360 Limiting GTA IV In Some Ways

Last week CVG had a story from the Official PlayStation Magazine, a print entity partnered with the website, about limitations Rockstar faces on the 360. For almost the first time, we're now hearing about a title where lack of space on the disc and the lack of a guaranteed hard drive may be detrimental to Microsoft's console. "[Rockstar's creative vice president Dan Houser] continued, 'To be honest with you we haven't solved all those riddles yet.' The difficulties aren't limited to working on Microsoft's box, as Houser explains that 'both have enormous challenges' and that 'both have their own particular pleasures and pains'. Rockstar hasn't said anything about a target SKU between the two consoles, but they're currently demoing the game to press running on an Xbox 360 - so we wouldn't worry too much if you've only got Microsoft's console. Look for more on GTA IV in the next few weeks."

system requirements

One of the contributors at Kotaku suggested that Rockstar simply require the hard drive to play. I think that would be a great solution, but I'd be surprised if Microsoft let them do something like that.

I don't see the problem

I'm THANKFUL they are running into this problem, maybe they won't make GTA4 the ridiculously countryside game that San Andreas was. I loved Vice City and GTA3, but San Andreas was FAR too open, you had no idea where the fuck you were without looking at the map every 5 seconds.

Re:I don't see the problem

The problem was that the open areas of SA didn't really add to the game much. It's not like Oblivion where taking a detour could pay off in a neat cave or side story or something under the radar.

The aforementioned problem is a game design problem where extra stuff was padded in but not fleshed out. It was most certainly technically possible to remove that padding but they chose not to.

Technical limitations and getting around them aren't exactly going to help game design any.

Re:I don't see the problem

I agree. And let's hope we don't have to sugar up girlfriends, feed ourselves, exercise ourselves, and dress ourselves in this one too. San Andreas was like a badass Sims game.

Re:I don't see the problem

I may be in the minority in this thread, but I loved San Andreas' countryside because while it may have been a hindrance to gameplay, there was something else it added that a compressed city map couldn't: Mood.

The first thing I do when ever I've played any GTA game is to hop on a motorcycle and just drive for a few hours, listening to the radio stations. I'm guessing that not too many people here have ever driven on the California coast, but much like the maps of San Fran and Los Angeles, they absolutely nailed it. Driving through that countryside while tedious to some was beautiful to me. Just don't get out of your vehicle. :)

I did wish they fleshed out these areas and made them more than just visually appealing. Maybe Oblivion will give them a good swift kick in the ass on this one.

I love how that's gotten cut down

The interviewer asks specificaly if the 360 has limitations and the interviewee says that yes, both platforms have their challenges and this becomes "DVD and lack of built-in HD is limiting GTA4!!!

Re:I love how that's gotten cut down

Ahem. Not only is the GMA 950 more powerful and more popular these days, but ever heard of the X3000/X3100 [wikipedia.org]? You know, the up-and-coming Intel chip with hardware TnL, pixel shaders, vertex shaders, actual rendering pipelines, and a 667MHz dedicated core? That'll probably do it if you turn the settings down.

But let's face it here. People who buy PC's for games know what they're buying. People who buy PC's for $500 and expect it to play the latest games don't know what they're doing, buying, or even using, half the time. The problem is, in order for said PC's to be $500, they need to cut them down to be as bare as possible - A decently powerful system will probably cost someone upwards to $1000, which will be adequate to at least run newer games.

If you're just going for the games, you're fine with a console, though I personally vastly prefer the keyboard/mouse style of control. You'll save yourself some money with a console, though (well, that's the idea), and you'll get a few years out of it. If you're looking to do games, rip DVD's, browse the internet properly, use IM, e-mail, newsgroups, and generally multitask, you're looking at a better value out of a PC. For something that does both, $1000 isn't too far off the mark for the cost of a low-end PC and a game console.

And the Solution?

Dump the consoles. There's this thing, it's called a computer. It's that little (probably beige) box with an attached television-like thingie that you use to make the game anyway. It's much better...

Re:And the Solution?

My Xbox 360 is a computer. A very specialized one that is much more powerful than my desktop or laptop. It sits under my TV and is small and quiet. And, it's partly subsidized by Microsoft, so it's far cheaper for me, too. The best part...it's one fixed standard, aside from this hard drive issue (hint, screw you if you don't have a hard drive), so developers can develop for one fixed set of hardware.

some translation help needed

What does this sentence mean exactly?

