dvd... it means that it is already an issue. What Mass Effect DOES prove is that a game CAN lack in some areas and still be appealing. And what games like HS, MGS4, Uncharted, & KZ2 show is that games on blu ray will be pushing the level of detail in games far beyond anything we will see on the 360. Own both consoles and quit being a moron.

Agree(19) | Disagree(19) | Report

Mu5afir - 760 days 17 hours ago

Mass Effect is an RPG, the "actual" gameplay is probably no more then 12 hours long at best. Comparing these two genres is idiotic, pointing to Heavenly Sword, when you could have pointed to R&C etc as examples of more storage used right.. is moronic and fanboyish.

Defending an inferior format, because you own a Xbox 360 and can't afford a HD-DVD / Blu-Ray player is sad.

Agree(8) | Disagree(17) | Report

Mark 1 - 760 days 16 hours ago

YOU'VE BEEN HIT BY...
@@________
@@@______(*) THE BOABY...
(__)_)

Agree(2) | Disagree(1) | Report

gaffyh - 760 days 14 hours ago

I'd wait to see how good it actually is, I don't see an RPG like this working, the facial animations are stiff and gameplay looks a little strange.

By the way FFX was also on a DVD, I think it used more space than this (and was as long if not longer), which makes me wonder what the devs have compromised on. Most likely they have completely replaced all FMVs with Cut scenes to cut down on the size (like in MGS series). It looks like it could be a good game, but they should be aiming to use up the full disc capacity.

Agree(1) | Disagree(3) | Report

FreeMonk - 760 days 14 hours ago

proves that you don't need a Blu-Ray disc to fit a game that looks and plays amazingly.

The 360 version fits perfectly onto a DVD disc and is 99.9% the same as the PS3 version with 1080p graphics and all, which shell's out a Blu-Ray disc using around 20gb of data compared to the 7gb DVD on the 360. The same probably goes for Assassin's Creed when that gets released.

If Mass Effect is indeed 6.74gb, it just re-confirms that Blu-Ray is still not needed at this present time, especially when the graphics in Mass Effect look amazing and matches any PS3 game out there at the moment, plus runs at nearly 50hrs worth of gameplay.

I'm sure the Sony Fanboys will have something to say about this, so just explain why Bluray is needed for next gen titles??

Agree(6) | Disagree(1) | Report

Mr Bubbles - 760 days 14 hours ago

thank god somebody here still has a sense of humor. I realize the irony of me posting this but, I kinda wish that first comment was the only one on this thread. Bubbles for the wit and the quick draw, sjappie!

Agree(0) | Disagree(0) | Report

fusionboxer - 760 days 14 hours ago

Ok you can't really say the amount of time you play a game all of a sudden equals the amount of storage space needed or desired. Details such as audio, textures, actual gameplay time, environments and all of that make up the reasoning why developers could use more memory on their discs.

I bet the mass effect dev team would have loved to have extra space regardless of whether or not they did or didn't have it. Hideo Kojima said he wanted more space for games on the ps2 let alone games this generation. Metal gear solid 3 definitely wasn't a 60 hour game yet it used quite of bit of data. I played Monster Hunter freedom 2 for going on almost 400 hours now, but that doesn't mean i'm seeing new environments, gameplay variations or anything like that. I'm basically moving to similar looking places, using familiar fight mechanics, against your basic npc's that other then textures pretty much act the same. This goes for oblivion (regardless of how engrossing and fun it was), your final fantasy's, and even my favorite psp game monster hunter. Mass effect is an RPG with very cool shooter elements and a bit a strategy. It's looking amazing and I never once thought it needed more then a dual layered dvd because the gameplay is seemingly(not sure yet) set in stone. The environments look nice, but aren't the focus because you simply use your vehicle to get around. The characters are definitely the focus here and I really don't expect the rest of the game to match up to the character textures, animations, and interactive dialogue.

Not to sound one sided, but i can see ratchet or heavenly sword needing the extra space because of the amount of textures, physics, size of envrionments, audio, and even AI all working together at once running off a single disc. Those games may not be long, but the scale of everything is simply over the top.

But yes regardless of how you look at it, some games will need extra space, and some won't. Simple as that.

Agree(2) | Disagree(2) | Report

Sam Fisher - 760 days 13 hours ago

i agree but u got to admit that sony is FAR ahead of its time and thats y its fails so much... but theres way more problems on the ps3 than on the 360 thats 4 sure 4 EX:

link - http://onaxis.blogspot.com/...

