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XBox (Games)

Certain Xbox 360 Titles May Fill 4 DVDs 107

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-lot-of-shiny dept.
MBCook writes "A Joystiq post says that certain 'highly anticipated' Xbox 360 titles will fill four discs-worth of content. From the post: 'From the high-res textures fit for an HDTV to the higher polygon counts befitting a next-gen console, the space available on standard DVDs is suddenly in increasingly short supply. [...] According to Game Informer, nearly every developer they talked to at X05 expressed difficulties fitting their launch titles onto a single disc. One unnamed yet highly anticipated game in particular is said to currently occupy a full four 9Gb DVDs.'" Relatedly, Microsoft has announced that mainland Asia should expect a March 2006 launch date for the 360 console.
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Certain Xbox 360 Titles May Fill 4 DVDs More

Certain Xbox 360 Titles May Fill 4 DVDs

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  • No wonder they cost so much to make. I thought Myst 4 was huge ( 2 dvd9s). I bet the "highly anticipated title" is Oblivion.
    • Why not stick all games on 4 (or more) 9GB disks, padded out with random data. It would certainly make pirating them more time consuming.
      • Heh, it'd take them 3 more minutes to bypass the check for the unused data and remove it so that they can still release it as a one-DVD game.
        • > Heh, it'd take them 3 more minutes to bypass the check for the unused data and remove it so
          > that they can still release it as a one-DVD game.

          Not if they used decent protection it wouldn't. I don't know about PC games but there was some pretty hairy Amiga protection being used about 15 years ago.
          • Yes, and they break that too, only it takes the crackers a bit longer. I don't know much about these things, but I think in most of these elaborate protection schemes, the legit user suffers a lot too as performance drops, usability goes down, etc. And in the end there are still fanatics that break and release it.

            So okay, maybe not three minutes more, but the "end-user" is still not gonna notice a significant difference in the available of the illegal cracked release.
    • I suppose Oblivion is a possibility, but I tend to doubt it. The only reason I can think of for a game to span 36GB of disc space is the [over]use of pre-rendered high-definition "cutscenes" which doesn't seem like a very Elder Scrollsish thing to do.

      • Re:No wonder (Score:5, Informative)

        by Keeper ( 56691 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:46PM (#14189641)
        Not only that, but the pc version is shipping on only one disc.

        All of the "oh no, the sky is falling in because HD games need higher res [foo]" talk is just rediculous. PC games have been running at > HD resolutions for years, and they still manage to ship on one or two CDs.
        • PC games don't have cutscenes in HD, the encoded video of which is mammoth compared to the standard 640x480 video I've seen in most PC games.
          • If you're encoding with mpeg2 yeah. Not if you're encoding with some of the more modern video codecs.

            Regardless of that point, I personally doubt I'll lose much sleep if the next rpg I get doesn't play like a choose your own adventure book.

        • Re:No wonder (Score:2, Informative)

          by thelonestranger ( 915343 )
          Yep they ship on 1 or 2 CDs/DVDs but the data on these is usually compressed. The games then unpack onto the PCs harddrive and take up sometimes double the space they did on the discs. Not really a practical solution for a console.
          • You'd be surprised. Read this: http://www.xbox.com/NR/rdonlyres/3FCB65F9-E9E5-45 D B-B7F9-59A5EE265B8F/0/Xbox360Preparation.doc [xbox.com]

            Most game data is compressed in some form, and a lot of time is spent dealing with compression. It reduces load times and allows you to pack more data in ram -- the processor is fast enough that it is more efficient to deal with most data in a compressed form than it would be to constantly hit the disc for it in an uncompressed form. Hell, it is preferable to actually calculate d
            • Your right, I am suprised. Guess they could decompress the data on the fly then. Would be better if they didnt have to though, saves wasting processor time on doing jobs that could be used for domething else.
              The bit I really like about this document is this bit about advice to developers working on games for their console:
              Design for controller input, not for keyboard & mouse input. Console players press simple buttons--they don't move the mouse or tap a keyboard

              I can just see some Microsoft exec sit
              • While processor time is something to be concerned about, it isn't the most limited resource in the machine; the biggest thing a game programmer is fighting is use of bandwidth. It is actually faster to decompress on the fly than it is to spend all your cpu time waiting on memory reads while saturating the bus.
        • I was thinking the same thing this morning - why are new console games $60 bucks, while PC games are still $50 and tend to drop like a stone a few months to a year after release.

          It would seem that the "high def texture" argument is a sort of red herring...
          • $60 is the price that they think they can sell at and make the most profit. Not all next gen games are $60. First party titles for the 360 are $50, and xbox live titles (which are admitidly far simpler) range from $5 to $20.