Rockstar hasn't said anything about a target SKU between the two consoles

Re:some translation help needed

Unlike the other reply, I'll try to actually help you out here.

What this statement means is that the reporter wants to know if Rockstar might stipulate that GTA IV for the 360 requires the hard disk, meaning that instead of potentially inhibiting the game by designing around a lack of hard disk, they would require the hard disk and simply require Core owners to buy one if they don't have one already. Rockstar has not made any indication about that.

The hard disk is standard in the PS3, so that's a known quantity on the PS3. It isn't required to play almost all the games on a 360 (the only ones I know of that require it are FFXI and the Halo 3 beta, and Halo 3 probably only requires it since the beta content is too big to be stored on a memory card). I don't have any real numbers but anecdotal evidence suggests that the number of Core 360s in the wild without a hard disk attached is very low. Considering the price of the HDD versus the memory card ($100 for 20 GB versus $40 for 0.05 GB), requiring the 360 to have a hard disk would not be an onerous burden for most gamers, I would think.

Not sure MS is to blame

Lack of space on a DVD means to me that these guys aren't using the space well... to say that they're limited by 360 not being HD-DVD... it seems like maybe they're just lazy about how they're going about making the game look good visually. Either that or they're not compressing audio well.

I get the feeling that some devs are just better at using what space they have available. That is, I'm not so sure GTAIV is going to look and sound better than even Oblivion. I don't see it being larger...

Yeah, MS really dropped the ball here

I thought from the very beginning that making the hard drive optional was a step backwards in the system's design.

The original Xbox was a really ballsy system overall. It was the first (commercially successful) console to have a hard drive and internet connectivity built-in. It brought LAN gaming and broadband online gaming to console gamers in a really big way. I thought it was really cool that if I played the same couple of maps or levels in Halo over and over it only had to load them once because Bungie was able to stream the files to the hard drive.

I feel like MS pussied out on the 360's design by removing the hard drive because they took that away from developers. Instead of innovating the console market again, they just seem to be riding on the success that they've already created. Now we're finally seeing a successful multi-platform developer complain about the 360's limitations. I don't think this looks very good for the 360 or for Microsoft.

P.S.: I'm sure the PS3 has development issues too--mainly the long load times as a result of the Blu-Ray disc and still figuring out the Cell architecture. But Rockstar is used to taking crap from Sony, so they're not complaining about it.

Weird Development Approach Foreshadowing Delays?

I don't get it... why are they claiming the 360 is somehow imposing limitations on a game's design? Hasn't it always been developer policy to create software for the least common denominator (ie, a 360 sans hard drive) first and *then* add extra features for more powerful systems afterwards?

If I had to guess, it sounds like they are testing the waters, seeing if the 360's multiple configuration can be used as a viable scapegoat, should the developers miss the deadline they publicly set for themselves.

Sure, the PS3 fanboys are probably eating this up now, but will they be chomping at the bit later on, if it turns out the delays were actually caused by the nightmares involved in developing for the PS3?

One DVD may be too small..

So if a DVD is too small and is impacting their goal, why not use a second disc? I know the whole map will have to be available, among other things, so much of the data would have to be duplicated on the second disc, but there has to be a way they can separate some of the missions onto the first disc. Then once most of the missions are complete they won't ever need that data again.. So the gamer switches discs.

sounds to me..

Sounds to me like they really didn't have the 360 in mind when they put together the game. I'm pretty sure when you're designing a game, you create a roadmap, requirements and blueprints if you know there may be certain limitations.

In they end, they have to make it work one way or another if they want to keep sales up... unless (which seems to be) Sony's giving them a bit of outside inscentive to push users in their direction because they know how popular the game is.

The 360 has been out for how long now... and they're JUST releasing GTA4? PLEASE tell me you don't think they waited for the PS3 to start developing it.

Gates says

9.4GB is enough for anyone!

I said the same thing ...

a couple of months ago [slashdot.org]. I thought the mass storage of the 360 wasn't up to par with the PS3. Whether or not Sony can recover from the marketing disaster that was the PS3 launch is another question entirely.

Who has a 360 with no hard drive?

Does such a thing even exist? Even if you ran tight on space you could upgrade to a 60GB unit. That' about 8 HD-DVD'sdatawise.

