DailyTech - Epic Games Says PS3's Blu-ray Gives "Lots of Legroom"

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Software Epic Games Says PS3's Blu-ray Gives "Lots of Legroom"
Marcus Yam (Blog) - August 16, 2007 8:52 AM

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86 comment(s) - last by ArneBjarne.. on Aug 17 at 1:58 PM

Blu-ray Disc drive in PS3 could pay off with "Unreal Tournament III"

Epic Games’ Unreal Tournament III is a PlayStation 3 exclusive for 2007. The main reason, according to the developer, is that Sony is more open to Epic’s proposals for an open system to allow game modifications to be run on the PS3. There may also be another, however, for Epic’s apparent favor of the Sony console.

Speaking at the Edinburgh Interactive Festival, Epic Games VP Mark Rein spoke highly of Blu-ray Disc’s storage capacity. In fact, Epic may have to omit several maps in the Xbox 360 version due to space constraints posed by the traditional DVD-9.

“We’ll compress some things. But you know, we may have fewer maps on the 360 version... Blu-ray has definitely given us a lot of legroom,” said Rein in an Xboxer story. “And what's really cool is if you think forward and think about what we've done in the past with UT. We had UT 2003 and then we had UT 2004, which was everything in UT 2003 plus a whole bunch of great mod stuff that we went out and purchased from mod makers.”

“If you think down the road, well maybe the next UT beyond this one, on Blu-ray disc, we might fill the whole damn disc with all the cool stuff the mod makers make,” added Rein.

If storage media is indeed a big factor in the final product of Unreal Tournament III, Sony may be smiling upon its Blu-ray Disc drive in the PS3, reaffirming the company’s feelings that it is “the smartest decision we ever made.” On the other hand, if Epic chooses to ship its game on multiple DVDs for the Xbox 360, then Microsoft will continue its stance that Blu-ray storage is unnecessary.

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Lets not

By mdogs444 on 8/16/2007 9:05:58 AM , Rating: 2

First and foremost....lets not turn this opportunity to comment on a new video game into a CHILDISH, NEVERENDING, and utterly ANNOYING "PS3 vs. 360" debate on which is better and why, and why BD or HD is going to win over the other.

I think its great for PS3 owners that Epic is going to load additional maps due to immediate hardware advances for the PS3.

However, the blog was also correct instating that Epic can just as easily release a several disc set just like game developers do on PC. I really dont think Unreal III for PC is only going to be released on a single DVD-9. And no its really not more expensive to make 3 or so DVD-9 discs than a single BD Disc.

The only thing I havent seen many people touch base on, is why COULDNT Epic release the game on HD-DVD and users who have an external HD-DVD drive use it for gaming? Just a thought. Im not talking about Epic not doing because of the number or sales it would get or the price it would cost, just a hypothetical "is it possible" question...

RE: Lets not

By Gul Westfale on 8/16/2007 9:09:05 AM , Rating: 5

i read somewhere that MS sold about 150k HD-DVD drives in north america so far, that may not be enough to justify the cost of making an HD-DVVD edition.

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RE: Lets not

By Tsuwamono on 8/16/2007 9:27:57 AM , Rating: 2

it is possible but the link cable that the xbox uses to connect to the HD DVD player is only a USB. may be restrictive.

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RE: Lets not

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 10:06:21 AM , Rating: 2

USB 2.0 transfer rates far exceed how fast you can read data off high definition discs currently. 480 Mbit/s equates to 60MB/sec. Far faster than a 2x BD or HD-DVD drive reads data from the disc.

2x HD-DVD and Blu-ray read speeds equate to 72 Mbit/s.

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RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 10:21:18 AM , Rating: 2

and before anyone gives the real life situation b.s USB2 in real life situations has a max transfer of about 35MBps which is about 280Mbps. (i am pretty sure USB2 limits a single device to about 50% of the total channel bandwidth)

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RE: Lets not

By philsworth on 8/16/2007 10:21:41 AM , Rating: 3

Blu Ray 2x is more like 108Mbit/s and HD-DVD 2x is 73Mbit/s. That is one of the main advantages of Blu Ray you just tried to white wash there.

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RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/07, Rating: 0

RE: Lets not

By Brockway on 8/16/2007 10:53:12 AM , Rating: 2

Or waiting for their games to load?

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RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 10:58:46 AM , Rating: 2

Depends on the way things are loaded, if theres 1 big file on the Disc and it is uncompressed on the console then theoretically yes, you are right, but if its a bunch of smaller files, which it probably is, the drive will never spin up to reach its max speed.

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RE: Lets not

By Samus on 8/17/2007 5:39:29 AM , Rating: 2

right, bluray is 'faster' but not significantly. 20% at best.

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RE: Lets not

By philsworth on 8/16/2007 11:02:32 AM , Rating: 2

Who cares if it matters to gaming or films or whatever, the important things is that it is accurate and it is the truth and the previous post wasn't.