Agree(2) | Disagree(2) | Report

Twist96 - 760 days 13 hours ago

[Regarding PGR4]

"The artists use software application Photoshop to draw the worlds and Maya to build the cities in three dimensions. At the end of the process each city is more than 6.3GB in size, across 10,487 different files. That data is crunched down by a render farm into a size manageable by the Xbox 360. The team even uses pre-production 360s to help export the data. At the end of the crunch a city is only 593MB in size, held in just three different files."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/...

Excellent note about the value of compression. Games will fit on DVD9 for at least another two years. After that we'll go to Digital Distribution. Screw expensive HDDisk formats. Both 360 owners (Tv Shows, Demos, Arcade Games) and PS3 owners (Warhawk) have seen the advantages of Digital Distribution.

Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report

Twist96 - 760 days 13 hours ago

Can you try typing in paragraphs?

Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report

SlappyMcTaint - 760 days 11 hours ago

Holy sh!t, I think I'll go slap yo momma -only 6.74gb?! wow, that's incredible!! How did they do that? OMGbbqSauce!! What will they think of next?

Agree(0) | Disagree(0) | Report

Jenzo - 760 days 20 hours ago

The only ones who said space was gonna be a problem this generation were Sony, and look what they know about designing dev-tools. The only thing they are good at is spreading hype and bs. That's what's selling the PS3. People think it's more powerful cause that's what they've been told.

Agree(15) | Disagree(9) | Report

green_ghost5 - 760 days 20 hours ago

By compressing animations and everything else to 1% of it's original size.

Agree(3) | Disagree(1) | Report

Gorgon - 760 days 20 hours ago

jenzo, its the same thing with games like Halo and COD4. People just think they are awsome because they've been told so. Every PC gamer is laughing at those games right now. For us its old hat.

Agree(5) | Disagree(5) | Report

dhammalama - 760 days 17 hours ago

Sony's definitetly not good at making game consoles!!! Name one Sony console that ever did relatively well. . . . oh, never mind.

Agree(1) | Disagree(1) | Report

Jenzo - 760 days 15 hours ago

I could name a couple of Sony formats that flopped completely if you like? =) How about Betamax, MiniDisc, ATRAC, HiFD, Super Audio CD and UMD?

Only calling MS greedy is funny cause all Sony wants with their new formats is to gain monopoly. They are both as greedy, as are all multinational corporations. It's part of the game.

Agree(3) | Disagree(1) | Report

sticky doja - 760 days 9 hours ago

Name one Sony console that hasn't been over hyped by Sony themselves. Every one of their systems has underperformed from what they promised it would be capable of.

Agree(3) | Disagree(0) | Report

dhammalama - 759 days 20 hours ago

Still they make good games and I think bluray was a good decision. It's forward thinking and I'm glad I have it. Basically I'm safeguarded from being funked buy the "HDDVD vs. Bluray WAR" because even if bluray doesn't win, my bluray player isn't obsolite. I also think that although sony has a lot invested in the bluray format, the ps3 gives them a perfect digital distrobution base as well. (as long as it sells well)

Agree(0) | Disagree(0) | Report

Bonsai1214 - 760 days 20 hours ago

you know as well as i do that chances are that they'll reuse textures in different colors much like they do in almost every game ever made. its the same for oblivion. they have the same grass, same trees, same people everywhere.

i'm not saying its a bad thing, but its a shortcut devs have been using for ages. see: mortal kombat

Agree(7) | Disagree(1) | Report

Mu5afir - 760 days 17 hours ago

It's an RPG, I am pretty sure it doesn't have 60 hours of gameplay.

Agree(2) | Disagree(2) | Report

Close_Second - 760 days 14 hours ago

...the same is true for Sony exclusive games like Killzone 2 and GT5. Some images I have seen from both of those games you can see the same texture being re-used many times in a single scene - GT5 especially.

Having more space does not necessarily mean the use of more textures. For one thing, having more textures will result in more time required to develop a game. It also means you need more graphics memory to render the increased number of textures in a single scene.

The Nintendo 64 was stifled because of its low storage capacity. Blu-Ray for this generation is the opposite - its overkill. DVD is still fine even if it means having to split a game across 2 or 3 DVDs.

What should have happened this gen is for the ability to install game content from the DVD onto the HDD. Unfortunately MS have prevented this by releasing its "Core" and also only supplying a 20GB (of which only 13GB approx. is usable) in its "Premium" console.

The PS3 would have been fine with standard DVD for games as long as you could install a game on the HDD like you can with a PC...which as it happens is still using DVD. However, Sony wanted to push Blu-Ray for two reasons:

1. They want the blu-ray format to win.
2. They needed something big to distinguish the PS3 from the 360.

Agree(4) | Disagree(1) | Report

deep - 760 days 21 hours ago

You know that's not true. The Xbox drive reads doublelayer dvd's at 8x, and the 2x read rate of Blu-rays is faster than that.

