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Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony 205

Posted by Zonk from the well-that's-a-relief dept.
Via Opposable Thumbs, an article at GamePro in which Phil Harrison clarifies that Blue-ray on the PS3 is a 'game design' decision. From the article: "Once we had that storage capacity on Blu-ray Disc, adding the movie playback functionality was extremely cost-effective, [the cost] is actually non-existent. So games like Resistance which, as a launch title, is up to 20-something gigabytes already. And that's day one -- think about four years, six years from now. We'll be pushing the 50 gigabyte limit with dual-layer Blu-ray very quickly. So we absolutely need it as game designers, and in that regard, the consumer is getting the movie functionality effectively for free." I probably would have had a follow-up question there, but that's where the interview ends. So what do you think? Which came first for Sony: Blue-ray as new movie media, or Blu-ray as answer to design challenges?
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Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony More

Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony

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  • That's nice (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dan East ( 318230 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @01:08PM (#16216557) Journal
    Okay, so now they can include gigs of FMV, just so the majority of players (especially kids) can hit a button and skip right over it. Yep, that definitely justifies the extra storage, and the associated costs and delays.

    What I want to know is how the extra storage enhances gameplay?

    Dan East
    • Because now they can make the FMV's HD! Woohoo!

      And they can make damn sure you enjoy it, by making the movies unskippable!

      Progress is beautiful isn't it?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Intellectual Elitist ( 706889 )
      Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas for the PS2 already uses almost an entire DVD layer (4+ GB), and it doesn't have any in-game FMV. It also compresses the crap out of all of its audio, and often doesn't play its radio songs in their entirety. You push a game like that to next-gen levels and you'll already need 6 times the space for textures just to maintain their per-pixel quality in HD, and you'll probably want to ease up on the audio compression across the board as much as you can. Then factor in the extra

  • Sounds like so much BS to me. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TooMuchEspressoGuy ( 763203 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @01:10PM (#16216577)
    Game designers did just fine when they had to put some games on 3-4 CDs in the PSX era. What's the problem with printing large games on 3-4 DVDs? The fact that the player will have to disc-swap a few times?

    Blu-Ray IS a burden... on the consumer. We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Stratus Fear ( 771632 )
      You're not being *forced* to pay for anything. If you don't like the price, don't buy it. Sony isn't forcing you guys to do anything, nor are they indebted to produce a product that the forum jockeying techno-geeks want. If you don't like their product, seriously, go buy a product that you DO like. It's not like Sony is walking down the street and ripping $600 out of your wallet.

      • Re:Sounds like so much BS to me. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by TooMuchEspressoGuy ( 763203 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @01:29PM (#16216895)
        I love how people always jump all over the word "forced" by stretching it to a completely illogical extreme.

        The truth is, you see, I WILL be forced to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a Blu-Ray drive... IF I buy a PS3. There are no non-Blu-Ray PS3's. Thus my use of the word "forced."

        • But you see, you're not forced in any respect. It's not like there's a DVD model they calcelled or anything the machine was designed with bluray form the get go. You're no more forec her than if you were to say you want a Ferarri, but only with a V6 becvause you dont' want to be forced to buy a V12. If you don't want to get Bluray, buy a 360. If you DO want the product, then that's the product you want, and that's what it's made with.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by fbjon ( 692006 )
            Bad analogy. All cars can presumably take you from A to B, while a 360 can't take a PS3 exclusive game.
            • Well, the 360 comment wasn't part of the analogy... My point was, if you don't want bluray, you don't want a PS3.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by rherbert ( 565206 )
      We're forced to pay an extra $300 so that game dev's can be lazy with their compression methods.

      Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480). Are you saying that game developers who are currently filling up DVDs for PS2 and XBox games should suddenly have compression algorithms that are 6.75 times more efficient? Or would you like swapping out 7 DVDs?

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Are you saying that game developers who are currently filling up DVDs for PS2 and XBox games should suddenly have compression algorithms that are 6.75 times more efficient?

        First off, the number of PS2 and XBox games that filled up a dual layered DVD could be counted on one hand.