Another fact for you, Disney says data transfer rate matters to them a great deal especially when there is a lot of things happening on screen and that's why they chose Blu-Ray.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,222...

This second fact and your comment makes me think you don't have the faintest idea about this stuff or how it affects gaming, video or anything else.

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RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 11:30:55 AM , Rating: 2

I am not too sure what you are talking about here as you did not say what i said wrong, but if you think the little section about but if you are talking about this part,

quote:
Blu-ray can send 40Gb of information per second. HD-DVD can only do 29. So when you have an action scene and you have all this information on the screen - you've got fire, you've got people running about - you need to use so much bit rate.

There is a few things wrong here, for one this article makes things way more confusing then they are, 40Gbps vs 29Gbps transfer rate has nothing to do with the increased bitrate, I already told you the bandwidth needed for 1080i/p is no more than 20Gbps. BD discs actually are 50 gigs vs HD-DVD's 30, so the BD bitrate can theoretically be set higher because there is more space on the disc. But what they fail to mention, is most dual format movies are encoded with the same VC1 codec at the exact same bitrate.

So before you come crashing down on someone saying they dont know what they are talking about, you should read more than just one article, say not one that has a bias towards BD.

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RE: Lets not

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 11:47:06 AM , Rating: 2

I'd love to know what they were basing that 40Gbps and 29Gbps off of.

If a Blu-ray 1x reader reads from the disc at 36Mbps, you'd have to have an 1111x reader to read at that speed.

Even in Anandtech's own tests they say Blu-ray content only peaks at 54Mbps. So I'm thinking they swapped a 'M' for a 'G'.

At 40Gbps(5GB/s), the entire disc would be read in 10 seconds for a 50GB disc.

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RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 11:53:25 AM , Rating: 2

yep its certainly a typo, and it made me continue the trend, all Gbps in my post should say Mbps

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RE: Lets not

By ArneBjarne on 8/17/2007 1:58:07 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
let alone the High-def movie world? 1080i maxes out at something like 18mbps, 1080p/24 is even less.

Being capped at some bitrate does not mean it is maxed out. Uncompressed HD video takes up a hell of a lot more space than that (that would be the video signal that is transmitted over HDMI which is measured in Gbits/s ;) )

I can't remember if the 18 Mbit/s limit is the cap for HD broadcast endcodes, but the caps for HD DVD and BD are both higher (for BD the max. video bitrate is 40 Mbit/s). But again, those are still both lossy encodes.

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RE: Lets not

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 11:12:46 AM , Rating: 2

I was going off numbers on wikipedia. Check it out for yourself. If their numbers are wrong, correct them.

IGN also lists 2x Blu-ray reading at 72 Mbps.

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RE: Lets not

By philsworth on 8/16/2007 11:39:06 AM , Rating: 3

I see what you mean, at the top in the box it says 72 for both HD-DVD and Blu Ray entries, but if you look at the maximum bit rate of the comparison table (found within both entries) towards the bottom of each page you will see the bit rates DO differ.

This seems to be the usual wikipedia crap.

In my opinion I think the table is the more accurate though (I concede my 'fact' is now my opinion) and I apologize for accusing you of propaganda.

I'll have to find a more reliable source of information to confirm what the truth is.

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RE: Lets not

By philsworth on 8/16/2007 10:13:07 AM , Rating: 2

I heard that you cannot use the Xbox HD-DVD attachment for running games off. I don't know if this is technical limitation (doubt it) or a just policy.

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RE: Lets not

By bkm32 on 8/16/2007 10:16:57 AM , Rating: 2

Unfortunately, the HD-DVD add-on cannot read X360 games; therefore, cannot take advantage of the extra storage capability of the medium. It's only good for movies, which technically and economically speaking puts the device even coupled with an X360 Elite at a disadvantage when comparing to the PS3.

Then again, a system is only as good as the games played on it. Currently, the X360 has a superior gaming experience over the PS3 as seen on games such as Spiderman 3, CoD 3, and now Madden '08.

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RE: Lets not

By Chaser on 8/16/07, Rating: -1

RE: Lets not

By IceTron on 8/16/07, Rating: -1

RE: Lets not

By omnicronx on 8/16/07, Rating: -1

RE: Lets not

By Chaser on 8/17/2007 8:15:03 AM , Rating: 2

I do not own a 360. And now that I am "informed" I'm even more pleased I'm not.

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RE: Lets not

By Chaser on 8/16/2007 10:45:44 AM , Rating: 5

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RE: Lets not

By Dharl on 8/16/2007 11:09:09 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
The only thing I havent seen many people touch base on, is why COULDNT Epic release the game on HD-DVD and users who have an external HD-DVD drive use it for gaming? Just a thought. Im not talking about Epic not doing because of the number or sales it would get or the price it would cost, just a hypothetical "is it possible" question...

If memory serves me well. Someone speaking on behalf of Microsoft made a comment of how HD DVD will never be a required addition to play games on the XBOX 360. I can't find the article on DailyTech that featured this comment.