From Xbox.com:
Custom IBM PowerPC-based CPU
        * Three symmetrical cores running at 3.2 GHz each
        * Two hardware threads per core; six hardware threads total
        * VMX-128 vector unit per core; three total
        * 128 VMX-128 registers per hardware thread
        * 1 MB L2 cache
CPU Game Math Performance
        * 9.6 billion dot product operations per second
Custom ATI Graphics Processor
        * 10 MB of embedded DRAM
        * 48-way parallel floating-point dynamically scheduled shader pipelines
        * Unified shader architecture
Polygon Performance
        * 500 million triangles per second
Pixel Fill Rate
        * 16 gigasamples per second fill rate using 4x MSAA
Shader Performance
        * 48 billion shader operations per second
Memory
        * 512 MB of 700 MHz GDDR3 RAM
        * Unified memory architecture
Memory Bandwidth
        * 22.4 GB/s memory interface bus bandwidth
        * 256 GB/s memory bandwidth to EDRAM
        * 21.6 GB/s front-side bus
Overall System Floating-Point Performance
        * 1 teraflop
Storage
        * Detachable and upgradeable 20-GB hard drive
        * 12x dual-layer DVD-ROM
        * Memory Unit support starting at 64 MB
I/O
        * Support for up to four wireless game controllers
        * Three USB 2.0 ports
        * Two memory unit slots
Optimized for Online
        * Instant, out-of-the-box access to Xbox Live features with broadband service, including Xbox Live Marketplace for downloadable content, gamer profile for digital identity, and voice chat to talk to friends while playing games, watching movies, or listening to music
        * Built-in Ethernet port
        * Wi-Fi ready: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g
        * Video camera-ready
Digital Media Support
        * Support for DVD-Video, DVD-ROM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, WMA CD, MP3 CD, JPEG Photo CD
        * Ability to stream media from portable music devices, digital cameras, and Windows XP-based PCs
        * Ability to rip music to the Xbox 360 Hard Drive
        * Custom playlists in every game
        * Built-in Media Center Extender for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005
        * Interactive, full-screen 3-D visualizers
High-Definition Game Support
        * All games supported at 16:9, 720p, or 1080i, with anti-aliasing
        * Standard-definition and high-definition video output supported
Audio
        * Multi-channel surround sound output
        * Supports 48KHz 16-bit audio
        * 320 independent decompression channels
        * 32-bit audio processing
        * Over 256 audio channels

They claimed both system has issues.

The full interview shows how biased the magazine is. Even the linked story has it. They basically laid out the obvious flaws with the xbox 360 and all Houser could do is say yes. What a shock for the Playstation Magazine.

But on the other hand they at least mentioned he said both systems have issues. And trust me from what I've seen with the PS3 and how my company is handling it, the HD issue and the Disc capacity should be the least of their worries. The 360's issues are easy to enumerate and resolve.. the PS3, not so much.

Seriously the 360 has proven itself over and over. We have Oblivion, yet if Rockstar can't get their head out of their ass and figure out how to do the work they don't deserve your money. We have at least 4 major open world games on the 360 (hell Just Cause was also available on the PS2, at the same size world which was "fucking enormous".) And Rockstar the guys who everyone seems to think can piss gold can't figure this one out?

Please.

Oh give me a break.

Stick this on the box:

"Requirements: XBox 360 with optional hard drive of 20GB or greater."

PROBLEM SOLVED, NOW STOP WHINGEING..

Agree (sort of) but...

When "limitations" are mentioned, I think about the GTA series (well, 3, VC and SA) in general.

30fps limit and/or 60hz on computer.

Think about it for a second, 30fps limit on machines that can churn out 2 to 5x that amount?

Or the 60hz, which gets even more painful to my eyes as time goes on? Hell, I've amazed people
by being able to look at a monitor and tell the diff between 60/75/85hz w/o looking at the display
properties. 60hz hurts (pun intended), 75hz is tolerable and 85hz and above is best looking and I
can't see the flicker.

Taken together, if you use directX's allowable refresh rates to change per resolutions you get all sorts
of anomolies in GTA3/vc/sa, like buildings that disapper, curbs/trees/cars that aren't drawn until/after
you've hit them.

Worst one was in SA trying to get to a clamshell w/o the "frame limiter on", you'd think that parachuting in
dropping into the water and swimming from there would give me enough time? Nope, drowned no matter what.
Turned on the limiter, swam down, got the shell and got back up with more than 1/2 lung capacity.