        Secondly, the only system that supported compressed textures in hardware was the Gamecube, the XBox and PS2 both had to uncompress their textures prior to rendering a polygon with that texture on it; with how much of a performance d
        • Hardware support for decompression: nice

          But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures. With how much more powerful this generation is, maybe it's not as much of an issue. Or maybe it's worse, given how much larger the textures will need to be. Of course, it may be more efficient to load a smaller compressed image off the disc and decompress it than to wait while the whole thing is loaded.

          I think that the real thing people have a problem wi

          • Hardware support for decompression: nice But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures.

            I'm sure you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but the phrase "hardware decompression" implies to me that there will be dedicated hardware assigned the task of running the decompression algorithm, as opposed to using a portion of the CPU's cycles to run a software decompression routine. If that is true, then the CPU is left unburdened by any decompression activities

            • I guess I wasn't clear in my comment... I meant that in the absence of decompression hardware, I'd rather not have to sacrifice CPU time to decompress textures if it's not necessary.

              • I meant that in the absence of decompression hardware, I'd rather not have to sacrifice CPU time to decompress textures if it's not necessary.

                The PS3 "Cell" CPU is already an order and a half of magnitude faster than the PS2 CPU. It consists of one traditional PowerPC CPU core and seven digital signal processors, two of which are reportedly dedicated to running the PS3's operating system. So just dedicate one of the five remaining DSPs to decompressing or procedurally synthesizing textures, and you'll hav

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by Anonymous Coward
            But I'd rather have the CPU dedicated to rendering more complex environments than decompressing textures

            Well, when I was talking about texture decompression I was specifically refering to the GPU; the Gamecube's GPU handled real-time hardware texture decompression (S3TC) (from Nintendo.com). The result of this was that textures were compressed on disc and in memory, reducing the memory imprint of the game and reducing loading times. On a side note, I think anyone who has an iterest in GPUs should really loo
        • First off, the number of PS2 and XBox games that filled up a dual layered DVD could be counted on one hand.

          Of course. If you are a game designer a huge priority is going to be to make a game fit within a single DVD, because the cost of a dual layered disc (or heaven forbid, a second disc!) is a cost that detracts from every sale you make.

          It's a lot cheaper to reduce the number of textures used or the size of levels than it is to pay a per disc cost for every game ever sold. That's why most games fit on a
      • Oh, I don't know; Microsoft seems to be doing the HD-using-DVD-media thing just fine without printing 7-DVD games. Why should Sony be any different?
        • I'm willing to bet that you will start seeing multiple DVD games, and now that 360's are going to get HD players there will be two options for distribution.

          • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

            by damien_kane ( 519267 )
            now that 360's are going to get HD players there will be two options for distribution. The HD player only plays HD-DVD movies. As it is essentially an HD-DVD drive connected via USB2 to the 360, MS wouldn't be able to (realistically) enforce their DRM and copy-protection in the games. Games still will come only on DVD and play through the normal slot.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by powerlord ( 28156 )

            I'm willing to bet that you will start seeing multiple DVD games, and now that 360's are going to get HD players there will be two options for distribution.

            Except that MS has repeatedly said that the HD-DVD player will be for movies only (effectively irrelevant for games). This means there is only one option for game distribution... DVD.

            UNLESS ... they split the cinematics and game-play so the game-play is on a DVD and goes in the 'main' XBox360 drive, and the cinematics are on an HD-DVD and go in the add-

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by Chris Burke ( 6130 )
        Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480).

        Only if all your "data" is full screen video.

        Most of the time, just like with PC games, all the higher resolution will mean in practice is that you see the same image but with higher resolution. Obviously there will be more data due to the higher capacity of the machine, more vertex data and more detailed texture data, but not 6.75 times as much because you don't need to fill the entire scree
        • You discount that textures all need to be increased in resolution to look OK at higher resolutions. If you have a lot of textures that is potentially a lot more data,

          You are also discounting the use of HDR, the greater dynmic range of image data increases the bit depth of textures as well.
          • I'm not discounting increased detail in textures, I mentioned it. Yet the fact is you don't need to scale the textures linearly with the increase in resolution. If you didn't increase the texture data at all, you still benefit from having the textures look good on polygons that are farther away from the viewer. This is what you see when going from 800x600 to 1600x1200 in a PC game. Having higher resolution on the same textures makes them look better. With the higher resolution screen you can add more d
      • Running at 1080p widescreen

        What proportion of gamers have that screen?
        The PS3 caters to the high-end electronics market, not to gamers.
        • Even lowball estimates of HDTV penetration are that 10% of all households have HDTVs. If 10% of all people have it, then it's not the high-end electronics market anymore. In 5 years after the analog cutoff, what will that percentage be?
          • Even lowball estimates of HDTV penetration are that 10%

            That would include 480i...

