Quote: "A game that is 4GB is not necessarily larger in gameplay size than a game that is 1GB. Understand? FF7 is dozens of hours long, and fits on a single CD-ROM. Heavenly Sword is 5-10 hours in length and is on a Blu-Ray disc."
Well Final Fantasy 7 is actually 4 discs, and around 40hrs of adverage gameplay. Heavenly Sword, despite using a BluRay disc only actually uses about 12GB of it.
That said you can't really compare, because FF7 did a really good job with compression; the reason that takes up so much space is because of the sheer size of the background media.
Actually I think a really really good comparison between two games and how they can evolve to better utilise technology is Resident Evil 2. Let me explain why a bit.
Resident Evil 2 was released on the N64 and Playstation within a year of each other, graphically speaking both are almost identical. The only thing that the N64 version lacks is pre-rendered movies, they're done as in-game cut-scenes instead.
The N64 version uses 32MB, the Playstation version uses 520MB.
I'm not against the useage of extra space that is available, but when that extra space is given at the cost of the gamer simply because it's "new" (as is the case with BluRay) with no realistic reasoning then that is when my problem starts.
Look at the PC, because we install to hard disk and the prices of these keeps falling for larger space. It is only fairly recently that games have really started to make the move to DVD.
Several games are still available on both Multi-CD and DVD formats.
People certainly won't be making the move to HD-Formats on the PC for atleast another 5years if trends continue to make it worth while releasing games on such a format.
While you can argue that on the PC as we install to hard disk there is less worry about having to change disks, but personally I hate installing games. I wish they would change to disc-streaming like on console. Halo 2 shows a nice way of a compremise between utilising the Hard Disk for performance reasons, and running with almost no traditional installation.
Something I've never cared about is swapping discs for games, as I said previously is how sodding lazy do you have to have a problem getting up off the couch after several hours of gaming?
I think my biggest issue with this is hardware manufacturers as always giving in to the laziness of developers. Think about it like this the Playstation 3 is suppose to be truely "next-gen" power. Yet so far, we've not seen that.. Assassins Creed does a good job, but it still doesn't show any performance difference in either the 360, Playstation 3 or PC platforms.
All three cost overall roughly the same to purchase, maintain and get games for. None really stands out to having a purpose above the rest in a gaming sense.. i mean each have their foibles and at the end of the day generally comes down to what a gamer prefers to use or just brand loyalty (the latter being what Sony quite frankly depend upon more than anything else)
I dunno, really PC gaming had put me off for the past 6-7years because of developers just being lazy for the platform. As there is so much performance difference between top-end and bottom-end, there isn't much developed that'll happily run on the low-end.
I prefer using my low-end system consistantly over my high-end one because is both are run for 24hrs... my low-end one costs only 35p to run where-as my high-end one costs almost £1.20
I mean you add to this that many PC owners (not gamers, but owners in general) only ever use on-board or budget range cards that come with the machine. Then lazy programming means far far less people can run the games.. which to me seems retarded. To save a development headache you effective cut off over three quaters of your potencial 240million people.
It seems like insanity, and explains why the casual games market has seriously increased in size the last few years.
If you give developers more freedom, they will take it and still create the same content as others without putting in the effort to really optimise that for a given platform. The only solis that console owners have is eventually the market will demand better and there is no expansion going on that developers can utilise. So they have to finally develop more sensibly.
This becomes a big problem when one console is more powerful than another because they can still develop without really trying just to keep something on-par with the competition.
While the PS3 might be a good idea, the real problem that plagues it is.. Sony. The hardware is a good idea, a new larger format is a good idea, etc.. but Sony have developed the console in a way to replace the PC, which frankly it can't.
It isn't a media centre, it isn't a PC and it isn't a gaming console.. but it wants to be all three. This is one of it's biggest flaws, by focusing on everything at once it ends up not being able to do anything particularly well. There have been fundimental decisions made that have slowed game development, lots of empty promises about future content, etc..
While this sort of behaviour is good, while the hardware is in development; once it comes out it needs to be able to hit the ground running. The Playstation 3 SDK for example, they should've tested with their developers if it was needed; and had it available BEFORE release, not 3months afterwards.
I mean BluRay is built-in, yet memory card support isn't. You need a USB attachment (atleast for old PS1/PS2 cards). To me those seem more important. WiFi is built-in on every mode... NOW. The original 20GB though, it wasn't.
You can't change the HDD, like you could in the PS2. You can say "well until recently you couldn't with the 360", but technically you couldn't get a larger HDD.. and I'm talking about features the previous generation had that they've dropped.
Really dunno but, it's infuriating seeing a company slowly killing itself because of the games division. This is the first christmas I recall Sony advertising their stores, to purchase their products.. sure they've always shown off adverts with new products but the store themselves, saying if you can't get to the shops they have an online store and it's also the first year I recall them offering some seriously large savings on their stuff.
Sony Store here is often known for basically ripping you off.
This year their prices can compete with Comet, Argos and such!!