My point is two-fold. First Microsoft by offering the HD DVD as an accessory has allowed them to support and yet distance the XBOX 360 from HD DVD. In doing so they can easily go without HD DVD IF it were to eventually lose the format war or worse die out and disappear IE: Betamax. Second they may not want to offer two versions of the same game. One DVD9 the other HD DVD. Because to some customers this would be perceived as a "requirement" to buy it on HD DVD.

Sad fact is when you present someone with 2 or 3 disks on CD or 1 disk on DVD to run their installation or game from the person will always pick the DVD. Now it's more of an extreme in the High Def case due to current pricing, but to some it would be viewed as required.

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RE: Lets not

By wallijonn on 8/16/2007 1:11:36 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
why COULDNT Epic release the game on HD-DVD and users who have an external HD-DVD drive use it for gaming?

Because most 360 owners don't have the HD-DVD add-on. If there are 10,000,000 360 owners, then there are probably less than 1,000,000 who have the add-on. A more reasonable number would probably be less than 200,000. Epic will therefore have to come out in three different formats. That is not cost effective. It would make more sense to just load them into the HD, all three DVD-9 discs.

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RE: Lets not

By mars777 on 8/16/2007 4:07:15 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
That is not cost effective. It would make more sense to just load them into the HD, all three DVD-9 discs.

Considering that users have HDD-s of 20GB, if you dont buy the 120GB HDD you cant fit 3 DVD9 discs on the Xbox since that is close to 30GB.

And this is speaking of Premiums, but there are a lot of Core-s too...

So BD has a decent advantage here: 1 disc with faster transfer rate. Xbox users should have to switch 3 discs with less transfer rate.

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RE: Lets not

By threepac3 on 8/16/2007 1:31:08 PM , Rating: 2

To be fair PC and Console game disks are designed differently. In most cases console games are made to stream data directly from the disk when it is needed. PC disks are made to be installed to a HDD once then the disk is no longer needed. Usually if the game still requires the disk its for security purposes.

In other words PC game data on the disk can be compressed to all hell and wont effect quality of the final game install.

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RE: Lets not

By herrdoktor330 on 8/16/2007 9:38:58 PM , Rating: 2

Honestly, I don't think MS cares. They can just get that additional content as downloads on XBOX Live. ;)

That's the beauty of the Live model in the XBOX design; it makes itself indespensible for situations like this. And it warrants you to by that extra-large hard drive.

Personally, I don't believe the future is in Blue Ray or HDDVD. The future is downloaded content. Companies like Valve with their Steam Content delivery system have the right long-term view. All they have to pay for is bandwidth and they can cut out brick-and-mortar retail outlets entirely. Money goes to the distribution company and the developers and everyone is happy. And no matter what happens, hardrive load times will be faster than optical drives for now (and maybe forever). The only downside to this is that it takes about 4-8 hours to download a full game like HL2, but as bandwidth opens up that becomes less of a problem.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

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RE: Lets not

By OxBow on 8/17/2007 9:33:10 AM , Rating: 2

So, where would you put that extra 20+ gigs worth of downloaded content? Or the bandwidth to dl it?

The PS3/PC cross-platform format also allows for just this type of access. Live doesn't have a monopoly on downloading extra content, they're just restrictive about who can participate. In this case, Sony's model is clearly superior.

Downloaded content will be the future, but that future won't arrive for several more years. Our infrastructure to deliver such content isn't robust enough for LARGE term adoption. In three to five years, yes, but not now. It still doesn't change the fact that many people prefer removable media, which disks provide better than hd's (right now).

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To be sure

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 8:58:52 AM , Rating: 2

Microsoft will probably make sure that UT3 doesn't ship with any less content than the PS3 version. Even if it means adding DVDs. Or they could just make them free downloads for people to keep on their hard drives.

RE: To be sure

By therealnickdanger on 8/16/2007 9:28:37 AM , Rating: 2

Well, Microsoft can't force Epic to anything, but I'm sure they will bend over backward to ensure that 360 owners get every opportunity to get the same access to maps. I'll assume a downloadable map pack is in order.

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RE: To be sure

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 10:24:41 AM , Rating: 2

and why not? if the only limitation is space why would epic not take any help Microsoft has to offer (such as pay for the cost of the extra discs), i am not saying they can force them, but Epic would be stupid not to oblige.

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RE: To be sure

By therealnickdanger on 8/16/2007 10:35:33 AM , Rating: 2

... unless Sony pays them for "exclusive" maps. In which case the storage format becomes irrelevant. UT3 is a heavy-hitting title. It may not be as big for consoles as it is for the PC market, but everyone knows of the game, so any chance Sony can get to somehow proclaim their version as superior, they will take it - especially since they are currently on the bottom rung saleswise.

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RE: To be sure

By mars777 on 8/16/2007 4:11:21 PM , Rating: 2

And that would be a wise choice since their BD drive offers them this opportunity. It would be just stupid not to do it..

