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XBox (Games)

Lost Odyssey To Span Four DVDs 69

Posted by Zonk from the that's-a-big-game dept.
Perhaps proving that Sony has something to their 'bigger disc as standard' argument, IGN is reporting that Lost Odyssey will span multiple DVDs when it is released for the Xbox 360 next year. "Hot on the heels of the three DVD long Blue Dragon, Sakaguchi informed the crowd that Lost Odyssey will span a massive four DVDs. The game, which uses a mixture of CG and real-time cutscenes, will last roughly 40 to 50 hours. Lost Odyssey will follow in Blue Dragon's footsteps in another way as well. The team plans to ship the game with multiple language options, including English and Japanese. However, the voice animations will be synched to English on all versions, including the Japanese release."
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Lost Odyssey To Span Four DVDs More

Lost Odyssey To Span Four DVDs

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  • HD-DVD also has more room. The DVD versus Blu-ray argument simply is not standing ground.

    Besides, you can make something fit in most format, granted you take the time to do so.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Tinyn ( 1100891 )
      Ya, but PS3 shipped with a Bluray drive for games. Xbox360 has that HD-DVD video addon, but it can't do games. The point of 'Hrm, maybe the game drive use one of the new, bigger formats' is still true.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cpct0 ( 558171 )
        If it became such a problem, I am sure a Xbox 360 patch would be along the way to play this game over the HD DVD. Granted, it would not be for ALL 360s, but it would still work. Also, they could make it a DVD-game with a HD-DVD "movie" extra, optional, for 720p and up native movie contents. That would allow all people to get it, while making sure the freaks with giant HD sets and Elite 360s would get their eye candy.

        Finally, they could simply make a better use of the compression, and extend it to make sure

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by aliquis ( 678370 )
          But forcing people to buy the addon HD-DVD is rather lame, looks like shit and as expensive as a PS3.
          And people who has the DVD-version would feel it sucked.

          Also I doubt it will happen since not that many have the HD-DVD one currently, so the first few games which started to use it would have crappy sales, and noone wants that, and without games being released for it noone will care to get the drive.

          Of course games could be released on both DVD and HD-DVD, but that kindof stuck aswell.

          Anyway of those two PS

          • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

            by cpct0 ( 558171 )
            I have a Wii, I played it some, there are _SOME_ good games, but the production has only started ramping up on the Wii, as most major studios got caught red-handed with a 10-million-console market and no products to offer. So I think it will become more and more interesting, as the months will go back. DS, well, it's there to stay. PSP, we'll see.

            Correcting you, a full-featured 360 costs MORE than the PS3 (Like $200 more), for all the same features.

            As far as the way I see it, both consoles have to better th

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by aliquis ( 678370 )
              Well, that 360 with hd-dvd and live gold where as expensive (a little less, a little more, I don't know, I don't care.) where my point.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LKM ( 227954 )

            Not that intrested in Wii either since I have a cube which I haven't played much on at all and a DS.

            If you think the Gamecube and the DS offer what the Wii does, you're missing what the Wii is offering :-)

            Oh, totally off-topic, but I just bought Tingle's for the DS, and man, that is one awesome game!

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by aliquis ( 678370 )
              Still I have like 180 .. err.. games for my cube, which I sort of haven't played, and uhm.. gigs of.. uhm.. information for my DS, so I have enough games to play already if I wanted to.

              Sure I would prefer a chiped Wii and sell the cube, but it's still expensive and I doubt the few existing games are worth it in experience compared to all the games I already have.

              I can get a wii 3 years from now instead ;D

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Seumas ( 6865 )
          Developers are already reporting issues with the limited space provided by DVD on the XBOX 360 platform.

          Yes, perhaps they can somehow patch the system so that their HD-DVD drives could play games. Now you'll be looking at a $400 system plus another $200 for the HD-DVD drive, while the PS3 comes with blu-ray and is a hundred bucks less already.

          You must be imagining some super magic compression to crap a blu-ray disc worth of content on a DVD. Not to mention, the same super-magic compression could also be on

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by LKM ( 227954 )

          If it became such a problem, I am sure a Xbox 360 patch would be along the way to play this game over the HD DVD.

          How do you propose that would work? Games would come in two versions, which means shops will have two SKUs? Or games will include both four DVDs as well as one HD-DVD?

          I actually am in a bet right now with a Sony fanboy who claims that Microsoft will be forced to release games on HD-DVD before the end of '08 in order to keep up with Sony. I'm betting against it. Such console add-ons have never

    • It does stand ground, in a way, because ms doesn't support HD-DVD games (though it may be technically possible.)