            We'll see if that pricepoint sticks; ultimately, if people buy it they'll continue to charge that kind of money for it.

      • It actually seems very 99 Nights-ish.
      • I was just think that becuase of the large high detail enviroments, but your right; The can repeat many of the textures and object alot.
    • No, no, no. It is Gears of War. You see, all those graphics we saw were cutscenes. The entire thing is just a big cut scene.

  • Pshaw (Score:5, Funny)

    by brilinux ( 255400 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:04PM (#14189334) Journal
    I play no games which do not fit on a 5.25" floppy.

    • Re:Pshaw (Score:3, Funny)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      My standing rule is to play no game unless it's smaller then it's own 320x240 jpeg screenshot, but that's just me.
    • I really hate slipping those 5.25 floppies back into the sleeves when I go too far across the map. I mean, shoot, I have TWO FLOPPY DRIVES, and my desk is only so big, and I have to set the beer I sneaked up into my bedroom on my desk, so give me a break! It's bad enough I had to get a Mockingboard to hear good audio, and the 80-column card to get the hi-res graphics, what you want me to put an extra floppy controller in slot 5 to play your game?!?!?! SHEESH!!!

      This is so silly! I can't wait until my disks h
  • Sure, not having to swap discs is kinda nice, but not if its going to add $200-$300 bucks to the price of the console to cover the price of an HD-DVD drive. I'm just not that lazy.

    Besides, this isn't exactly breaking new ground here. There were plenty of Playstation 1 games that came out on multiple CDs.

    • But we're not talking cd's here. These are DVDs. 9 gigs of crap per disk. CDs only have 800 mb.
      • Doesn't really matter. The main issue for playability is whether the gamer has to switch media in mid-game. The capacity -- and for that matter, the physical shape -- of the media isn't an issue except for dictating the number of chunks the game has to be split into.

        Everything else being equal*, a 9GB game on one DVD is more convenient than a 1GB game on two CDs.

        *In other words, assuming the additional 8GB doesn't impede gameplay itself.
        • A game like GTA:SA has to fit on one DVD (since you can't tell the user to change discs if your game streams data, that would require a choke point the player has to pass to get from one half of the map to the other and at each pass he has to swap discs. Apparently the devs had quite a few problems fitting all that data on one disc.
  • Until they start filling those 36 gigs with AI, Physics, Ginormous dynamic levels, or dare I say it, Gameplay, I'm not biting.

  • A problem that's going to get worse too (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ChrisRijk ( 1818 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:24PM (#14189469)
    Xbox 360 games are likely to get more detail and more complex over time, so being limited to 9GB per disk is going to become more and more of a problem.

    Anyone want to bet Microsoft do an "updated" Xbox with higher capacity DVD and other tweaks...?

    Meanwhile, PS3 developers get to use a whole Blu-Ray disc...

    • Re:A problem that's going to get worse too (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      "Anyone want to bet Microsoft do an "updated" Xbox with higher capacity DVD and other tweaks...?"

      A 360 with a new disc storage format that is incompatible with the existing installed base is effectively a brand new console from developer point of view. Even a company as clearly incompetent in the console space as Microsoft is wouldn't be as foolish to even consider trying something like a format switch.

      The sad fact for 360 owners is they are going to get:

      1) PS3 ports that were borderline potentially profita
      • Hu? Its known that MS plans to include HD-DVD in the future, an it WON'T be incompatible with existing DVDs. Heck my DVD player now can play CDs DVD DVD-DL etc. As long as the disc sizes are the same all future CD sized disk will be backcompatible, at worst you have to add a second laser at best simply different software.

        • So, you expect game developers to publish HD-DVD games which won't run on the 1.5-to-3 million Xbox consoles Microsoft claims they want to sell by year end? Or how about the millions more consoles they'll sell next year before HD-DVD drives actually, possibly become available?

          No game maker is going to cut off their own nose like this. HD-DVD in XBox360 is a dead topic.

        • Hu? Its known that MS plans to include HD-DVD in the future, an it WON'T be incompatible with existing DVDs. Heck my DVD player now can play CDs DVD DVD-DL etc. As long as the disc sizes are the same all future CD sized disk will be backcompatible, at worst you have to add a second laser at best simply different software.

          Splitting up your market between core and deluze is already bad, then splitting it up futher with HD-DVD/DVD spells death You know why Atari died? Partially because of shit liek that splitt
        • No. Please cite a reference, and I'll fail you on it. There will be no HD-DVD games for the Xbox 360. There _might_ be a version of the Xbox 360 that can play movies from HD-DVD, but I doubt it.