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RE: To be sure

By vhx on 8/16/2007 2:54:28 PM , Rating: 1

You'll see some content over Xbox Live, just not as much as you would from the PS3. The point is, that Epic doesn't like the whole approval system required for Xbox Live. While the PS3 is mostly open for mods and other things.

In other words, it will take several months for Xbox users to get the same thing PS3 users would have had a long time ago. So they will get some of the content, and will get it a lot slower.

They like both consoles folks, deal with it. Each has advantages over the other, and they like to discuss them. Fanboys will jump on any company showing the slightest bit of approval for the PS3/X360. Kind of sad.

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RE: To be sure

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 2:57:57 PM , Rating: 2

thats a lot of speculation, go look at the forum posting from an Epic admin someone posted, it has something different to say.

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RE: To be sure

By vhx on 8/16/2007 3:32:57 PM , Rating: 2

That's not speculation, that's what they said in various interviews. X360 content will have to be approved, and only thing certified by Microsoft will be allowed. Approval takes time.

And as in his post, they haven't even figured out what they are going to do yet (in the list of his priorities, it's basically last); they already have PC/PS3 figured out.

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RE: To be sure

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 3:56:21 PM , Rating: 2

http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=2496827...

until the game is released, it is merely speculation, i have heard different things from different sources, most of which contradict the original statements. You also forget GOW is an Epic release based on the UT3 engine, so its not like the xboxlive features are going to take an extended period of time to 'approve', as the UT3 engine online play has already been developed for live.

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RE: To be sure

By MrPickins on 8/16/2007 11:31:25 AM , Rating: 2

Core systems don't come with a a HDD correct?

The problem with requiring a HDD on 360 is you can't be sure the system the game is playing on will have one.

And the 20GB HDD in the premium has hardly enough space for caching files for a few games.

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RE: To be sure

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 12:14:43 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
The problem with requiring a HDD on 360 is you can't be sure the system the game is playing on will have one.

I am sure it would be advertised, maybe a big sticker or something saying XBOX 360 HARD DRIVE REQUIRED. as for the 20GB HDD doesnt have enough space? A little over 10gigs is saved for caching, thats larger than the size of a DVD9 disc, there should be no problems with any game.

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RE: To be sure

By Wightout on 8/16/2007 2:19:47 PM , Rating: 2

10 gigs may be more then enough for 1 game however if you look at the many other games that would be storing data on this system, plus online content 20 gigs can be filled fairly quickly.

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RE: To be sure

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 3:46:07 PM , Rating: 1

heh, i should have been more clear, 10gigs is saved exclusively for caching games while playing, thats why your 20gig as advertised HD only says 10gigs available when you first use your shiny new xbox. Everytime a new game is put in, the cache is erased and used for the current game.

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RE: To be sure

By Timeless on 8/16/2007 2:20:54 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
I am sure it would be advertised, maybe a big sticker or something saying XBOX 360 HARD DRIVE REQUIRED.

So what you basically propose is for Microsoft to screw over all the people that bought the Xbox360 Core? I know a lot of friends that have an Xbox360 Core only and are really hyped about UT3. It would really piss a lot of people off to have to buy a Premium. Adding the price of the Core and now a Premium together...why...that's like buying a PS3.

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RE: To be sure

By zombiexl on 8/16/2007 3:42:15 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
It would really piss a lot of people off to have to buy a Premium. Adding the price of the Core and now a Premium together...why...that's like buying a PS3

Or they could by the 20 or 120gb harddrive.. They should work on the core just fine.

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RE: To be sure

By zombiexl on 8/16/2007 3:43:21 PM , Rating: 2

Or they could *buy*

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RE: To be sure

By Keeir on 8/16/2007 5:05:18 PM , Rating: 2

20 gig hard-drive - $100 dollars
120 gig hard-drive - $170 dollars

*Best Buy 8/15/2007

Not really a happy moment for Core owners either

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RE: To be sure

By aos007 on 8/16/2007 6:20:21 PM , Rating: 2

I'd say the writing was on the wall from day one. They got quite a mileage from their hdd-less consoles and I'd say most games in the future won't require it either. Besides, there should be a number of 20G drives on EBay from users who upgraded so the upgrade won't be that painful.

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RE: To be sure

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 8:49:01 PM , Rating: 2

If games start requiring the hard drive, the prices will likely fall drastically.

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RE: To be sure

By Timeless on 8/16/2007 5:59:25 PM , Rating: 1

quote:
Or they could by the 20 or 120gb harddrive.. They should work on the core just fine.

Correct me if I'm wrong but the last time I heard, opening up your Xbox360 automatically voids your warranty on it. So if you screw up or your Xbox360 fails after a insertion of the harddrive, you got yourself a broken Xbox360. Did that rule change?

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RE: To be sure

By aos007 on 8/16/2007 6:16:26 PM , Rating: 2

You don't open up the Xbox to add the hard drive. It's an attachment that you simply snap in to the top of the console.

