What Smells Like Blue? (May 24, 2006)

[Bandit LOAF]

PRWeb has posted a press release announcing the creation of Blue Ray Game Technologies, Inc., a company which will be responsible for manufacturing high-definition Blue Ray discs for gaming purposes. Many people are worried that the Sony-supported format will end up in second place to HD DVD... but at least the man behind the scenes here has Wing Commander experience!

“Even many game business professionals don’t fully understand everything Blu-ray is about to do for their industry,” said Blue Ray Technologies founder and DVD pioneer Erick Hansen. “The graphics, processing power and video texturing, not to mention the storage capacity, will be a quantum leap in the technology that will absolutely engulf gamers.”

Hansen, who manufactured the first DVD-ROM game, “Wing Commander,” for Creative Labs, said his launch of a game development firm was to ensure gamers would get the full-blown possibilities of BD games that other developers may not provide. “The gamers will soon demand the full-scope of what BD can do,” Hansen said.

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Original update published on May 24, 2006

 

[Edfilho]

That's pretty cool, and I love my WC4DVD, but I do question the need for games to go from DVDs to a new media. I mean, games spanned a lot of floppies when CD-ROM arived, and CD-ROMs were pretty used up when DVD became standard...

But we still have a lot of CD-ROM games being released NOW, and I've yet to see a game in ANY plataform needing more than one DVD9.

HD movies will eat up those 25GBs very quickly, and it would be a lot easier to buy TV series boxed sets if they had less disks...

But games are veering away from pre-rendered cutscenes, Next Gen titles are supposed to do everything in-engine... and The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion, a huge beast of a free-form game, nees a single layer disk, even with FULL voice acting.

I think it's too soon.

 

[Ijuin]

Even in Japan, there are only a very few games for PS2 or PC that take up two DVD's, although PSP ports of PS2 games more often need to be two-disk games because the UMD only holds 1.8 GB. However, I do not doubt that the extra graphics data from high-definition PS3 games will end up requiring the space that Blu-Ray makes possible.

 

[Delance]

I think normal DVDs are more than enought, it already costs a small fortune to develop a game as it is.

 

[ChrisReid]

I think normal DVDs are more than enought, it already costs a small fortune to develop a game as it is.

That doesn't make any sense. The cost of making a game is based on a number of factors. Regardless of the cost, new games will have more detailed textures, higher resolution content and more things to fill up space. People complain today when games are released for DVD and not on CD. It's ridiculous. Higher capacity discs aren't necessary today in 2006, but they will be in the future, and they won't be the reason games cost more to develop.

 

[Edfilho]

Even in Japan, there are only a very few games for PS2 or PC that take up two DVD's, although PSP ports of PS2 games more often need to be two-disk games because the UMD only holds 1.8 GB. However, I do not doubt that the extra graphics data from high-definition PS3 games will end up requiring the space that Blu-Ray makes possible.

I think most PS2 two-DVD games used single layer. They could have used a dual layer disk and keep it smaller.

And Chris, sure, we will need media bigger than DVDs, but I think it is too early. We could use DVDs for one more generation.

 

[Ijuin]

Meh, we all know that making the PS3 use Blu-Ray is Sony's way of getting their foot in the door for the next media generation so that they can grab market share. Since PS3 owners will already have Blu-Ray capability, once Blu-Ray High-Definition movies start coming out the will choose the Blu-Ray edition instead of buying a separate HD-DVD player. It's VHS/Betamax all over again.

 

[Quarto]

Well, I don't know. On the one hand, I find it hard to believe that games could go beyond 20GB at any point within the next decade. At the same time, a decade ago I certainly wouldn't have believed that games would increase their sizes tenfold from 600MB to 6000MB. Provided that hardware development will continue at the same pace as it has so far, it's definitely possible, and even very likely, that game sizes will again increase tenfold.

(so, Delance is definitely wrong. I do tend to agree with Edfilho, though - it does seem like this generation of consoles isn't really capable of taking advantage of the amount of space Blu-Ray offers)

 

[Delance]

The growth might not be constant, however.

 

[Quarto]

Sure, but it never was constant previously, either.

 

[cff]

But it rather seems to slow down rigth now instead of speeding up.

Besides any capacity problems will be easily solved with either HD-DVD or Blue Ray. I don't see the advantage of either at this point.

Its all a matter of marketing. Besides that I'd like to see how a Blue Ray disk will have "quantum leap" on "The graphics, processing power and video texturing". Didn't know that Blue Ray was a 3D graphic device now - amazing...

 

[Ijuin]

Most current High-Definition video schemes have about four times the pixel count of NTSC video, so I would expect that a HD movie would then require about four times as much disk space for the video track as current DVD movies.