    • How much do HD-DVD drive unit cost?If they do release a new version of they 360 perhaps M$ will do something similar to what they did with their power supply screw-up. Go online, enter your serial number and they'll upgrade your old dvd drive to a spanking new HD-DVD drive. Not particularly likely I have to admit, but its one way they could avoid alienating developers by having 2 flavours of storage to be taken into account when developing games.
      • wouldnt work.

        for the average hardcore gamer, thats simple and /could/ work, but most xbox users arent hardcore. most users dont bother to mail back their registration cards. most are going to walk into the store to buy the newest boldest game only to find out that they cant play it on their home console. most parents dont realize what goes on in a particular game they buy for junior; do you think they will be in the know about a new required peripheral drive? and do you think they will accept waiting weeks

  • PC Games? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coolestdickofall ( 858613 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:27PM (#14189493)
    I'm not sure I quite understand this.. PC games have been high res for many years. They don't seem to require multiple DVD-9s...
    • Exactly what I was going to post. I don't think any of the biggest current PC games even use more than a 4Gb DVD.

      Of course in the PC's case some of the data can be compressed as much of it is copied to the hard drive during install and uncompressed. I believe the GTA games on the consoles needed a full DVD-9 for all the radio stations, whereas the PC version compressed the radio stations to MP3s (or Ogg in San Andreas IIRC).

      With the extra grunt of the 360 I would think real time decompression of data when l
      • With the extra grunt of the 360 I would think real time decompression of data when loading levels should be possible making standard DVD-9s more than plenty for most games.

        This is what I was thinking as well. Also, why don't consoles include an audio decoding chip (to decode MP3/Vorbis) with onboard buffer goodness? This would allow 5 megs of audio data to be sent to it instead of spinning the disc to stream raw, CD-quality sound, and it wouldn't burden the CPU at all.

        • Also, why don't consoles include an audio decoding chip (to decode MP3/Vorbis) with onboard buffer goodness?

          As far as I understand, it's not a price issue. There may not even be any decompression chips (or research) that will allow more than one decompression at a time. Sure, maybe you could run the music throught the chip, but then sound effects and voice would be sacrificed. We're talking about timing here.

          MP3 doesn't take a static delay in decompression, so you would have to buffer every possible sou

    • No kidding. My entire Steam directory -- containing Half-Life 2, HL2 Deathmatch, CS Source, CS 1.6, and the Half-Life 1 games, plus the Source Engine SDK -- is far less than 9GB on my hard drive. And it's not like Half-Life 2 is short in the media department, either. The game is chock full of hi-res textures, detailed character models and animation sequences, dialog, and music.

      Something's not right here...

      • Re:PC Games? (Score:3, Interesting)

        by MindStalker ( 22827 )
        I think the developers are being pushed to include HDTV quality cut scenes, an hour of HDTV will eat through an entire DVD even well compressed.
    • More filler, less killer.

    • Re:PC Games? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TubeSteak ( 669689 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @02:17AM (#14191501) Journal
      From TFA:
      Microsoft's J Allard downplayed the storage issues, citing that improved compression rates in the future will allow much more data to be held on an individual disc, and that the pre-launch crunch forced many current 360 titles to use space far more inefficiently than they would have otherwise.


      It helps... to read... TFA.

  • Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xenocide2 ( 231786 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @07:36PM (#14189562) Homepage
    PC games have been using higher resolution for years and rarely need multiple DVDs. I haven't really paid attention to how the 360 compares to a PC, but if they're about on par, then something's amiss.

    Of course, if the 360 boasts larger texture capabilities, or more polys, that's potentially more texture sizes and more geometry data to store. It's also possible that console games include more full motion video cutscenes than a PC game, which 360 owners would naturally prefer at HiDef resolutions.

    Naturally there is a compression tradeoff between space and time. By now many ./ readers have likely seen the .kkreiger game that fits in like 96K. This is of course an extreme tradeoff while you wait for the game to recreate all its textures from high level combinations to bitmaps. But texture compression is nothing new and is often seen in 3d hardware. Again, I haven't dug into the 360, but I would imagine there's one or two texture compression options available and build into the hardware. Either the company isnt using them, or the compression isn't enough.
    • I seem to remember reading that Microsoft specifically designed the 360 hardware to make dynamically generated textures and models quick, that's the solution they are pushing. And I for one think it is the right solution.
    • well for computers its different because your not running the entire game off the disc. In computers games most of the game is compressed on the disc and then is installed on your computer taking up several gigs. so with computers the games are able to read of the HD and the disc so its faster.
    • Texture compression was avaliable on both the Gamecube and XBox (not sure about the PS2). That doesn't do enough.
  • High-res textures and higher polygon counts causing more disks? That is kind of hard to believe. In general even if a model is very poly that shouldn't take up too much space. If they really need more then one DVD for models and textures they need to learn about data management. There are lots of ways to reuse texture and make the games look good.