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RE: To be sure

By FITCamaro on 8/16/2007 6:18:58 PM , Rating: 2

The hard drive mounts on the top of the 360 (if standing vertically). It doesn't go inside.

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RE: To be sure

By Timeless on 8/16/2007 6:33:35 PM , Rating: 2

Thank you for correcting my mistake.

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RE: To be sure

By melgross on 8/16/2007 11:51:48 PM , Rating: 2

That's not a solution. How are they going to keep 20 or 30 GB from one game on their HHD's?

They would be forced to upgrade those HHD's which many people might not be happy about. It would almost be a forced upgrade. MS would have to start offering the 360 with the 120 as standard, and then what would the over 10 million who already bought the systems do?

Even if they had the 120, it would only hold a few games worth at these capacity levels of 20 to 30 GB per game. Not worth it.

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overblown?

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 9:32:19 AM , Rating: 4

This is overblown BS PR..
Did anyone sit down and think, the PC release of this game will not be on BD? Its not like you are going to install it on your PC and have to download 15gigs of extra maps and mods.I assume the PC version will be on 2 DVD's, so one could also assume the same about the 360 version.

Furthermore the pc version has to be stuffed with different textures for different resolutions etc.. so in theory a pc game would need more space than a console. If I am heading the wrong direction enlighten me please.

RE: overblown?

By The Sly Syl on 8/16/2007 9:48:28 AM , Rating: 2

I remember the "Editors Choice" edition of UT2004 shipping on a single DVD and, eventually, taking up over 15 gigs of my harddrive space.

So i can't even begin to imagine how much space UT3 is eventually going to take. With much, much higher quality textures. (Textures being around over 12 gigs of that 15)

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RE: overblown?

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 10:04:39 AM , Rating: 3

It doesn't matter how much the files uncompress on a console, especially if the game 'required' a hard drive, which i could easily see anyways for this game. It uncompresses on the fly, with the maps and textures that are currently needed. Furthermore as i just said, PC games require more than one copy of the same textures for different resolutions. Consoles on the other hand require only textures for the native resolution of that game. 2 DVD9 discs would be 18gigs, 3 would be 25, you cant tell me they have 15-20 gigs in compressed textures, its just not going to happen.

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RE: overblown?

By BigLan on 8/16/2007 10:34:28 AM , Rating: 3

The issue is that the PC installs everything from the dvd(s) to the hard drive, and then only uses the physical disc to make sure it's not a copy (though I don't think UT games use this method anyway.)

The point is that you never really need the 2nd or 3rd discs again on the pc becaue the data's already on your HD, but if the 360 shipped with 2 or 3 discs, theoretically you could be prompted to switch discs before every level loads which would be a real PITA. I know I don't want to have to haul my butt off the couch between rounds just so that I can load the next map.

Also, how would they split the content? The thing about UT is that you can use any model in any map, and I imagine they're reusing some textures between levels as well. So I guess they'd have to have copies of all character/item models on each disc, and then split the levels up based on reused textures, which seems pretty wasteful. It's not the same as splitting up a linear game such as final fantasy or half life, where you know which assets are going to be used for the next (x) hours of gameplay.

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RE: overblown?

By ET on 8/16/2007 10:40:04 AM , Rating: 5

Multiple DVD's may be fine for linear games (which most games are). However, imagine standard UT play, where maps are selected at random. Would you be willing to switch DVD's every time the map needs resources from the DVD not currently in the drive? I imagine this will become a hassle very quickly.

Unlike the PC, where games are installed on the hard disk, there's no way to install that size of a game on a standard Xbox 360 disk, which is 20GB, so that's not a solution, either.

Though if the game takes, say, only 15GB of space, you could theoretically load just 6.5GB on disk and play with an 8.5GB DVD in the drive.

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RE: overblown?

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 11:04:07 AM , Rating: 1

quote:
Though if the game takes, say, only 15GB of space, you could theoretically load just 6.5GB on disk and play with an 8.5GB DVD in the drive.

exactly, this would be one of the ways to get past this, or for all we know there could be a game disc and a maps and models disc, the game disc could be loaded and cached from the start, while the maps and models disc could be put in when you start to play, who knows, we sure don't. But I am sure there are many ways to get past the all the obstacles you both have named.

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RE: overblown?

By Murst on 8/16/2007 11:36:43 AM , Rating: 2

And I thought I read a statement somewhere that HDD space will not be a requirement for any Xbox 360 game..

If they end up going this route, then anyone w/o a HDD will have a really poor experience playing the game when maps are switched.

That would be even worse than Madden playing at 30FPS on PS3 and 60FPS on Xbox. It'd be like Madden playing at 10FPS... the experience would just be horrible.

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RE: overblown?

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 12:05:32 PM , Rating: 1

What they said, and what they will do is a different matter,
Chances are if space really is an issue for this game, and HD will be required. If they make a requirement for an HD, its not going to run on system without one, plain and simple.

In fact its my opinion that in a year or two all games will require an HD, as caching for matters people have previously mentioned will come into play.