Starwars battelfront, IIRC from a friend of mine, had similar issues, made worse by consoles and pc's
playing online.

It comes down to: console games work within the strenghts/limits of the console, pc's OTOH have to work
within the real limits of the hardware or the artificial limits of console ports or both.

SA was the best/worst example of this. Freedom to roam, graphically stunning, little load time (I got
no more than a 2 second tick of the SATA drive), but you still had drowning without the frame limiter and
teleporting cars, and disappearing scenery if not at 60hz (sometimes the 60hz unlock was applied w/o
user intervention and had to be locked manually, AFAIR).

I've generally noticed pc -> console ports do better than v/v, because to cut the game down to fit a
console is easy, building a game back up to not look crappy on a pc rarely works (i.e. Thief3, Deus Ex:IW)

Require a HD?

So put a hard drive in the system requirements. If the game is good enough, core system owners will buy the HD. Sure, it's a bigger risk since you're limiting your market, however that risk is mitigated by the fact that you won't have to compromise on the quality of the game. (Although I wonder what percent of core 360 owners don't have, or have plans to buy, a hard drive).

Required Hard Drive?

It is sad to see you guys say this. Rockstar nor Microsoft are about to crap on a couple million customers like that. I seem to remember Microsoft saying that they would never allow for any game to require the hard drive. Why? Because it would unconscionable and mean to force those 360 Core owners to buy a Hard Drive just to play the new GTA4. From a business perspective it is not practical. I know all you Premium and Elite owners don't give a fig about those poor Core owners, but it is good for them that you guys are not in control of the decision making process. I think it is high time to admit that in this instance Microsoft made a bad decision to not include a HD. Sure it is not used in every game, but in massive games like this is obviously very useful. Like Halo 1 and 2 for example. Bungie used the HD to preload the levels which made for fast and easy gameplay. The HD in X-Box was a great idea and was a major advantage. Sony should have done the same in PS2, which is why they did so in PS3. Sony made the right decision to include the HD in both SKU's. I have a hunch that this "Episodic" content that will be available for the 360 version of GTA4 will be the rest of the game that would not fit on to the DVD9. If so then I hope that they don't screw you guys by charging you more money for a game the PS3 owners paid for just once. Now that would be unconscionable and mean. BluRay is an advantage because bigger is always better. Heck, Blue Dragon for 360 is on 3 DVD9's. How many DVD9's will some fourth or fifth gen games fill? Five? Six? While many people say they don't' mind multi disc games, I say it sucks. This is next gen and the days of multi disc console game should be at and end. For PC it is all right because it is an install. But getting up to change discs for me is a pain in my ass.

Fanboys on Slashdot?

I can't believe you guys aren't open-minded enough to see that all consoles have their strengths and weaknesses. And also that some consoles may not look like it's good but actually will turn out very good. Seriously does it matter what rockstar says, there are games out that will utilize each system accordingly. Just don't turn this sites comments into a fanboy flame war blood bath.

You know what, Rockstar?

Shut up, Rockstar. Just shut up. Are you seriously telling me you can't fit an entire game on a 9.1 GB DVD? Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion only used 5.01GB on the disk, and over 40% of that is dialog. I'm sure they did something stupid like textured every single little rendered newspaper on the ground, or put dialog for pedestrians or something outlandish that is taking up so much space. I mean, Oblivion does it so nice and only uses half the disk! 200+ hours of gameplay, and you can't even finish the game without going "oops Low Disk Space warning guys?" Come on. Compress your audio!

No ones defending the ps3?

Wow all of the comments are from people who worship the 360 or are trying to stimulate a ps3 360 fanboy battle.

I didnt see any comments from the ps3 guys so I ll say a few words.

actually now that I come to think of it, i have nothing much to say. If I say I love it you guys will assume I am a fanboy, but the fact is that Iv never had a playstation before. I had a nes, snes, n64, dreamcast, gameboy (the old brick one), DS, wii, and now a ps3. So i was never really a fanboy to begin with.

How can I say this with out sounding fanboyish? ps3 was well worth my $600.

(the 360's costs are starting to add up arn't they)

That's a lot of pr0n

I can't wait to see what the devs are hiding in the DVD to take up all that space waiting to be unlocked by the next hot coffee.

