PS3 game will actually use Blu-ray capacity, says developer
By Erik Hanson 
posted Aug 22nd 2006 4:55PM
posted Aug 22nd 2006 4:55PM
Developer Insomniac games spoke to MTV recently about their new Playstation3 game Resistance: Fall of Man. While normally this sort of post is left to the fine readers of Joystiq or other sites, of interest to the ongoing media war is that the game is scheduled to weigh in at 22 GB of data, putting it above the Xbox 360's DVD-drive capacity. Up until now, we weren't sure if games would actually use any of the extra space on a Blu-ray disc, or if it would just be a sort of Trojan horse for getting non-gaming media into the home entertainment setups of consumers.Surely a good chunk on that disc is cutscenes or other non-gameplay data, but still, it's nice to see someone putting extra capacity to good use. We can think of all kinds of good things to fill up a disc with, perhaps making-of movies, behind-the-scenes clips, a video walkthrough or cheat guide, or TV trailers for the game, perhaps even hidden or extra levels or assets for you to add onto your game, or unlock using game play time or achievement points. Let's hope game developers of all platforms can think of some great uses for the extra storage on any of the next-generation media.
[Via Joystiq]
I could be wrong, but based on the fact that the game will require bluray authoring and media, wouldn't that make the production costs much higher, consequently raising the retail price of the game? I can't see Sony completely writing off the majority of the development cost of the game to counter the increased production cost of the media. Obviously it won't cost $60 to produce each copy, but I really wouldn't be surprised to see the games that use BD-ROMS actually cost more, at least in the beginning life cycle of the system.
Is it really worth paying extra for the game, in order to have hi res textures and cutscenes?
This sounds like 22GB of uncompressed data. That's not uncommon for a game under development. If you were to compress the final product, I'm sure it'll consume less space. Until the product is released in final form, this really means nothing.
I'm sure they'll be some sort of compression because you don't want to load large chunks of uncompressed data off disc-- but maybe that's just me.
My guess is the large size of games is why they chose to include a hard drive on all versions of the PS3. I am guessing that the PS3 starts prebuffering a game onto temporary space on the hard disk to improve loading times. Or hopefully give you the option of doing so.
Hells Yeah. If ya got it, flaunt it. Shake what ya mamma gave ya. Show me what you're workin with.
Feel free to add any other exclamation of next gen joy in using extra capacity.
Second Chance, the article says "...SCHEDULED to weigh in at 22 GB" which implies that's the final number anticipated on the retail disc (ie. compressed, if they choose to do so). But like you I find it hard to believe that there will really be 22 GB (or more) of meaningful game data in any PS3 game. Sure, they can stuff the disk with cutscenes and other extra content, but I don't anticipate 22 GB of textures and levels. The PS3 doesn't have any more RAM than the 360, so it can only use a small chunk of that at one time. And what game developer is going to spend the time it takes to create that much game content. Heck, Oblivion uses only 4.5 GB and it took 5 years to make.
Blue Ray in the PS3 is a sham. It will provide SOME minor advantage but not nearly enough to justify the price or the 1 year delay vs. the 360, which is getting true second gen games NOW.
They are putting all the different countries' versions and languages on a single disk. Like instead of one disk version per country it is all countries on one disk. They are also using a higher bitrate for all the audio, so it sounds better. I think all that could easily fill the disk.
Brian, the PS3 is region free. One version suits all. The only difference is the menus will be in different languages. And the audio (speech only) will be a different language as well. Nothing else as far as sound effects and music will be changed.
Even if it weighs in at 22GB for the final product, how much do you wanna bet that is uncompressed or inefficiently compressed data? No way a game is that large. It has to include uncompressed video, audio, or some other supplemental material to fill the additional space (Like a HD movie on the making of...). Maybe I'm wrong, but I've yet to see game consume what would 3 dual layer DVDs.
22GB of uncompressed data is right. If Oblivion with its 400 hours or whatever of speech can fit in under 5 GB, this is usless PR for Blu-Ray.
Yea, its uncompressed 5.1 audio and HD textures. Also, since the game plays in 720p (upscaled to 1080p) they may elect to use 1080p video for the cutscenes rather than using the game engine to generate the fmv.
I dont know why people use uncompressed audio as a space hog... 5.1 audio isn't at all demanding in a video game, maybe in movies, but in a game its generated on the fly by the processor.
To further my point.
"The game, he said, currently takes up 22 Gigabytes of memory on a Blu-Ray disc, the new disc format supported by the PS3"... ... "While the music and vocals in "Resistance" take up only about 1 Gigabyte of disc space, graphics, level data and programming code occupy most of the remaining 21." - - MTV
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1539078/20060821/index.jhtml?headlines=true
I know its a horrid site regarding news like this, but you get where I'm coming from.
Obviously paid for by Sony...
Wow, sour grapes around here!
This game is not compressed, nor does it contain 20 gigs of region coding (puh-lease try again fanboy).
Just accept it. It's a game the Wii60 can't handle.
Rejoice Sony Fanboys, rejoice!
22 gig has to be uncompressed. High Res PC games come on one disc with room to spare. With VC1 compression and in-engine cut scenes, I'm sure this game would fit on a DVD9.
A few PS3 developers have stated that they aren't using compression, and I wonder why. PS3 will have a 2X Blu-Ray drive, which is half the read speed of a 12X DVD drive. 2X Blu-Ray has a max data read speed of 72Mbps (million bits per sec, which works out to 9 Meg per second), which means 512 meg of ram will take a minute or more to load. Compression could speed this up quite a bit, but it seems Sony would rather use the extra disc space.
This is why large portions of PS3 games will be stored on the hard drive and stay there until the space is needed for something else. 2X is way too slow for gaming.