      However, I think the argument is fallacious because if you are complaining about the need to change the CD every 10 hours, you probably need to be changing the CD every 10 hours just to give your body flaps [bobbyworks.com] a chance to air out.

    • It would be a pointless article if we were talking about movies, where HD-DVD is competing with Blu-Ray, but we're talking about consoles, where Microsoft pitted the DVD against the Blu-Ray. Apparently MS forgot that each succeeding generation will use 5-10x what the previous one did.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aliquis ( 678370 )
        They didn't forgot, the 360 where supposed to have HD-DVD from the begining, I would more belive that they noticed that it would cost more and therefor raise the cost of the console and also because there where no clear winner the "oh and it can play HD-DVD-movies aswell!"-argument wasn't that strong.

        So they opted for a lower price than the PS3 which so far seems to have worked well for them, don't you think?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by donaldm ( 919619 )
          Look at the following chart http://vgchartz.com/hwcomps.php?cons1=X360&reg1=All&cons2=PS3&reg2=All&cons3=Wii&reg3=All&align=1 [vgchartz.com] and you can see that if you align the launches the PS3 and the Xbox360 are tracking each other, how long this will go on remains to be seen. What is significant is the massive take-up of the Wii which is not really that surprising considering the Wii is less than half the price of a PS3, whether this translates into good game sales remains to be seen. What Mi

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by LKM ( 227954 )

            What is significant is the massive take-up of the Wii which is not really that surprising considering the Wii is less than half the price of a PS3, whether this translates into good game sales remains to be seen.

            I agree. However, it should be pointed out that as of now, attach rate on the Wii is higher than on the PS3 and on par with the 360 at the same time in its life. As more good games keep coming out, attach rate will only go up.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by KDR_11k ( 778916 )
        They probably knew but they realized that this generation started too early to make HDDVD and BluRay as a stock feature a good idea. Sony didn't and ended up going from first to last place. If these formats had come out a few years earlier the 360 would have used HDDVD but they were already hitting the limits for an acceptable price by trying to cram more advanced hardware in than it was time for. Sony crammed even more things in and ended up with a 600€ console, losing a huge portion of their marketsh

    • Re: Multiple discs didn't hurt FF VII... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by trdrstv ( 986999 ) on Friday September 21, 2007 @05:23PM (#20704865)
      Moving on to "the next disc" after 10-15 hours of play doesn't bother me. It worked for all the Final Fantasies of the PS1 era, so meh... whatever. What DOES bother me, is why are they STILL doing CG cutscenes? With the in game quality of Lost Odyssey, or any other "Current Gen game" why not use the in game engine to run them? It not only saves space, but makes the experience less jarring/ more immersive.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by OK PC ( 857190 )
        In game engines can't do everything unfortunately.
        Take for example, an epic scene with thousands of troops, an in game engine would struggle to produce high detail with a decent framerate.
        In game engines are also unsuitable for quick cuts to different environments (textures etc would need to be loaded).
      • Agreed. In fact, so does the game's creator: http://kotaku.com/gaming/microsoft/lost-odyssey-lights-out-301746.php/ [kotaku.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ADRA ( 37398 )
        FFVII was mostly linear in what it presented. The cut scenes included in each disc were arranged by timing of the event with some data spread over all the discs as needed. This is why (annoyingly) some event could only be triggered on a specific disc even through the area was open to you. If you ever wanted to develop a large sandbox type game with the same richness of content, there'd be no reasonable way of making the content fit.

        The sad thing is developers know this and are most likely shearing the desig

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by trdrstv ( 986999 )

          If you ever wanted to develop a large sandbox type game with the same richness of content, there'd be no reasonable way of making the content fit.

          I think the developers at Bethesta would disagree. They fit Oblivion on a DVD9.

          The sad thing is developers know this and are most likely shearing the design of the game based on content size limitations.

          You say that as if it's a new thing. Every developer works around a systems' strengths and limitations.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by aliquis ( 678370 )
        Warcraft III does this, and it's cool :D
      • Actually, I'd much rather have some CG or a nice FMV than an in-engine cutscene. When I'm watching rather than playing a game, I want it to look as nice as possible. Even on Gears of War and Bioshock, which are, in my opinion, the best-looking games currently available, the quality of the visuals isn't as good as what can be achieved with a proper, traditional cut-scene. As for immersion, I don't think I find anything more jarring than having supposedly emotional game-events rendered comic by close-up views

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by aliquis ( 678370 )
      Yeah but the Xbox360 HD-DVD speced where scraped and replaced with a DVD.

