100Gb Blue Ray to work on PS3

msmalls74 · 6 Oct 2007 at 09:59

Saw the news about the 100Gb BD the other day and wondered about PS3 compatibility looks like there was no need for concern.

This is just to dispel some confusion surrounding the compatibility of 100 gig Blu Ray discs on existing Blu Ray players including PS3. With a firmwire update all the existing Blu Ray players including ps3 could also be made to play the 100 gig Blu-ray discs.

Here is the official statement from Afterdawn:-

"To sweeten the pot even more, Hitachi says the discs are compatible with existing Blu-ray players and drives after an easy firmware update. "

The much anticipated 200 gig Blu-Ray disc is also on the way to make inroads against the competition . Afterdawn further reports :-

"Hitachi says they are now working on "improving the signal quality of its quad-layer technology" so that it can be ready to hit the market soon. The company also boasted that they were working on a eight-layer Blu-ray disc capable of storing 200GB of data. "

If games start to use this i cant see any need for us PS3 owners to change disks. Currently most games are on a 25Gb BD disk as far as i know, MGS4 is the only one using the 50 GB BD disk i know off.

Buzza · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:09

"Most" games fit on an ordinary DVD anyway. Bigger disc space could mean longer games with more content(if theres the time and money to create it), but wont necessarily mean better looking games as the memory and performance of the machine hasnt increased. You have the potential for truly hi-def cut scenes though.

Inazuma · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:11

That's freaking crazy! 100GB I never even imagined

Inoshishi · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:14

That is awesome, they will be able to fit so much more onto one disk.

However the blu-ray movies annoy me, you will still get series spread over a number of discs, thats how they make the money.

Johnz0r · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:16

100gb on a games disk that is just mental but how are they going to fill it?

Samione · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:17

Blu-ray is pretty much pointless for games, I don't know how MGS4 takes up anywhere near 50GB, blu-ray must be pretty s**tty when it comes to writing files to disk.

Fubsy · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:24

100GB on a disc is pretty impressive. That's a pretty big leap from 50GB.

msmalls74 · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:24

Samione said:
Blu-ray is pretty much pointless for games, I don't know how MGS4 takes up anywhere near 50GB, blu-ray must be pretty s**tty when it comes to writing files to disk.

Games such as Heavenly Sword had all the audio for all the different languages on the same BD ( Narkio speaking Italian sweet), i guess as MGS4 is being release at the same time (ish) in all regions it may have all the different languages for all the in game movies speech etc (in 7.1 uncompressed audio of course) on just the one disk. If thats right its possibly cheaper to press say one or two to version of the same game on a 50 Gb than 4 or 5 on a 25Gb. Or perhaps its just a big game with loads of cut scenes?

Samione · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:25

msmalls74 said:
Games such as Heavenly Sword had all the audio for all the different languages on the same BD ( Narkio speaking Italian sweet), i guess as MGS4 is being release at the same time (ish) in all regions it may have all the different languages for all the in game movies speech etc (in 7.1 uncompressed audio of course) on just the one disk. If thats right its possibly cheaper to press say one or two to version of the same game on a 50 Gb than 4 or 5 on a 25Gb. Or perhaps its just a big game with loads of cut scenes?

Oh right I guess that makes sense then, it's a way for publishers to bundle everything on one disc, no real gain for the consumer then.

Inoshishi · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:32

Samione said:
Oh right I guess that makes sense then, it's a way for publishers to bundle everything on one disc, no real gain for the consumer then.

Are you crazy? or course there is a gain, more textures, more sounds, better quality sound, more cutscenes, more everything basically.

Soon dev's are going to find themselves limited by DVD9.

norm · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:34

I hate cutscenes. If I wanted to watch a movie I would have loaded a DVD.

GRAW2 was terrible for that. And they don't let you skip it.

msmalls74 · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:48

a lot of the room on PS3 games is from uncompressed 7.1 audio, something the 360 doesnt and as far as i know cannot do (only due to no 7.1 audio outputs ?). Although not everyone has an amp that can be used like this its still on the Disk for those that have (me for one in month or so). One other reason is that the BD access times are less than a 16x DVD at speed so to they duplicate textures to improve load times. Some people dont mind changing disk in games, but im sure most would rather not have to, Lost odyssey on the 360 is on 4 DVD9 blue dragon on 3 just a few examples, i imagine the SE 360/PS3 rpg will be multi DVD on the 360 and 1 BD rom on the PS3.