            If 10% of all people have it, then it's not the high-end electronics market anymore.

            Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?
            • That would include 480i...

              480i is NOT HD. The minimum to be considered HD is 720p. Even if you sell a 480p TV, you have to call it an EDTV.

              Every TV does 480i.

              Interresting way to look at it. It's not high-end anymore? There's higher grade than that because a tiny minority has it?

              The "high-end electronics market" is a rather specific term - these people can spend tens of thousands of dollars on their systems. I bought a 50" HDTV last year and have a component audio system to go with it, and I c
      • Running at 1080p widescreen instead of 480p standard means that there's 6.75 times more data (1920x1080 vs 640x480).

        It means the VRAM image sent to the rasterizer is 6.75 times as large. It does not follow that the size of the raw content on disc (textures, geometrical data, etc.) will also be 6.75 times as large.

        • It means the VRAM image sent to the rasterizer is 6.75 times as large. It does not follow that the size of the raw content on disc (textures, geometrical data, etc.) will also be 6.75 times as large.

          The textures must now be 6.75 times larges to not look pixelated or blurred, the models have to have more detail and so on so it's a hard call. I doubt the games will be fully 7 timeslarger but I doubt that it's goign to be a trivial increase. Remember they're not just throwing up SD FMV's for you to play now.
        • It means the VRAM image sent to the rasterizer is 6.75 times as large. It does not follow that the size of the raw content on disc (textures, geometrical data, etc.) will also be 6.75 times as large.

          No, the textures are actually larger - not only do you have to store textures at a higher resolution so they will still look OK at 1080p, all the consoles are moving to support HDR now which requires textures with a greater bit depth.

          The geometrical data will be larger due to the need for greater poly counts, ag

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by CaseM ( 746707 )
        Yes because texture resolutions scale proportionally to the resolution on which they're displayed.

        That's sarcasm, in case anyone missed it.

    • Game designers did just fine when they had to put some games on 3-4 CDs in the PSX era. What's the problem with printing large games on 3-4 DVDs? The fact that the player will have to disc-swap a few times?

      For a linear RPG, that's not a problem. For a game like GTA, where you just get a huge area to play in, it's more of a problem. Imagine taking a wrong turn in San Andreas and accidently crossing the DVD line. Now you have to switch disks, wait for it to load, go back, switch disks, and wait for more loa

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by rherbert ( 565206 )
        That's one of the great things about San Andreas compared to Vice City, and that wasn't even swapping disks - just waiting for the other side to load. San Andreas' landscape is HUGE - just imaging what they could fit on a Blu-Ray disk. Since they have simultaneous releases for XBox and PS3 for GTA4, I hope they don't cripple their landscape to fit it on a DVD for future games. It probably won't be a problem for GTA4, but once they start really exploiting the capabilities of the machines (like the differe

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Mike Blakemore ( 999177 )
      I will gladly pay an extra 3 bills for richer content and the ability to load everything off of one disc. In fact, if the average person's internet was fast enough - I would suggest getting rid of cd's all together. It's hard enough keeping track of one cd as it is, and then you still have to worry about scratches on all of them. I've been fighting an xbox with a messed up drive tray; the only game that will still play is halo 2 and then only sometimes. weak. I can't wait until we have no moving parts. That

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by oc255 ( 218044 )
        One problem with streaming game assets over the net in the future (imho) is nostalgia. Take NES FF1. It'll probably run on the Wii in 2006/2007. What happens in 2020 when I want to play FFXI? We going to wrap it all up in virtualization and have the vendor run the (then ancient) ffxi game servers? Community supported servers?

        Take tradewars 2002. It's great that community supported servers still exist for this old BBS game. But we've lost simplicity. Instead of some simple .rom that I could dump from

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ifrag ( 984323 )

      Yea... but remember a vital restriction on the disc swapping setup. The fact that disc swap games are at least to a point, linear. And that is what allows them to set up the game like that.