Hardware problems on both sides

The xbox360 hardrive issue is surmountable. Multiple discs or compressed data gets round 'problems' with DVD storage.

The PS3 has a problem that can't be solved as easily: half the RAM. This will affect titles, in fact already has as Ubisoft have pulled Splinter Cell Conviction. Now the PS3 cell architecture with the right progarmming team can work wonders with the physics model this title has, but there isn't enough RAM on the PS3 to implement it.
http://mygen.com.au/article.php?page_id=9696017911 0181074&format=2&se_id=29 [mygen.com.au]
(Australian translation of Finnish magazine with interview)

As I said the xbox360 hardrive and DVD issues are surmountable, unfortunatly the PS3 memory issue isn't.

The xbox360 features 512 MiB of GDDR3 RAM clocked at 700 megahertz with an effective transmission rate of 1.4 GHz on a 128-bit bus.
The PS3 has 256 MiB GDDR3 VRAM clocked at 550 MHz with an effective transmission rate of 1.3 GHz and the XDR main memory via the CPU.

Splinter Cell DA

Splinter Cell Double Agent was released ages ago and it has a warning on the box : this game REQUIRES a HDD or a memory card to play. This is microsoft we're talking about as soon as the core holds em back they will change there mandates.

Re:Consider the Source

Developing on the PS3 III

That must be the new Sony console everybody's been talking about.... especially since the PS3 flopped. The PS3 III might be the next big thing in console gaming!

Re:Consider the Source

I would suggest hitting the ATM instead of the ATM machine. I hear those things can be a pain to carry around.

Re:Consider the Source

Taking the source into account brings up the possibility the the interviews were faked, based on the company's history.

That aside, is it acceptable for a game to release for HD equipped consoles only? I seem to remember way back that a console that required a CD-ROM released one with the game ... perhaps they should look into it.

Re:Consider the Source

I heard talk from Rockstar employees about how they already hit the limit of the medium with GTASA, due to the slow layer switching (no idea if the 360 still has that issue) only one layer of the disc could be used to keep the load times lower (with streaming it'd be fatal if the loading took too long). Even without the layer switching overhead a "next-gen" GTA game is going to hit the limit of DVD9 very quickly so this report is very likely true.

From what I heard Microsoft requires that all games are basically playable (i.e. it doesn't matter that you can't feasibly finish the game without saving, it just has to be theoretically possible) on a 360 Core system OOTB, this would make HDDVD-only games not allowed.

Re:Consider the Source

You know, when trying to prove a point to someone, the worst thing you can do is insult them right upfront. That pretty much garantees they aren't going to read the rest of what you have to say. Also, it makes you sound like a socially inept basement dweller.

Re:Consider the Source

Well then it's a good thing you saved your insult until the last sentence. I read your complete post proving your right!

Re:Consider the Source

It is not the single layer switch that happens when watching a movie. This is predictable, and always happens at the same place. The head also does not need to move during the layer change, it just reads from the inside to the out on L1 and then switches to L2.

The problem comes from random access reads between layers.

To decrease this issue each layer has to be treated like its own disc. Once the transition is made to L2 you stay there. That means any part of the game engine that is not always in memory has to also be on both layers. Along with any textures, models, sounds, etc. that are used through out the game. So going to two layers does not double the ammount of space available due to having to store a lot of data twice.

Re:There are no HD equipped 360's

I think the "HD" refers to hard drive, not HD-DVD.

Re:Consider the Source

I would not call it just FUD if this is coming from the developers. It is mighty nice of OPSM to relay this *unbiased* information though, HA. Anyway I can see how this could cause challenges, but if I did own a 360, I would not be too worried.

Re:Consider the Source

The source, TFA, is Dan Houser, Creative VP at Rockstar.

What would a person titled "Creative VP" have to do with announcing a technical limitation of a game that just finished releasing a trailer which implies the game is coming pretty soon? I dunno.

Would it be a big loss to target the game to HD-equipped 360's only? How about it looks less detailed if the console doesn't have one, so that those users can decide if they want extra detail and spring for the HD.

Granted adding a HD to a 360 isn't quite the same as a new controller, but remember that Sony released quite a few games clearly labelled "DUAL SHOCK REQUIRED" due to heavy non-optional use of the analog sticks. Ape Escape is one that instantly comes to mind. Nintendo also required the 8 Meg expansion for the N64 for a few games, too.