    To me it seems like the problem is video based. Videos take up a lot of space on a disk, especially since they now have to be HD videos. They should rely less on p
    • Look at kkrieger (can be found at http://www.theprodukkt.com/ [theprodukkt.com]). This is a first person shooter demo that is on par with most first person shooters today...

      Okay, that's neat as a demonstration of techniques, but saying that it's on par with most first person shooters today is incredibly disingenuous.

      There's no challenge, it's about 10 minutes long, the sound is as good as nonexistent (there is sound, but it's awful), I could go on, but that'll miss the point. It's nothing like modern first person shooters.
      • That is why I used the qualifier "most" obviously F.E.A.R., Doom 3, Half life 2 and that type are much more impressive. But the majority of FPSs are not as impressive. As to what the article was talking about (High-res textures and higher polygon counts) this isn't that far off of the tech used in games like battlefield or halo.

        True it is a demo but this demo took 10 minutes, well make the game 100 times longer and the file size is still only 9.37Mb (9600 kilobytes), ad 300Mb for good sounds, maybe pad on a

  • Well.... (Score:3, Funny)

    by sparkie ( 60749 ) on Monday December 05, 2005 @08:07PM (#14189785) Homepage
    If they used 9GB discs instead of 9Gb discs, they'd be able to cram those 4, and 4 more onto a disc.
  • Oh Noes! You'll have to get up off the couch.
    I seem to remember having to do this for some PS2 games, PS1 games, whole bunch of compgames, and just about anything that used a floppy.
    Of course Higher-Res stuff is going to take up more room.
  • Maybe what's taking all this room is pre-rendered cutscenes! It seems japanese developers love to fill discs with them... and Microsoft's decision to stick to DVD could help them break out of this vicious circle! There was a time when CGs made sense, but no longer; rendering all cutscenes in real time is now feasible - and it even adds a sense of visual coherence to the game.
    • Nintendo already did this, on the N64 no less.

      In most (if not all) of the first party games, cutscenes were rendered by the engine at the time of display (the Zelda games were this way). Of course, they were forced to do this by the limitations of the cartrige format.

      You're right about staying in the moment, too. It's much more atmospheric to transition from the cutscene directly into game play without hearing the crunch and grind of a disk, and seeing a "now loading" screen (yes PS1, I'm looking at you).
    • Xenosaga (2, at least) is rather low on prerendered videos, most of the stuff seems to be realtime. You may remember that game as being one of the largest games this generation.

      From what I've heard, GTA:SA hits the limits of the format as well and it doesn't seem to use much video, either.
    • There was a time when CGs made sense, but no longer; rendering all cutscenes in real time is now feasible - and it even adds a sense of visual coherence to the game.
      The problem with rendered custscenes with the in-game engine is that you're stuck with the in-game limitations and small bugs can really add up. Playing No One Lives Forever is very difficult for me now because of the lack of lip movement. And VTM: Bloodlines... enough with the skating characters! Something glitched in my models, I guess, beca
  • Anyone else remember when three entire game discs were filled with storyline and had a real emotional impact on you? I'm referring mostly to games like FFVII. It seems the problem with the game designers today is that they're so stuck on graphics that they miss some of the most importent elements of a game. A storyline that moves you. Ok I'm done being sappy, but this is one thing that has been bugging me about quite a few of the "next gen" games.

  • Blueray (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gullevek ( 174152 ) on Tuesday December 06, 2005 @12:48AM (#14191178) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps Sony thought about this, and thats why they "loose" extra money for putting a Blueray drive into it.
  • This seems like the perfect time for developers to start using procedural textures/models. They could save enormously on space, and could even be a selling point for a game...
  • Swapping to another disc after a few days of play then to another a few days later never bothered me when I played Final Fantasy 7 on the Playstation, so I dont think that this will bother me now. Its not like your going to have to swap discs every 20 minutes is it? And I very much doubt that you'll have to swap backwards and forwards between discs.
  • While the commenters above are right to point out that comparable PC games managed to do fine on single disks, this sort of memory-hogging is part and parcel of the sort of games (particularly console games) which are in the limelight right now. The PS3 and 360 hype is mostly about high-definition this and hundreds-of-characters that, so unless there are a series of sudden breakthroughs in procedural texturing, modelling, animation and dialogue, they're going to require more and more storage space.

    Procedu

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