Inoshishi · 6 Oct 2007 at 10:50

msmalls74 said:
a lot of the room on PS3 games is from uncompressed 7.1 audio, something the 360 doesnt and as far as i know cannot do (only due to no 7.1 audio outputs ?). Although not everyone has an amp that can be used like this its still on the Disk for those that have (me for one in month or so). One other reason is that the BD access times are less than a 16x DVD at speed so to they duplicate textures to improve load times. Some people dont mind changing disk in games, but im sure most would rather not have to, Lost odyssey on the 360 is on 4 DVD9 blue dragon on 3 just a few examples, i imagine the SE 360/PS3 rpg will be multi DVD on the 360 and 1 BD rom on the PS3.

Yeah I was going to mention Square-Enix are going to be stuck for space soon, even on Blu-Ray

mmj_uk · 6 Oct 2007 at 11:07

Inoshishi said:
Soon dev's are going to find themselves limited by DVD9.

They already are, even the PGR4 guys have admitted that storage limitations has affected their creativity, they planned to have dynamic weather in it but couldn't because there was not enough room for the new textures it would involve.

Joebob · 6 Oct 2007 at 11:45

This could be really cool if devs use it right. Imagine if Rockstar released GTA: SA but you coudl also fly to Vice City and Liberty City too. Could be a way of really increasing the size and quality of area maps on games which need it.

NokkonWud · 6 Oct 2007 at 12:18

Can you imagine the cost to make 100gb of game data. Being able to use it and using it are 2 different things. We are at a stage where it would be nice to have more than 9gb, but we aren't near needing 25gb yet (despite MGS4) and certainly not 50gb.

Samione · 6 Oct 2007 at 12:37

Inoshishi said:
Are you crazy? or course there is a gain, more textures, more sounds, better quality sound, more cutscenes, more everything basically.

Soon dev's are going to find themselves limited by DVD9.

LOL@you, basically. The textures you could fit on that disc wouldn't even be able to be rendered by the hardware on a PS3. That's what I am saying, the space isn't proportionate to the hardware in the machine. Oh and also 50GB's worth of content is gonna cost developers a lot of ££. Crysis probably won't even use 20GB of space and and a PS3 would struggle to run that game on medium. So more to the point, no i'm not crazy. It is in fact you who is crazy

Inoshishi · 6 Oct 2007 at 12:53

Samione said:
LOL@you, basically. The textures you could fit on that disc wouldn't even be able to be rendered by the hardware on a PS3. That's what I am saying, the space isn't proportionate to the hardware in the machine. Oh and also 50GB's worth of content is gonna cost developers a lot of ££. Crysis probably won't even use 20GB of space and and a PS3 would struggle to run that game on medium. So more to the point, no i'm not crazy. It is in fact you who is crazy

Why wouldnt the textures be able to be rendered? i'm not talking about higher res textures, i'm talking about MORE textures so that you have a zillion textures to choose from, so that no two levels in a game look the same.

Take Final Fantasy VII as an example, it was originally going to be coming out on the Nintendo64 but as Nintendo said they were going to be sticking with carts, Square decided to move over to the PSOne as they could fit more onto a CD.

Dev's will eventually run out of space like I said, your typical games are going to be fine, but big long rpg's like FF, MGS etc etc. are going to need more and more space.

So, LOL@YOU... Go back to playing games spread over 60 or 70 700mb CD's

Samione · 6 Oct 2007 at 12:58

More textures, = more money+more time. How do you think games are developed, they don't just chuck a bunch of random textures together and call it a map, they are carefully chosen based on strict and guided art direction, you really think developers are going to splash out precious time and money so you can see 3 variations of a level? No, probably not. That'd mean basically designing a level 3 times. Developers don't need 50GB of space, YET. Maybe in a few years time, and it will be needed by PC games first, not by PS3 games

KNiVES · 6 Oct 2007 at 12:58

It's not feasible to use the disc space for larger textures and geometry and such, because it will eat up random access memory. This is a big problem for developers, but it seems to many uneducated people it's like the second coming of Christ. With large storage space comes bigger challenges, as developers attempt to juggle between adequete compression and content. 100 gigabytes' worth of content onto a 256mb/256mb platform will strain the console considerably.

An easy example to compare to would be the evolution of PC games and the increasing random access memory requirements over the years. Today's PC games take up roughly 10Gb of HDD space and most need 1024-2048mb of random access memory. With more, bigger content comes more memory requirements - something the current consoles will most likely struggle with.