Sony feeling blue...

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 11 Sep 2006 08:53 pm

Yeah well my analyst says that the cost of the PS3's Blu-ray drive is around US$200-300 per unit so nuts to you.

And given how wrong you were on the last pricing debate we had (US$50 per Blu-Ray disc?!? How the fuck does even the most idiotic of fanboys believe that?!?) I'm gonna take a punt and say I'm right.

Texas · Post by **Texas** » 11 Sep 2006 08:55 pm

Here is something I found with the $350 price for the BD-Drive quote. Merril Lynch... never heard of 'em.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » 11 Sep 2006 08:59 pm

Talez wrote:
Pat wrote:
Talez wrote: Oh bullshit. It's more like USD200.
It's more like $800 when you factor in the cost of the inevitable replacement unit.
$800 or $80 a game?

From your site:

DO NOT CHANGE THE POSITION OF YOUR XBOX 360 WHILE IT IS ON WITH A DISC IN THE DRIVE OR YOU RISK POTENTIALLY DAMAGING YOUR GAME DISC.

HOLY SHIT, NO REALLY?! GUESS I BETTER TAKE MY 360 OUT OF THE WASHING MACHINE TOO!

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 11 Sep 2006 09:01 pm

Pat wrote:HOLY SHIT, NO REALLY?! GUESS I BETTER TAKE MY 360 OUT OF THE WASHING MACHINE TOO!

THE XBOX 360 FANBOYS ARE ON TEH SPIN CYCLE NOW!!!

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 11 Sep 2006 09:04 pm

$50 wtf talez, bluray titles were always meant to rrp for $29-35us, $50 my arse. Fox just recently announced their titles for a wopping $39us rrp, apparently some of them are the first dual layer discs.

I think you're confusing the fact i might of said $50AUrrp for local movies. Which if you work out the exchange rate conversion it's about right.

Also talez given still the poor yields of blue laser diodes, i would expect the drive costs to be in the higher range of your ars technica estimate. Especially considering the news that the samsung player is sold at a loss currently at $999.

A quote from your ars technica article btw talez.

Thus the bulk of the price difference between the high-end Xbox 360 and the two PS3s, at US$100 to US$200, can be almost entirely attributed to the Blu-ray drive.

Exactly what i've been saying all along.

And come march next year, expect a 360 price drop, making the price differential even higher.

Seraph · Post by **Seraph** » 11 Sep 2006 10:55 pm

You're beginning to confuse me, lestat. Sandbox games are the hot thing at this moment, and part of the attraction is the huge free roam world and the multitude of things to do in these worlds. Each big game is bigger than the last, with more to do, and more area to do it in, and each game gets progressively larger in terms of virtual size and physical media size. You acknowledge that these sorts of games are the ones that need a large capacity single disc, rather than multiple discs.

And somehow you put all this together and say DVD-9 isn't going to be restrictive during the life of the Xb360 and PS3.

How?

Arthas · Post by **Arthas** » 11 Sep 2006 11:02 pm

Didn't San Andreas on the PS2 fill up an entire DVD9 disc?

3-4 years from now I imagine games to be at least double the size. I know my PC demo's and games are taking up ALOT more space these days.

selfish · Post by **selfish** » 11 Sep 2006 11:21 pm

A LOT

t0mby · Post by **t0mby** » 11 Sep 2006 11:23 pm

Arthas wrote:3-4 years from now I imagine games to be at least double the size. I know my PC demo's and games are taking up ALOT more space these days.

As long as the games arent double the price or double the wait!

/also remembers full install PC games needing like 200mb.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 07:14 am

Actually that's the misconception seraph. Freeroaming sandbox games aren't looking to more data storage, these games have to stream the data contents in realtime. They don't have 30 seconds to load data, streamed data has to be fast. The optical drives are a bottleneck when it comes to transfer speeds. So developers are looking to compress data as much as possible, to reduce streaming load times. Also for streaming large worlds, procedural content generation is also being used to get around the optical bottleneck.