      And I guess this is sort of why Microsoft started to support HD-DVD so much at all because having Bluray not seem like a definite winner which it more or less was and eventually fail would make the point that the PS3 came with a Bluray player which could also do HD-video less major. (Weird english :D)

      Which is one of the reaons why I hope bluray wins:
      1) More space.
      2) HD-DVD are only considered because Microsoft wanted to hurt PS3 sales.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by scolen2 ( 956819 )
      First: You can't read Second: There is apparetnly a update to the HD DVD drive for the 360 sometime next year. Being in teh HD DVD industry i know this is a good thing for compatablity, cuase the 360 is a horrible HD DVD player, but perhaps they might be using this to create support for HD DVD game titles too! What is the limitation of why they can't play titles right now off that drive? Is it only software or is it hardware issues?
      • One of the issues is that it costs an extra 200 dollars. Another is that not too many people have it. Assuming it was possible to play games through the external HD-DVD drive, it would still be a pretty bad idea.
  • On the other hand, Microsoft really seemed to have something with getting the console out first for a lower price.

    On the gripping hand, I'd say Nintendo really had something with dropping out of the technological race to armageddon. They seem to have found the sweet spot this generation.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by aliquis ( 678370 )
      I wonder what history says about this, I don't know which consoles does compare and have been in on similair pricepoints as Wii and 360, but PS3 and NeoGeo might be similair, thought the NeoGeo where even more expensive I think, the games much more so.

      But we all know how well sales for NeoGeo went ...

      I guess Nintendo where old enough to know their game, and wanted a console with high profits so they didn't lose their money on it, and also smaller development costs. And all three points worked.
  • Actually, having multiple disks didn't really bother me so much in Final Fantasy VIII. But in VIII, the discs were used pretty much sequentially. When you were finished with one, you wouldn't need it a second time around. But if a game required constant switching back and forth between disks, that could get real annoying real fast.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Stormwatch ( 703920 )

      But if a game required constant switching back and forth between disks, that could get real annoying real fast.
      One word for you: RIVEN.
      • Subject says it all. Game for amiga on three discs, where you most often had to change disc 2 times for each fight or similair... A very good reason to get a second, or maybe even third external drive ;D

        Monkey Island II where on 11 discs but required less swapping.
  • I hope SonyDefenseForce [sonydefenseforce.com] doesn't find out about this.
  • Just using a nice round number for DVDs of 5 GB (I know 360 may be less than this), so Lost Odyssey might take up 20 GB of space. If we're using that much space in art assets of large RPGs this year, what about 2 years from now? Seems like the massive 50 GB of Blu-Ray will not even be enough and by the end of the PS3 life cycle we will for sure be seeing multi-disc releases. I'm a 360 owner but i'm not overly worried about multi-disc releases. What I am overly worried about is those developers that feel
    • The majority of the space usage is almost certainly FMV and weakly-compressed audio. This has been the case in most major titles released in the past few years - FMV and audio eat up 40% or more of the total size of the game, and are typically not compressed nearly as effectively as they could be.

      If previous Final Fantasy titles are any indicator, this is definitely going to be the case with Mistwalker games. Most of the information I've seen on space used by PS3 games also indicates more or less the same -
    • XBOX 360's games are on dual-layer DVD's, which puts 4 discs worth of data at around 35 GB.
      • But how much of that content is common to two or more of the discs? Strip out the redundant information and the data footprint would probably be MUCH smaller than 35GB.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Osty ( 16825 )

      Just using a nice round number for DVDs of 5 GB (I know 360 may be less than this), so Lost Odyssey might take up 20 GB of space.

      The Xbox 360 uses a dual-layer DVD9 format, or 9GB. Assuming each Lost Odyssey disk fully fills that space (unlikely), that's 45GB of space, which is also pushing the Blu-Ray format limit. Obviously some of that is duplicated data across each disk that wouldn't contribute to the full amount on a Blu-Ray release.

      If we're using that much space in art assets of large RPGs this ye

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Osty ( 16825 )

        BTW, my math was wrong. I assumed 5 disks rather than 4, where 4 DVD9 disks would be 36GB, not 45GB.