Bioware did say that they were thinking they'd have to put it on two dvd's, but worked very hard to get it on one dvd. Surprised they took it so far, I expect it's because of extras.

Agree(9) | Disagree(12) | Report

Zhuk - 760 days 21 hours ago

http://www.joystiq.com/2007...

"According to comments made by Bethesda's Todd Howard in the latest issue of EGM, the development team is using extra space on the Blu-ray disc to duplicate crucial data and improve load times. "Drive speed matters more to me [than capacity], and Blu-ray is slower," Howard told EGM"

"Overall, we know that the Xbox 360 drive reads data faster than PS3's. While the Blu-ray drive might consistently read data at the same speed, the 360 drive is faster at reading data on the outer layers of the DVD disc; and that's were devs tend to put the biggest files."

Agree(10) | Disagree(4) | Report

TheMART at Xboxkings - 760 days 21 hours ago

As far as I know the 360 uses DVD players at 12 x speed and IS proven faster then the PS3 BluRay reading in multiple games (multiplatform) comparison. That's why they use the HDD install on the PS3 so much. To speed up for the slow BR player.

Agree(7) | Disagree(6) | Report

Jenzo - 760 days 20 hours ago

Jason Booth from Harmonix stated the same thing in his blog.

I believe them more than I believe some delirious fanboys on this site.

Agree(5) | Disagree(5) | Report

Bonsai1214 - 760 days 20 hours ago

shall i dig up that article that states that 360's dvd drive only spins at 12x at the outer rim, and progressively slows to 1.x times when it reaches the center of the disk? whereas the ps3 drive reads at 2x on every part of the disk. and when averaged, the ps3 drive has a faster data transfer fate.

(actually, i can't find that article. but most people know what i'm talking about. meus, care to pull it up for me? :-p)

thanks vip3r

Agree(7) | Disagree(3) | Report

Vip3r - 760 days 20 hours ago

http://forum.beyond3d.com/s...

It's been said over and over again.

2x Blu-ray Drive (72Mbps(9MB/s))
Single Layer (2x CLV) - Constant Linear Velocity (Same speed across entire disk)
Double Layer - Couldn't find any data but no games have been released on a double layer yet.

Entire Blu-ray Disk is read at 9MB/s.

12x DVD-Rom Drive SL (9.25MB/S-15.85MB/s(AVG ~8x(10.57MB/s) DL (4.36MB/s-10.57MB/s(AVG ~6x(7.93MB/s)
SL(DVD-5) 12x Max (5-12x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)
DL(DVD-9) 8x Max (3.3-8x Full CAV) - Constant Angular Velocity (Speed Varies from edge to edge)

SL DVD is 1.57MB/s > SL Blu-ray
DL DVD is 1.07MB/s < SL Blu-ray

Seeing that Mass Effect will be on a DL DVD it mean that BDs will be faster a loading.

Agree(7) | Disagree(5) | Report

Zhuk - 760 days 20 hours ago

"Overall, we know that the Xbox 360 drive reads data faster than PS3's. While the Blu-ray drive might consistently read data at the same speed, the 360 drive is faster at reading data on the outer layers of the DVD disc; and that's were devs tend to put the biggest files."

Agree(5) | Disagree(5) | Report

deep - 760 days 20 hours ago

Single layer the 360 drive reads at 12x, double layer it reads at 8x. FACT.

Blu-ray read speed is above the lowest read speed of a single layer DVD (outer rim), but below the fastest 12x (inner rim), but it is faster than the 8x it is to read a double layer DVD. FACT.

Honestly it doesn't matter. I mean Uncharted uses the HDD so there's NO loading throughout the whole game. So I just wanted to point out your stupid comment, and maybe you learnt something. Both drives are very capable.

Agree(5) | Disagree(5) | Report

skagrerrrr - 760 days 19 hours ago

so that why the 7200 rpm hdd gives a data transfer boost

all that aside... Great work, bioware!

Agree(1) | Disagree(0) | Report

jaja1434 - 760 days 9 hours ago

As opposed to what? The whole point of replayability is to get a different experience then what you did last time. And least I be mistaken taking a different conversation path which in turn could lead to a completely different story is a different experience. So really. Know what, I'll just skip to the end and call you an idiot.

Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report

Zhuk - 760 days 21 hours ago

Imagine a sci-fi Morrowind! though Fallout 3 will keep me happy for sure :)

Agree(2) | Disagree(0) | Report