 

[Delance]

Sure, but it never was constant previously, either.

Yes, it was accelerating, now it's not.

 

[Quarto]

Yes, it was accelerating, now it's not.

Really? What exactly do you base this claim on? Because I can't think of a reason why you might think this is the case.

 

[Delance]

Really? What exactly do you base this claim on? Because I can't think of a reason why you might think this is the case.

Multiple factors. For starters, I suspect that if someone was to make a graphic of the avarege size of game since 1985 they'd see a curve that's increasing slower now than it was on 1991. Initially, what make games explode in size? Is that still a factor? I don't think so. I think games will remain more or less the same size until the next generation of consoles. That's just a guess, anyway.

 

[Ijuin]

What made games explode was the switch from floppies (1.44 megs each, maximum useful program size of around 30 megs) to CD-ROM (512-720 megs each), which for a brief time gave developers more space than they knew what to do with. However, like with roads and traffic, if you build it, they will come.

 

[ChrisReid]

I think most PS2 two-DVD games used single layer. They could have used a dual layer disk and keep it smaller.

And Chris, sure, we will need media bigger than DVDs, but I think it is too early. We could use DVDs for one more generation.

And we are.. only the PS3 is using a larger format.

Well, I don't know. On the one hand, I find it hard to believe that games could go beyond 20GB at any point within the next decade. At the same time, a decade ago I certainly wouldn't have believed that games would increase their sizes tenfold from 600MB to 6000MB. Provided that hardware development will continue at the same pace as it has so far, it's definitely possible, and even very likely, that game sizes will again increase tenfold.

Yeah, if we do jump up here, prerendered high-definition content will be a large part of that. Yeah, more and more seems to be going to in-engine real time cutscenes, but I wouldn't be shocked at all to see a PS3 game with a 6000MB 1080P prerendered intro (Onimusha 4 is a good candidate for such a thing).

Multiple factors. For starters, I suspect that if someone was to make a graphic of the avarege size of game since 1985 they'd see a curve that's increasing slower now than it was on 1991. Initially, what make games explode in size? Is that still a factor? I don't think so. I think games will remain more or less the same size until the next generation of consoles. That's just a guess, anyway.

The same size as what? Games a couple years from now will most definitely use up quite a bit more space than games a couple years ago. We are transitioning into the next generation of consoles right now. All other things being equal, prerendered high definition videos and high resolution textures alone will take up a bunch more space.

 

[Quarto]

Multiple factors. For starters, I suspect that if someone was to make a graphic of the avarege size of game since 1985 they'd see a curve that's increasing slower now than it was on 1991. Initially, what make games explode in size? Is that still a factor? I don't think so.

Well, a lot of things made games increase in size. I'll try to cut it down to two short points, though.

One factor was the increase in size of the game world, the higher detail of the game world, new sound hardware, et cetera - in short, games simply getting better and taking advantage of better hardware. This, obviously, is still happening. We're using higher quality audio samples (and still plenty of room for improvement - most games don't currently take advantage of 7.1 channel sound, but they will soon), higher resolution textures, and more textures. Back in the days of Prophecy, an object was covered with a single texture. Today, on top of that texture you add several others - specular maps, alpha maps, bump maps, and so on. I can't imagine what other maps they could possibly add... but my imagination is limited, and I know that there's people out there right now, developing technology that I can't imagine.

The other factor was of course the addition of storylines utilising pre-rendered images. The talking heads took up quite a bit of space in WC1, and then went on to take up four CDs in WC3. This factor, clearly, is no longer as important today. Most games don't have much in terms of pre-rendered cutscenes any more (though there are still exceptions). Here's the thing, though - today's games take up a single-layer DVD (that's around 6000mb) in spite of the shift away from pre-rendered cutscenes. That's something really worth thinking about - in 1996, it took WC4 four hours of pre-rendered cutscenes to take up the equivalent of a single-layer DVD... ten years later, games take up a single-layer DVD without those four hours.

Of course, there are still lots of games out there that take up a lot less than that. The games my company develops, for example, are always designed to fit on one CD. But this is normal - back in 1996, there was plenty of games that took up less than a quarter of a CD, too. And, after all, when you develop a new console, you don't design it based on what the least-demanding developers require in terms of hardware. You design it in such a way as to get the most demanding developers on board.

 

[blueray 1]

ur think this is funny but iam a fan of ur site wow now 4 the good stuff i heard all the same stuff with dvds and cds come on every tech e knows u grow it a format. let me give a hint its going to change the ------- world kinda way c u erick blueray hansen

 

[ChrisReid]

What?