RESPONSE to 6
ps3 1 year late or xbox 360 many years early.
i get my ps2 on december 2000, and enjoy it a 7 full years, still getting a lot of good games in the last year like final fantasy xii.
one friend buy an xbox in march 2002, and enjoy it a crapy 3 years, the 2005 not even have a good game to buy, because the xbox 360.
if the history repeat, and all we know that microsoft loves selling the same product over and over again, with minimal changes; sony say the ps3 will have a 10 years life.
ps3 = $600, 7 years equals $85 for year, less than $100
xbox 360 = $400, 3 years equals $133 for year, more than $100
Guess what console is the most EXPENSIVE...
RESPONSE to 14
i prefer a 2x Blu-ray, that a 12x DVD.
just like i prefer a 2x DVD over a 12x CD.
More clear i prefer a basic today cell with camera, that a top cell from 5 years that not have at least a color screen
why, just because its better technology, and the new do the same that the old and more.
even microsoft, who talk shit for the inside blu-ray in the ps3, now release an hd-dvd add-on, and just for movies... did not microsoft say that a console is meant to be just for playing games, either microsoft dont have memory or just they dont know what the hell are doing.
@1 Gmoney
Everything i've seen and read so far has put the BluRay games on the PS3 at 59.99 the exact same price as the DVD games on the 360.
Now of course the games COULD end up being more, but everywhere i've seen games posted they're listed at 59.99
Well, uncompressed data or not, I'm still looking forward to owning a PS3...eventually. I got a PS2 on launch day... but can't see myself doing that with the PS3.
Also, I am not yet convinced about this game. Looks like a bit of a generic FPS to me. "Shoot everything that moves!"
Personally, as a TimeSplitters fan, I am looking forward to seeing what "Haze" is like. Please, nobody say that I will be able to get that on the 360... I don't care.
Blu-ray has more information capacity per layer (25 gigabytes instead of 15). if ps3 can use full capasite, I'll game more detailed games
Awesome, I can't wait to get this!
The PS3 is looking better and better as it nears launch. Sucks for XBOX fanboys...
No one is saying that the games will be any worse because that data is uncompressed.
The thing that people have a problem with is that the developers and Sony will be claiming that using more space makes for better, more detailed games when this is not the case. Resistance: Fall of Man could certainly be on a DVD with no loss of quality. If Oblivion on the PC could fit on a DVD, I'm guessing just about any game could.
I wouldn't be surprised if Sony wasn't encouraging developers to use as much space as possible. As long as their games have a bigger footprint than the capacity of a 360 disc, it's a feather in their cap.
Thomas, thanks for clarifying that. * Thumbs Up *
However theres another way to look at this. The PS3 hasn't even launched yet, and there filling up 22 gigs already. Assuming the PS3 will launch with a drive that can only read 25 gigs, these devs better learn how to use compression.
Considering compression is a numbers game, and the CELL is a very efficient processor when it comes to simple operations (FLOPS) it would make sense that devs would use compression do remove the bottle neck of the Blu Ray drive as it would decrease loading times.
But I guess this is mostly media hype for Blu Ray.
#19 - The amount of space on the Blu-Ray discs is irrelevant. They could store 1TB of data and it still won't result in noticeable game improvements. Why? Because the video card and the CPU are the limiting factors....not storage space.
Some of you are saying you could fill the RAM faster if the data was compressed, so what! The BD drive can stream data at 72Mbps! If you compress the data down so it will fit on a dvd, you have to uncompress it. The greater the amount of the compression, the greater the amount of cpu cycles needed to decompress it. I would much rather they use uncompressed data and spend those cpu cycles on game play. Uncompressed streaming data will mean little or no delay between levels. Compression is only necessary if storage and/or transfer bandwidth are at a premium.
#22 Zach: Do you really think Sony would release a BD drive that could only read single layer disks? That would be pointless with BD movies planned to move to dual layer BD disks.
As for caching, I haven't seen anything saying that 25% (5 GB) of ps3 jr's drive being used to cache the BD drive. I'm sure some audio and textures will be.
Let's not forget the ps3 is a linux based system. I keep seeing people mention it only has 512 MB, but both models have HD's and most linux systems use the HD for swap (virtual memory) space. Most of the linux systems I've used have 1-2 times the RAM size for swap and it performs much better than Windows' VM.
I am a Sony fan and plan to buy a ps3 Sr. at or near launch. I have an HDTV and Netflix is already offering BD and HD-DVD movies for rental. I think sony made a mistake removing the HDMI from Jr. and removing vibration from the controller. I also think MS rushed the 360 out the door to beat sony to market at the cost of the 360 fans. With the cash that MS has, there is no reason they couldn't have included an HD in the core system. I see a lot of core systems being traded in at the local gamestop so people can play oblivion. They could have included HD-DVD too. Just like sony they stand to gain from their chosen high def dvd standard. Also like sony, MS wants to rule your media and livingroom. Isn't competition great?!
u dont have to trade in the core, all u have to do is buy a hard drive.
Playable demos of HD games on Xbox360 are all well under 1Gb, including the game engine, graphics, sound and voices and look fantastic. PS3 is graphically similar so whats the other 24-49Gb going to be used for?
This is pretty funny really, 22 gigs for a game that still looks crap. By the looks of it the PS3 really will need that full 50 gig dual layered Blu Ray just in the hope they may come up with something that may look as good as Gears does now. Yeah I might be falling in line with the Sony hating crowd but it's just so fun, and Oh so easy.
>>>Also like sony, MS wants to rule your media and livingroom. Isn't competition great?!>>>
Vinton, I agree. But I don't want M$ anywhere near my livingroom. Stay out of my home M$!