261
rate

Does the PS3 really need a Blu-ray drive? – Community Gamer Gab #2

September 30, 2010 in Blog comments 18

OXCGN's COmmunity Gamer Gab has seen another writer supply articles, one of which is looking at the whole BluRay format issue with the PS3.

Not a sling at the platform, or a fanboys approach, but an honest look at the fact that was and is BluRay really needed in gaming as we were once led to believe, as more and more games of higher quality are coming in at much lower file sizes than we were told, many of them well below the 8gig mark.

An interesting look at how Sony perhaps used the PS3 like it did the PS2, to bring in a format to help sales of its primary format at the time. Come check it out, fanboys stay at home please.

When the Playstation 3 came out it was one of the cheapest Blu-ray players on the market, which I suspect had an enormous impact on the sales of the console.

Now, this is not the case anymore and you can pick a Blu-ray player up for much cheaper than the PS3.

So the question really becomes, does the PS3 really need a Blu-ray drive for games?

Do the developers really need that much space for the games or does this encourage lazy programming and cut-scene compression?

One could argue that the future delivery method for games will be PSN, Xbox Live and Steam thus rendering the disc completely irrelevant. Personally, I quite like owning a physical copy of a game, so it would take a fair bit of convincing to get me to change.
XboxOZ360 via oxcgn.com »
Favourite this article Add source
| More
Report!
Latest comment:
Most recently commented on by on Oct 2, 2010

Comments

Register as a member to subscribe comments.
  • 1
    Red 9 Sep 30, 10
    No it wasn't entirely necessary; they could've gone MS's way and tried to flog DVD for another generation. But so far some of the most technologically amazing games have been developed on the Blu-Ray. Just because it's unnecessary doesn't make it a bad idea.
  • 0
    XboxOZ360 Sep 30, 10
    I;'m certainly not saying it's not, nor would I say it was, but the question asked is also, is the excess of space making some developers, especially japanese, somewhat lazy in developing tools and engines that can make their games smaller, and ideally then more suitable for digital distribution. Because that ultimately is where the bulk of retail will come from - over time.

    We'll never see the end of retail hard discs, just like we'll never see the end of paper, in fact, I thin we use more paper now than before the 'digital age - lol?

    Take Dar Energy as an example, makers of Hydrophobia. In order too go digital, rather than disc, they worked even harder on their HydroEngine, which ended up allowing them to reduce the game size down to just a mere 1.35 gig in size, yet still have fully dynamic water 'affects' and effects' as well as a decent game in the process.
  • 0
    Lupin_the_third Oct 1, 10
    I dont think we really need this article
    • 0
      XboxOZ360 Oct 1, 10
      The idea of articles is to create discussion, as each person can put forward information another may not have access to, or have known, thus opening up the wealth of knowledge that the internet is based on.

      Not discuss things like this or other items is a great deal worse than not discussing them.
  • 1
    Daweii Oct 1, 10
    Blu-Ray was needed perhaps not so much for gaming but we have seen the benefits of uncompressed data. I mean there are very few if any games on Xbox 360 that rival Killzone 2, Uncharted 2 and God of War 3 visually and I personally put that down to better textures thanks to more disk space. Where as Gears of War 3 may be a pretty game you have to think how many visual features they have to drop because they are too large because of DVD... I personally will never hate on Sony for adding Blu-Ray as without them doing that, Blu-Ray would not be an industry standard format and for that Sony's choice was justified.
  • 0
    Hideo1 Oct 1, 10
    Two words: Selling point.
    • 0
      XboxOZ360 Oct 1, 10
      actually it's 3 lol, USP (Unique Selling Point) heheheheh but yes, quite true.
      • 1
        Hideo1 Oct 1, 10
        Well USP is one word, now you're just being silly.
  • 0
    Zero Oct 1, 10
    I think the addition of Blu-ray to the PS3 is unnecessary. Don't get me wrong, HD movies are great to watch but the implement of Blu-ray is gonna see the price of PS3's soaring.
    • 1
      Xeros the Slayer Oct 1, 10
      Umm... what? I may be wrong but all of my PS3 games say blu-ray on them and the console was launched with a fully functional blu-ray player built in. And one of the console's original selling points back before its game library built up was that it was the cheapest blu-ray player on the market.

      Plus over the course of the past couple years the console's prices have been dropping.

      And if you want a point of where the space is needed, Mass Effect 2, the game's going to launch on PS3 with bonus content and most if not all of the DLC on-disk and its all just one disk. Yes there are a lot of games that can fit onto one disk on the 360 but not all of them and that number is probably going to grow as developers try to make bigger and better games. Compressing data is a temporary fix at best and won't hold for much longer.

      And "too much space" just sounds ridiculous, that doesn't sound like a very valid reason for anything. If developers aren't presented with more power, more space and just more in general to work with, they won't see as much need for improvement.
  • 0
    cjmnews Oct 1, 10
    Honestly BluRay is unnecessary. Upconverted DVD is good enough. BluRay movies don't provide enough of a difference to be worth the cost differential of the players or the movies.
  • 0
    DeathMonkey Oct 1, 10
    I don't have a problem with games using multiple disks tbh. Actually makes the game feel more epic in size
  • 0
    HisServant77 Oct 1, 10
    I believe devs who are lazy should be blamed for devs who are lazy, not the media upon which they create their games.

    I'm also all for the BD on the PS3. I'm for moving forward in the realm of media, not staying the same. And I honestly don't see DD taking a major role until internet speed increases drastically. If it takes less time to run to the store, pick up a game, wait in line to buy it, then get back home and play it on disk than it takes to download a game from the comforts of home, then yeah . . . there's a problem. It's fine for some things, but not for many things.

    I think a lot of people asked the same thing when the PS1 came out with CDs, then again when the PS2 came out with DVDs.
    • 0
      DeathMonkey Oct 1, 10
      Actually it IS faster for me to download a game from Steam than it is to go to the shop and buy it
      • 0
        HisServant77 Oct 1, 10
        Well, speaking on an average . . . would it be faster to download 1-2 gigs (or of course, more), than say . . . a 15 minutes or so trip?

        If it takes you less than 15 minutes to do so, or it takes you a long time to get to the store and get back home, then DD would work better for you. But for the average home . . . it's not so often the case.
  • 0
    Zaek Oct 1, 10
    I like the BD in my PS3. One of the reasons I actually got the PS3, I just thought it was a good idea and bought it. I feel like it was a very strong move as a business aspect for sony, Blu-ray has been getting bigger. If you look more and more things are turning into Blu-ray. I have noticed many TV show seasons are now going that route as well.

    About the DD, I would rather have a hard copy of almost anything over just a digital copy, but thats just me.
  • 0
    Metallica Oct 1, 10
    Blu-Ray is one of the best things Sony has done, if it wasn't for them having this we wouldn't have seen games like Uncharted 1 & 2 along with Metal Gear Solid 4 look as good as they did for a start, I'm always gameplay over graphics but when games can give you both it's a bonus.
    • 3
      Ded Valve Oct 1, 10
      What? Blue ray didn't do that, the PS3 did. Blu-ray is just the reason why so many of these games are on 1 disc. That's it really Blu-ray has way more space than a normal dvd, and is scratch proof practically. Not much of a difference I can see.

      PS3 doesn't need blu-ray but it sure helps. Especially when you got lunatics like Hideo Kojima saying it wasn't enough.

This news story is archived and is closed to comments now.