On the otherhand i do not see an HD-DVD drive being used, most people with 360's have a harddrive where as about 200k out of 12-15 million have an HD-DVD drive. I really doubt they are willing to piss off that many people just so you don't have to get your lazy ass off the couch to put in another disc.

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RE: overblown?

By ani4ani on 8/16/2007 4:34:07 PM , Rating: 2

It was only announced a few days ago that Microsoft have now given developers the go-ahead to release 360 games that must use a HDD. There will be specially packaged to illustrate that point. The 360 tbh is a mish-mash and was released too early in a desperate bid to beat the PS3 to market - they are facing the music now.

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RE: overblown?

By Timeless on 8/16/2007 6:03:33 PM , Rating: 2

If that is so, then there are going to be some unhappy Xbox360 Core owners out there when UT3 is released.

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RE: overblown?

By Scorpion on 8/16/2007 3:39:47 PM , Rating: 2

Perhaps it wouldn't be a problem if Epic knew how to properly optimize their games to they wouldn't require so much storage space.

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Xbox360: More maps on extra DVDs...hard-disk storage... poof....

By kilkennycat on 8/16/2007 11:30:30 AM , Rating: 3

quote:
On the other hand, if Epic chooses to ship its game on multiple DVDs for the Xbox 360, then Microsoft will continue its stance that Blu-ray storage is unnecessary.

Really? Continuously swap disks, or guzzle Hard-disk capacity ?? Maybe Microsoft should have offered a 250Gbyte hard-disk for $175 instead of their paltry 120Gbyte current offering... just to take care of the storage requirements of, say, 5 games each requiring, say, 20Gbytes of readily-accessible storage (a la Blu-ray) and still leave plenty of storage available for other uses. It is fairly obvious that Microsoft is trying to claw back money to cover the losses on the Xbox360 core system by selling Xbox360 peripherals at huge profit, the hard-disk and HD-DVD drive being prime examples.

If Microsoft's greed prevents them offering decent Hard-Disk capacity at a decent price on the Xbox360 for handling games with extensive graphics features, like UT3, then they had better come off the fence on integrating a HD-DVD or Blu-ray INSIDE the Xbox360. Call it the Xbox720, since the current Xbox360 with the HD-DVD then becomes a true dodo.... the transfer rate of the external HD-DVD is too slow for game-applications. Microsoft has got themselves into a bind of their own making with regard to storage capacity for next-gen games, neither providing sufficient hard-disk capacity at a reasonable price, nor integrating a high-capacity next-gen DVD-drive. Let's see how they manage to wriggle out of this mess. Hopefully, the Epic decision has given them a big wake-up kick in the rear, and with Peter Moore having been put out to other pastures some rational less-greedy decisions about the future of the Xbox360 will be made.

RE: Xbox360: More maps on extra DVDs...hard-disk storage... poof....

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 11:35:35 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
It is fairly obvious that Microsoft is trying to claw back money to cover the losses on the Xbox360 core system by selling Xbox360 peripherals at huge profit, the hard-disk and HD-DVD drive being prime examples.

yawn.. this argument can be made about every console, the ps3 sells their console for too much, xbox sells their accessories for too much, nintendo also sells their accessories for too much, every company has to make their money back somewhere other than just games.

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RE: Xbox360: More maps on extra DVDs...hard-disk storage... poof....

By NaughtyGeek on 8/16/2007 2:40:28 PM , Rating: 2

Xbox360 released a full year prior to the PS3 and if you look at it, has about a two year lead on gaming content at the moment. By the time the PS3 gets some really impressive titles under it's belt and starts gaining traction on the 360, MS will be hyping their new XBox system that will release the following holiday season. My money says the next XBox comes with an HD disc player and a larger HDD. Which player is included will likely rest on the outcome of the format war which should be all but over by then. PS3 is a generation early with their hardware and it will still be a few months before it starts to pay any dividends for them. UT will not be the only title which follows this course of cheating XBox owners out of content due to space limitations of the storage media.

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RE: Xbox360: More maps on extra DVDs...hard-disk storage... poof....

By ani4ani on 8/16/2007 4:37:39 PM , Rating: 2

I doubt there will be another XBox system - MS have sunk $26B so far and still no prospect of making any money from the franchise - any other company without bucket loads of money would have given up years ago.

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MOdding

By InternetGeek on 8/16/2007 9:01:02 AM , Rating: 3

Epic has a point in regard of allowing mods in the game. For $50 a game replayability through a free mod is gold. And mods require a HDD to play. Yes, there are ways to use a memory pack to store maps, and stuff but it might no be fast enough.

But it's like Epic is turning their back on the community who placed them where they are now: PC gamers.

RE: MOdding

By helios220 on 8/16/2007 9:06:23 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
But it's like Epic is turning their back on the community who placed them where they are now: PC gamers.

Well I wouldn't say they've completely forsaken us yet, but that statement can be applied to a majority of the the tier 1 developers for consoles. So many of the popular franchises and developers got their start on the PC, but developers are in the buisness to make money, not make the highest quality games so crappy console ports ahoy!