These drives can transfer 9mb a second. It's not a lot data. If you read the recent saints row developer interview, their complaint is they wished they had faster optical drives, cause currently that's the biggest bottleneck they had to get around.

San Andreas was a DVD5 for ps2. PC version was also DVD5.

Another interesting stat, the ps2 had a 4xDVD rom drive. That means it could transfer 40mbits, or 5mb a second of contiguous data. To fill 32mb of the ps2 system memory it took 6.5seconds.

Now lets compare 360/ps3. Both drives are around 9-10mb a second in transfer(note its only double the speed from last gen) But both systems have 512mb of ram. 16x more than the ps2 had. So we've increased ram by 16x but only increased drive transfer speeds by 2x. Can you see the obvious problem here? You're looking at around 50seconds to fill 512mb of ram with a contiguous load. This is why compression is very important, this is what these systems will be using those extra cpu cores for. Decompression on the fly wasn't something last gen cpus had the resources for, next gen they have plenty of cpu power for such tasks.

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 12 Sep 2006 09:19 am

lestat wrote:Now lets compare 360/ps3. Both drives are around 9-10mb a second in transfer(note its only double the speed from last gen) But both systems have 512mb of ram. 16x more than the ps2 had. So we've increased ram by 16x but only increased drive transfer speeds by 2x. Can you see the obvious problem here?

Well you could cache it on the hard drive which would be able to fill the RAM in about 15 seconds... except what do you do with the Xbox 360? Split the code bases to turn off the caching on Core systems?

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 09:26 am

Yeah right talez, you're gonna cache 25-50gb of data onto the hdd.

Can you see the problem here?

Also games like oblivion do use the hdd for caching and still they hit the optical drive pretty damn hard.

Seraph · Post by **Seraph** » 12 Sep 2006 09:50 am

Oblivion, and any other Xbox 360 game, has to "hit the optical drive pretty hard", because MS made the HDD an extra and told devs not to use it too extensively for caching.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 10:18 am

Load times in oblivion are twice as long without the hdd, so obviously they are using it extensively. But a cache is just that a cache. It's not a permanent store and it's objective is to increase reading speed of data that is reread often. You still need to fill the cache. Filling the cache with new data still requires hitting the drive. How often new data is read into the cache depends on the games data access patterns.

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 12 Sep 2006 10:50 am

lestat wrote:Yeah right talez, you're gonna cache 25-50gb of data onto the hdd.

Can you see the problem here?

Yeah. The Xbox 360 only has a 20G hard drive at the most

lestat wrote:Load times in oblivion are twice as long without the hdd, so obviously they are using it extensively. But a cache is just that a cache. It's not a permanent store and it's objective is to increase reading speed of data that is reread often. You still need to fill the cache. Filling the cache with new data still requires hitting the drive. How often new data is read into the cache depends on the games data access patterns.

The problem isn't hitting the drive its that it takes too damn long to hit the drive. If the drive starts loading extra data to the hard drive straight after it has loaded the immediate area then you end up with data ready to go on the hard drive. As the hard drive gets full you start purging the cache starting with the least recently used objects.

Duh.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 11:18 am

Talez wrote: Yeah. The Xbox 360 only has a 20G hard drive at the most

The ps3 tard pack has only a 20gb drive too

The problem isn't hitting the drive its that it takes too damn long to hit the drive. If the drive starts loading extra data to the hard drive straight after it has loaded the immediate area then you end up with data ready to go on the hard drive. As the hard drive gets full you start purging the cache starting with the least recently used objects.
Duh.

Yes Talez i mentioned caches are effect depending on data access patterns, Preloading works well for linear areas talez, if you can't predict where the person will go then it becomes hard to know what data to prefetch into the cache. Once again you hit the problem where you at the mercy of optical transfer speeds.

I don't know why you guys are fighting that fact for next gen, compression is heavily required, the cpus have the power and extra resources to do it on the fly, drive transfer speeds aren't as optimal as they could be, even the laptop drives used aren't all that fast as you think, but they have huge benefits in terms of seek times. This again is why I feel the extra storage that bluray brings won't be beneficial. If anything they will promote lazyness amongst developers which will lead to poor load times.