Re:Consider the Source

Sony is simply looking to spread some FUD about the Xbox 360 as well.

The source is Dan Houser, who works for Rockstar last I checked, not Sony.

btw, what is new about this article that it deserves another mention on the site? This is the same quote as in the OPM article; it's apparently just CVG referencing OPM.

Re:Consider the Source

I'm sure they took stuff out of context (like ignoring the part where Houser talks about the drug rehab program he will have to put his PS3 system programmers into after they finish the project), but the DVD size and lack of harddrive will be an issue for the XBox360 going forward.

Re:It comes down to this

GTA4 isnt the only game strugling with the 360, you'll notice many highend EA projects have now moved from 360 to PS3 due to the space and processing issues.

Any specific examples?

0 is not 15

The base model 360 still ships with no HD at all - so that is the baseline developers have to work with, not 15GB (which should be enough for anyone, right?)

If Microsoft had dropped the no HD model then it might possibly be acceptable, but it's not very kind to the userbase to target only a portion of users that have a special add-on. It's an option but it has some negatives.

There's not really a good way to work around the disc size limitation though, given the open ended nature of the world - you can't have users swapping discs all the time.

Re:Consider the Source

What in the hell are you talking about?

You don't see the fact that not all 360's have hard drives as a limitation? I think everyone saw this coming from a mile away. It's not a big deal for most games but for some, it will be. They'll work around it, and do so while probably introducing more load times and stuff.

Re:Consider the Source

And isn't worth much more than a box of Cracker Jack. microsoft tried to game the system by offering an incomplete version of their console to keep from breaking the $300 barrier. Now it's coming back to bite them.

In related news, I'd like to congratulate you for being the ONE guy who managed to abbreviate Hard Disk Drive properly.

Re:Consider the Source

You'd think someone who was trying to pass themselves off as authoritative on a subject (i.e. an actual PS3 developer) would at least get the basic facts right, like - I dunno - the actual console name.

Re:bleah

"128K of RAM or something". Clearly you're pretty well versed on PS3 development then, or do you just get all your info from xbox-scene.org?

Re:Consider the Source

Developing on the PS3 III is an absolute nightmare. Sony is simply looking to spread some FUD about the Xbox 360 as well.

I bet the infidels are actually committing suicide by the hundreds on the gates, too, eh?

640k is enough

I don't know what all you script kiddies are complaining about. 640k is plenty big enough for anyone to run any program that they need to run. Grumble, grumble, wasteful bloat-ware. ;)

Re:It comes down to this

That has FUD written all over it.

Re:bleah

"or something"

Hey - you convinced me. Just curious - what technical acronym is that? I'm guessing it's for:

"Origonally random sentence offers more eccentrically toned hubris in naive grammar".

Meanwhile the PS3 has problems too...

Finnish magazine has an interview with Ubisoft saying Splinter Cell Conviction has been pulled from the PS3.
English translation and some lovely scans of the screenshots.
http://mygen.com.au/article.php?page_id=9696017911 0181074&format=2&se_id=29 [mygen.com.au]

Won't be the only title that gets dropped due to having half the ram of the xbox360.

Sony's problems are software based? What about ...

Any issues devs have with the PS3 can be fixed with time as they're software based, issues on the 360 require hardware, and thats a problem.

There are trade offs with both systems that are hardware and software based. Let's go over a few Hardware ones to start.

The 360 has a Dual layer DVD drive and the PS3 has a dual layer Blu-ray drive. The PS3 wins for storage capacity, but loses for read speed.

The 360 also has twice as much addressable system memory as the PS3 (512 vs 256 megs).

The 360 has a hardware scaler installed so it scales games to whatever source you tell it, doesn't matter what the native res is, it can upscale from 480i to 1080p if you want it to (or any combination in between). The PS3 currently doesn't upscale anything.

The 360 doesn't come with a HDD standard, and the PS3 does. Not exactly a pure Sony win since PS3 games are now requiring Multi-gig installs to play them.

Even the controllers have compromises. Sony compromised by taking rumble out for tilt. They didn't need to for technical reasons (see Wario Ware twisted from 2003, or the Wiimote that uses both). The 360 gave us Standard AA (IE non-rechareable) batteries for the controller. Sony has a proprietary, rechargeable battery built in, but it's not user changeable.

Each system has problems (and strengths), but there are trade offs all over the place.