      Take a final fantasy game for example. At some point in a disc change, some content becomes unavailiable. Now I'm sure a fair amount of that space is FMV's, and most of the game engine / world can be duplicated (more wasted space btw since it has to be on every disc). As a general rule, most FMV's also only play a

  • Movies first (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wind_Walker ( 83965 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @01:10PM (#16216583) Homepage Journal
    Sony is repeating their past efforts. The PS2 won wide acceptance in part because it was a very cheap (at the time) DVD player. I believe that in Japan, a PS2 was actually priced lower at launch than any other DVD player available in Japan, so thousands of people picked it up simply for DVDs, and the games were an afterthought.

    Sony is taking the same strategy this time around. Blu-Ray is Sony's technology and they NEED it to succeed. History is not on their side though - Betamax, MiniDisc, UMD... Sony just can't get their formats off the ground. Their solution? Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money.

    Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.

    So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.

    • So, to answer the question, Blu-Ray came first, and Sony is trying to justify their huge price by claiming that it was needed by game designers. It's not.

      It is now. Bear in mind Murphy's Law of Storage: storage requirements rise to meet storage capacity... plus. The storage capacity became available; thus, now it's "needed". Now pardon me, I have a 1 TB RAID to check up on....

      • Point well taken. I remember back in the BBS days I had used Stacker (disk compression software) to turn my 250 MB drive into a 520 MB drive, and people asked me "What could you possibly need 500 MB for?".

        The problem I see is filling the space with quality. Somebody else in this article imagined GTA:San Andreas on a Blu-Ray disk, talking about how huge the area to explore could be, how detailed they could make it, etc. As I see it, it's not the space that's the problem, it's the time to fill that spac
        • Somebody else in this article imagined GTA:San Andreas on a Blu-Ray disk, talking about how huge the area to explore could be, how detailed they could make it, etc.

          Simply put, no. GTA: San Andreas was a HUGE map, and had to take a lot of developer time to create. The designers I doubt weren't wanting for more storage space (though I did read somewhere they did have to take a few intended songs and whatnot to fit it on a DVD). What you might see though would be movie cut-scenes included as well.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by norminator ( 784674 )
      The PS2 won wide acceptance in part because it was a very cheap (at the time) DVD player.

      There's a few differences, though. DVD was already doing well on its own before the release of the PS2. Hollywood Video and Blockbuster already carried a good selection of DVD titles. DVD also didn't have any real competition from other formats, like Blu-Ray has now. HD-DVD players were out before Blu-Ray players, at half the cost. The fact that the Toshiba HD-DVD player costs $450 on Amazon vs. $700 for the Sa
      • Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • If that $499 Blu-Ray player was available now, if a decent sized-catalog of Blu-Ray content was widely available, if Blu-Ray added convenience and features (beyond HD quality), and if HD-DVD didn't already exist at a less expensive price, then maybe. As it is, the only people willing to pay $500 - $600 for a Blu-Ray player that also plays the newest games will be the ones who want to buy a PS3 anyway, for the games. I don't think they're going to persuade a lot of non-gamers to buy in to PS3 just for the
      • There's a few differences, though. DVD was already doing well on its own before the release of the PS2. Hollywood Video and Blockbuster already carried a good selection of DVD titles. DVD also didn't have any real competition from other formats, like Blu-Ray has now. HD-DVD players were out before Blu-Ray players, at half the cost. The fact that the Toshiba HD-DVD player costs $450 on Amazon vs. $700 for the Samsung Blu-Ray player vs. $1000 for the Sony Blu-Ray player makes you wonder who would be excited a
    • I agree with you, but I see this as more intensifying their gamble.

      Sony has parlayed two bets that the PS3 will do well and so will Blu-Ray. They feel the two technologies helped each other out. Blu-Ray gives the PS3 more proliferation via a selling point while the PS3 proliferates the standard of Blu-Ray throughout the community prematurely.

      However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also. Sony has tied their fates and if consumers balk on either, Sony goes under. A
      • However, if one of these technologies fails, I believe the other will also.

        This makes no sense, at least in one direction.

        Lets say Blu-Ray does not take hold as a movie format, despite having the backing of more major studios and the two major computer vendors (Apple and Dell).