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RE: MOdding

By Gul Westfale on 8/16/2007 9:07:24 AM , Rating: 2

nah, in two years all this marketing stuff will have calmed down and things will return to normal.

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BS Mark Rien, pure BS.

By phatboye on 8/16/2007 9:29:10 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
“We’ll compress some things. But you know, we may have fewer maps on the 360 version... Blu-ray has definitely given us a lot of legroom,”

Like others have pointed out for the price of one BD disk you could expand UT3 to fit on 3 DVD-9 disk, and i'm highly doubtful they will fill up 3 DVD-9 disk. Not to mention x360 users can download content from the net so I don't see why the x360 version should have any less content than ps3 or pc (which is going to be released on DVD as well) version.

RE: BS Mark Rien, pure BS.

By Aikouka on 8/16/2007 10:28:32 AM , Rating: 2

I don't know about you, but I would be mildly annoyed having to ask my buddies which map we were going to play and decide which disc had that map and put that disc in.

There's a couple things to keep in mind:
1) Microsoft is going to allow user-generated content on XBL.
2) Microsoft lifted the restriction to require a hard drive.

The first point is probably in relation to the problems with being unable to support player-created mods on the XBOX 360 where the PS3 wasn't a problem.

The second point might not even relate to UT3 as I'd assume the maps that were cut would be released as a DLC on XBOX Live Marketplace. Hopefully this time, Microsoft won't be a bunch of stingy suits and make us pay for it like they did with the Gears of War map packs that Epic wanted to give out for free.

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RE: BS Mark Rien, pure BS.

By Brockway on 8/16/2007 10:29:54 AM , Rating: 2

For a single player game changing disc's isn't a big deal. Back in the ps1 days not only did we do it, we did it with pride! UT3 is like a multiplayer mostly game though, isn't it? Having to dig out one of the other 2 discs every time the map changes between matches could get old. Epic can't count on the hdd option either since not only is it not guaranteed to be there, but how much of that 20gb would get filled up by 3 damn dvd's of levels? With all the live games and hd movies, space is at a premium of 360 hard drives. An Elite would pretty much be required for multiplayer not to be interrupted by disc swapping.

The PC game shipping on multiple dvd's is bunk also, you actually install the game on the drive. Since when would you need to change discs while playing? You'd just leave the play disc in and it would read off the hdd.

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Fun and Rage

By JasonMick

(blog) on 8/16/2007 9:09:10 AM , Rating: 2

Hopefully Epic has worked out all the bugs/delays out of their system. The new Unreal Engine should hopefully be a very solid engine in the long run. It should be interesting to see how it stacks up against Rage. Id has always had some of the best programmers out there and they care much more for efficiency of code/low-end peformance than most. Hopefully with so much focus on the ps3/their high end graphics market, Epic will remember the little guy and make the engine scalable to non-top-of-the-line systems, for my laptop's sake.

Its support of physics acceleration is one interesting feature of this engine. If it is a best seller on the PC side, sales of PhysX cards may actually pick up. Hopefully they will use it for actual physics, not just more particle effects (like Call of Juarez). Anandtech did a great article on this a while back:

http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3048&p=3

Is the filling the disc referring to a single layer or a double layer disc?? According to sources Lair is already pushing past the 25 gb limit, some of that may be movies though, which this game should have less of. Of course it has all the extra mod content on it. Filling a 50 gb disc with actual worthwhile content would be an impressive landmark!

RE: Fun and Rage

By Brockway on 8/16/2007 10:48:55 AM , Rating: 3

Id has always been pretty good at having their games scale well for lower systems. Doom 3 still looked quite good at low res with few effects on a 9600.

How many games really use pre-rendered movies nowadays? Other than Jade Empire, Need for Speed, and RE4, all of which shouldn't count because they just filmed the damn game engine rendering it. You can do it using the game engine much faster and easier, it scales with higher end hardware, and it doesn't need as much space. Textures seem to be where most of the room is going nowadays.

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From Mark Rein

By PAPutzback on 8/16/2007 2:43:01 PM , Rating: 2

http://forums.epicgames.com/showpost.php?p=2496827...

RE: From Mark Rein

By omnicronx on 8/16/2007 2:52:02 PM , Rating: 3

might aswell quote this one, Great post..

FROM an EPIC FORUM ADMINISTRATOR:

quote:
I continue to be disappointed that folks on the internet treat any positive thing we say about one platform as some sort of critique of another platform. We're a multi-platform company folks please come to grips with that. We like the PC. We like the 360. We like the PS3. We like the Macintosh. We like Linux. We will deliver UT3 for all of these platforms and it will rock on every one.