    • From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360_hardware#Storage [wikipedia.org]

      "Games are stored on standard dual-layer DVD-ROMs with 7 GB of usable space available for game content."
      • Odd....the reference link for that says that they're DVD-9's, but only 7 GB per disk. They should be getting at least 8 GB from each disk.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by OK PC ( 857190 )
      It's worth noting that the game isn't actually the size of four disks.
      There will be a lot of data duplication between the disks, as you can visit the same areas on different disks.
      Remove the movies and it may even fit on one disk.
      I can't see a game needing any more than 4 disks, I think games have hit a few limits that prevent them getting much bigger.
      One, the cost to make a game vs. a saturated market (for RPGs).
      Two, content takes time to produce and test and games have to come out at some point.
      Three, gam
    • Excuse me? Final Fantasy 7 was released in 1997, ten years ago now.

      Heck, don't you remember multiple CD games like "Under a Killing Moon" in 1994?

      It's not restricted to JRPGs, and it's not even remotely new. This is something Microsoft should have anticipated, even if it meant going the HD-DVD route.
      • I'm pretty certain they anticipated it, and figured "people are OK with changing disks in the middle of a huge, multi-day game." Jade Empire, one of the RPGs for the original Xbox that actually sold pretty well, was on 2 discs -- and the content on disc 2 was about 10% of the game, so it was truly just "overflow" that didn't fit.

        And no one complained. They were happy that Microsoft didn't force the developer to cut that 10% out of the rest of the game. It's not like these games require disc changing e

        • Jade Empire, one of the RPGs for the original Xbox that actually sold pretty well, was on 2 discs -- and the content on disc 2 was about 10% of the game, so it was truly just "overflow" that didn't fit.

          Incorrect. Jade Empire, and KotOR 1 and 2, were all single-disc releases.

          Jade Empire was available with a 'special edition' bonus disc, which added a character and some new weapons.

  • Why does it matter if a game takes more than one disc?

    Having to get up every 15hrs of game time to swap discs is not a problem.
    How much does it cost the manufacturer for three extra discs and larger packaging? Its likely to be pennies extra, though its better than spending extra dollars on a new disc format that causes everyone to hemorrhage money when they sell their hardware.

  • I request that all PS3 fanbois post their "360 is shit!" posts under this one. Please make sure that you also list other platforms that were totally shit for requiring games that span multiple discs, and also how those games placed an awful strain on you and you just couldn't play them. Here, I'll start you out:

    1. PS1: Resident Evil 2 - 2 discs. Fuck me that was awful. I watched one of the Capcom USA testers finish Leon's disc in under an hour, and then he had to lean over and swap the disc to Clair's. God fo
    • These consoles are still relatively young. If this sort of problem starts to affect non-linear games it could become very annoying. Most people might not remember this, but the Gamecube Tiger Woods had half the courses on one disc, and half on another or something like that. There are certain types of games that don't lend themselves to multiple discs. It might not be an issue if the 360 has as short of a lifespan as the previous Xbox, but if I'm dropping a small fortune on a console, I'd like it to be

      • I live in fear of Tiger Woods on the XBox 360 not being able to fit all their courses on a 8Gb disc. I will run out and spend a small fortune, as you put it, on a PS3. Those trifling games like Bioshock and Halo 3 have been completely throttled to fit their games onto such a small medium, and I should make sure that my console can handle enormous epics the size of Heavenly Sword which will no doubt take me many months to finish given its enormous size on disc.

  • The game, which uses a mixture of CG and real-time cutscenes, will last roughly 40 to 50 hours.

    The game will last roughly 40 to 50 hours and required FOUD DVDs?! Wtf do they need all that space for? Blue Dragon was 3 DVDs long and reviewers were complaining about the game's storyline being slow to unfold.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CastrTroy ( 595695 )
      Is there 40 to 50 hours of gameplay? Or 40 to 50 hours of full motion video. I'm currently playing the GC version of Twilight Princess, and have played a total of 40 hours. And from what I can tell, I'm probably under 5 hours from beating the game. That's not counting doing all the side quests. I've completed a couple, but I haven't really focused on it. All that fits on a single GameCube Mini DVD. There's quite a few cutscenes, but I think they are all rendered with the game engine. If you have 40 t

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Dunbal ( 464142 )
      The game will last roughly 40 to 50 hours and required FOUD DVDs?!

            That's ok, Oblivion only needed ONE DVD and I STILL play it. 40 to 50 hours, heheheh I think I know that type of game. Do not use brain and follow the exact path we have set for you.
  • Is it just me or do Japanese RPG's always seem to fall into one of two deeply uninteresting categories:

    1) "Cute RPG's" starring groups of orphaned, round-eyed children weilding cute, oversized weapons, or
    2) RPG's starring androgynous (or downright female-looking) men with overtly gay salon-styled haircuts, adolescent voices and hilariously useless-looking, oversized weapons.

    Hey Japan, can we get an RPG which actually features adult men who aren't pretty?

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