        Fine then, how does the PS3 owner suffer?

        They still have games that make use of the extra space. Because of the volume of manufacturing games, there's not really any great cost to the media the games are on (as if media cost has ever
    • The PS2 won wide acceptance in part because it was a very cheap (at the time) DVD player.

      The difference is that people wanted a DVD player.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kabocox ( 199019 )
      Package it in with their most popular product, the PS3. That ensures that there will be more Blu-Ray capable DVD players than HD-DVD players in households, thus ensuring that Blu-Ray will earn top billing and finally make Sony some money. Will it work? Time will tell, but I doubt it - the $600 price tag is simply too high for most people to justify.

      The sad thing is it would have worked perfectly if they started the system out at $250-300.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ProppaT ( 557551 )
      The PS2 was never a "cheap" dvd player. It was an expensive console that happened to have DVD playback when it came out. Then it went to a moderately priced console with subpar DVD playback (it didn't get worse, DVD players just got better). Now it's a reasonably priced console with laughable DVD playback (my cheapy $40 DVD player I bought for DIVX playback looks better than the PS2's DVD player.
      • My Ps2 also has this weird thing where the "voice" track on all my movies plays very quietly but the background is full volume.
  • Games "need" 25GB storage media to deliver? Or is it rather that it's convenient to have it?

    My guess is that the "need" for 25Gig media is not really present. More, it's convenient to abstain from compression for those cutscenes, to increase the size and thus (and here is the real benefit for game studios IMO) make it rather impossible to download it from a torrent, given that 25Gigs of traffic would kinda upset any provider.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sparr0 ( 451780 )
      You can already download 'ripped' versions of PSX and Neo Geo discs, with FMV cut out, so the disc images are very small. The same thing will happen for 25GB+ discs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Saige ( 53303 )
      Many games, to make development easier, will include multiple copies of their various assets on the disc.

      I've heard multiple game devs say that if the guys really do have 20 gigs of UNIQUE content on the disc for Resistance, then the rest of the game industry will bow down to them as game development gods.
  • If all that space is going to go towards hours of FMV you can count me out. Many, many PS2 games had too much FMV as it was...I can only imagine where this is going to lead.
  • At least an implied challenge.

    Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?

    Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is ... Stupid, quite frankly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jandrese ( 485 )
      It seems to me that once you're getting up to that much content, you'd better be looking at procedural content generation more and more just so you don't completely blow your budget on the art department. The rub is of course that once you start doing stuff procedurally, then you don't need massive amounts of space anymore.
    • At least an implied challenge.

      Do you know how much work by how many artists it would take to fill 50GB with "A" title art?

      Neither do I, exactly, but considering an "A" console title now can take the efforts of dozens of artists a couple years to complete, the costs and effort to develop a game that wisely uses 50GB is ... Stupid, quite frankly.

      Don't confuse more art with higher res art. The same art that had to be compressed and downsampled to fit inot a 700 meg CD and slightly less compressed to fit on a 4

  • Sony's problem was that they wanted all the profit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ConfusedSelfHating ( 1000521 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @01:45PM (#16217165)
    If Sony had made a deal with the DVD coalition and accepted the HD-DVD standard I think they would be in a much better position right now. They would only take part of the HD-DVD licensing profits, but it would be cash in the bank. Business is about risk, but it's also about taking the easy profits when you can.

    Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era would begin with the same unity as the DVD era. Sony would be guaranteed a huge quantity of money from licensing.

    Instead, Sony decided that it had the Playstation brand as a magic bullet and gave the finger to the rest of the DVD coalition. I hope it works out for them.
    • Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having.

      HD-DVD uses blue lasers, too. So they'd still be having the problem. Maybe more, because MS might have included HD-DVD in the XBox 360.

      Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker.

      And would those savings be passed on to the consumers in the absence of competition?

    • It's not a matter of Blu-ray the Sony format and HD-DVD the standard format. HD-DVD has the support of Microsoft and Intel, as well as Tochiba, NEC, Sanyo, HP, and Universal, but Blu-Ray has the support of Panasonic, Apple, Fox, and MGM, while numerous companies including Samsung and Pioneer, as well as Disney, Warner Brothers, Paramount, etc. releasing movies on both mediums.
    • If Sony had made a deal with the DVD coalition and accepted the HD-DVD standard I think they would be in a much better position right now. They would only take part of the HD-DVD licensing profits, but it would be cash in the bank. Business is about risk, but it's also about taking the easy profits when you can.