The simple facts state that the optical disc on the PS3 holds more data than the optical disc on the 360. If we exceed size of the 360s optical disc then we'll have to find alternative ways to get the content to 360 users such as making it downloadable. Adding a second DVD to a game like UT3 would be a challenge because when playing online you might not know exactly what map you're going to be playing next and we have to be able to accommodate users of the core system. So does that mean the disc on the 360 might have a map or two less? Possibly although it is too early to tell for sure. People love Unreal Tournament because we always ship it with tons of great content but that also makes it a bit of a disc hog - in a good way.

Obviously, and as is true with most major games on 360 and PS3, you're going to be putting your hard drive to good use if you want to experience the full richness of content that UT3 will have to offer over the lifetime of the game. the fact that you can do this is a good thing.

I don't know the exact numbers but I suspect the version of Gears of War that most of our customers play today on their 360s, when you combine the downloadable content with the content on the disc, is larger than what we could fit on the 360's optical disc alone. So clearly there are perfectly good strategies to cope with this situation. We're all very used to downloading extra content for console games and with UT3 there will be lots of it for all supported platforms. In fact the cool thing about our engine is that when you make content for one platform it can run on all of them. If history is any indication, the vast majority of UT3 content won't even come from Epic - it will come from some very brilliant end users with lots of cool and innovative ideas.

When it comes to user created mods on the 360 - we will work with Microsoft to find a way to support them. We just don't have all the answers today and it isn't our chief priority at this very moment because we already have our hands completely full shipping UT3 on PC and PS3 as well as shipping Gears of War on PC. When we get those out of the way, and get a little time to spend with our friends and families, then we'll get back on this issue and figure it out.

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so?

By Gul Westfale on 8/16/2007 9:00:09 AM , Rating: 2

so MS gets the EA sports guys to say that the xbox is better, and then sony gets epic to say that the PS3 has an advantage. this is all just marketing BS, especially when you consider that UT3 is DEFINITELY going to ship on multiple DVDs- on the PC.

does anyone remember the sony ads in gaming mags back in the PS2 days, when they made trip hawkins say something like "the PS2's launch is equal to the invention of the printing press"? seems like they're holding back this time :)

RE: so?

By vhx on 8/16/2007 2:47:54 PM , Rating: 2

That doesn't even make sense, considering they developed Gears of War on the X360. They like both consoles, just like PS3's high storage and open ended sharing capabilities more than the X360.

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no problem here

By invidious on 8/16/2007 10:58:38 AM , Rating: 4

One dvd with all the multi player content (including maps, mods, protocols) and the beginning of the single player content, and have another disk with the remainder of the single player content.

End result is you rarely have to get off your couch. But as someone suggested earlier they would not host multi player files on split disks, there simply isn't enough multilayer data isn't large enough to require it and end users would hate it.

epic sets their companies standards

By Blaidd on 8/16/2007 11:46:44 AM , Rating: 4

I think what people miss is that epic is stating that between the two consoles PS3 and Xbox360, the PS3 in their oppinion has an advantage in having a huge supply of available storage on the BD. They are not saying the PS3 is competing against the PC here.

To be accurate no matter how much you are a fan of either console you have to recognize that both are always on a two year plus behind the PC curve on cutting edge technology. It is however a smarter move to media blitz a customer base that will far out cover the PC base (and i am a PC first gamer mind you).

So it comes down to really epic feeling and setting a company path that they feel for their product, the PS3 is a wiser choice for what they want to deliver. It also indicates that if you want the ultimate deal on UT coming soon then you should invest in a PS3, simple as that.

If you want to as usual just boil everything to a PS3 vs Xbox360 then as an owner of both I have to say that over the last two months time I see much more long term value in my PS3 as more than just a game box. With every firmware update I see greater and greater usability. The most recent of which was upscaling capability, much better user menu options for just about every aspect of the machine.

As it seems a fact these days no company ever releases a product anymore which I would consider GOLD, just mechanically ready for launch which was the case for the PS3.

Just my two bytes.

HDD

By Slaimus on 8/16/2007 11:22:34 AM , Rating: 3

I would think the lack of a hard drive on the X360 would be the biggest issue. It would take forever to have to load 500MB off of a DVD every time the level changes.

They can at least assume every PS3 has a HDD so they can count on installing some commonly used files there to speed up loading.

Xbox 360 HDD

By dl429 on 8/16/2007 1:42:53 PM , Rating: 3

Microsoft really blew it when they didn't release every X360 with a hard drive. If they would have just bit the bullet money wise early and included at least a 60gig hdd in every console it would completely nullify Sony's blu-ray advantage.
The few games that require more space than a dvd9 could be cashed on the hdd the same way pc games do. HDD space is fairly cheap these days and the difference in cost to M$ between 20 and 60 gigs is probably minimal.

Blu-Ray gives more legroom...

By killerroach on 8/16/2007 10:31:39 AM , Rating: 2

...thank you, Captain Obvious. :)

I'm personally intrigued about the prospects of the game having this much content, even if it means coming on a couple of DVDs for PC and taking up a Sasquatch-style footprint on one of my 320GB hard drives. If the game lives up to its predecessors, the only thing that would dislodge it from said hard disks would be UT4.