      Just about the only advantage of the HD-DVD standard is easier retooling of existing manufacturing lines. The cost of the discs probably won't be too different in the long run and is irrelevant any

    • Imagine if you will, Sony including the only high definition format disc in their PS3. A dual layer HD-DVD has 30 gigs of storage, more than enough to hold the 22 gigs of Resistance: Fall of Man. Every single movie studio releasing their films on the only high definition format: HD-DVD. Sony would not be having the blue diode production problems that it is currently having. Because all of the manufacturers would be focusing on only one format, costs would come down even quicker. The high definition era woul
  • It is also not a Red, or Green Ray Player. Also, neither the colors of Orange or Teal apply. It is, however, a Blu-Ray player.

  • My yoke is easy and light (Score:5, Insightful)

    by joeytsai ( 49613 ) on Wednesday September 27, 2006 @02:42PM (#16218317) Homepage
    Well, it's a good thing that Blu-Ray [1] isn't a burden for Sony, because it's going to be a huge burden for the PS3. Blu-Ray certainly doesn't have much momentum right now, and I doubt the PS3 will help matters much. I'm not saying it won't be the new high-def medium, because it might. But I think its success will be pretty much orthogonal to the success of the PS3.

    On the other hand, let's see how the Blu-Ray has really hurt the PS3. Assume the PS3 had simply stayed with DVDs, like the xbox 360. They would've certainly released the PS3 much earlier, probably at the same time as the 360. The PS3 would've cost the expected $300 or $400, again remaining competitive.

    Now, they've given Microsoft a year head-start. We all know in console time that's incredibly significant - in terms of market share, development time, allowing older title prices to come down. Giving Microsoft a lead will especially hurt Sony in terms of online games, where xbox Live was already moving to its next iteration. Also, I'd bet good money when the PS3 becomes available Microsoft will conveniently announce a $249/$349 price break on the the 360, further making the $600 PS3 sticker more unreasonable. Maybe even a Halo 3 for good measure?

    Most big-name titles are going to be multi-platform, and without something truly innovative to set it apart (like the Wii), the PS3 has really positioned itself for failure. And the fault is almost exclusively due to Sony betting the PS3 on Blu-Ray. Honestly, as much as I love my PS2 games, I hope it does fail. The last thing I want video game manufacturers thinking is that they can release crap late and exorbitantly priced and succeed.

    [1] By the way, Slashdot, Blu-Ray is the correct spelling; I heard Sony didn't use "Blue" as they couldn't trademark it.
  • I guess "Next Gen" in Sony HQ means "Start Over From Scratch". Those FMV games sure were fun back then; I'm sure sitting through a 4 minute cutscene and pressing up/down/left/right every minute or so is going to be even more fun in HD.

    -BbT
  • No gamer plays games for the pretty video trailers at the end of a level or check points.

    As far as rendering large levels or detailed game play graphics, developers don't even use up the current generation's 4 gigs.... its the VIDEO clips that use all the space.

    Sony bragging that they can have tons of high def video clips in a game is great and all but its just FUD directed as MS. I typically skip out of the clips when I see them. And it sure isn't worth all the extra money to me to have them. And fran
  • I though Blu-Ray would be a sort of neat name, but I don't think it's working out. There seems to be some confusion among people about the spelling of its name. The summary in the article is a good example:

    Blue-ray 'Not a Burden' For Sony
    Posted by Zonk on Wednesday September 27, @01:02PM
    from the well-that's-a-relief dept.

    Sony Media Games Via Opposable Thumbs, an article at GamePro in which Phil Harrison clarifies that Blue-ray on the PS3 is a 'game design' decision. From the article:

    "Once we ha

    • They should have just called it Blue-Ray ("Blue Ray") instead of Blu-Ray ("Blew Ray") because it seems to be messing some people up. I saw a comment yesterday where someone was talking about Blu laser diodes....



      You can't trade mark somethign liek Red Fridge/Blue ray/Yellow banana. So they went with Blu-ray to avoid havign to deal with a trademark that is too general.

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