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 12 Sep 2006 11:37 am

lestat wrote:
Talez wrote: Yeah. The Xbox 360 only has a 20G hard drive at the most
The ps3 tard pack has only a 20gb drive too

I thought we were "not getting the tard pack so $999 only".

Edit: In followup, also, 20GB can still cache. The cache will just be smaller so assets not used frequently may need to be recached from time to time instead of just cutting out any sort of reliance on caching altogether like the 360.

Yes Talez i mentioned caches are effect depending on data access patterns, Preloading works well for linear areas talez, if you can't predict where the person will go then it becomes hard to know what data to prefetch into the cache. Once again you hit the problem where you at the mercy of optical transfer speeds.

It depends. You can just start loading the area around the player and in the direction thats linear to their mission if they're on one. If you can stream then you can cache at exactly the same rate or better.

I don't know why you guys are fighting that fact for next gen, compression is heavily required, the cpus have the power and extra resources to do it on the fly, drive transfer speeds aren't as optimal as they could be, even the laptop drives used aren't all that fast as you think, but they have huge benefits in terms of seek times. This again is why I feel the extra storage that bluray brings won't be beneficial. If anything they will promote lazyness amongst developers which will lead to poor load times.

I don't know why you're fighting the fact for next gen, caching is going to be heavily required to get the best experience. Do you think GTHD loads in seconds because its pulling uncompressed assets off Blu-Ray? It'll be pulling compressed assets straight from a cache on the hard drive.

I suppose you're forced to argue this completely retarded and illogical point simply because the Xbox 360 tard pack doesn't have any sort of hard drive and devs have to write to make sure the game worlds can be streamed instead of just being able to cache huge chunks of it on faster storage medium if required.

If this was backwards you'd be decrying Sony till the cows come home because they wouldn't be able to rely on caching to the drive.

mech · Post by **mech** » 12 Sep 2006 12:07 pm

If this was backwards you'd be decrying Sony till the cows come home because they wouldn't be able to rely on caching to the drive.

I'd put money on that.

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 12:53 pm

Talez wrote: I thought we were "not getting the tard pack so $999 only".

The US is still getting the tard pack, 20% of units allocated with be tard packs, Europe is getting premiums only at launch.

Talez wrote: It depends. You can just start loading the area around the player and in the direction thats linear to their mission if they're on one. If you can stream then you can cache at exactly the same rate or better.

And if the person decides to turn around, do a quick turn right or left, you’re at the mercy of the optical drive. If you’ve played saints row and how fast the cars are in the game, you’d realise there are lot of situations where caching wouldn’t help, where you are basically held up by the optical drive.

Talez wrote: I don't know why you're fighting the fact for next gen, caching is going to be heavily required to get the best experience. Do you think GTHD loads in seconds because its pulling uncompressed assets off Blu-Ray? It'll be pulling compressed assets straight from a cache on the hard drive.

GTHD, yes that’s really an example of a truly next gen game.

Once again talez it will be pulling compressed assets, I’ve been saying this all through out the fucking thread, compression is the best universal answer to loading times and streaming. Caches help but don’t eliminate the problem all together.

Talez wrote: I suppose you're forced to argue this completely retarded and illogical point simply because the Xbox 360 tard pack doesn't have any sort of hard drive and devs have to write to make sure the game worlds can be streamed instead of just being able to cache huge chunks of it on faster storage medium if required.

Since when did I say caching isn’t needed? Still with a hdd cache, there will be plenty of times where you are bound by the optical drive for reading data, a cache helps but doesn’t remove the problem entirely.

Talez wrote: If this was backwards you'd be decrying Sony till the cows come home because they wouldn't be able to rely on caching to the drive.

You’re the one who starting ranting on about caching, I’m saying that compression is the universal answer for the optical transfer issues. Compression helps for loading times, next gen cpus have extra cores for doing decompression on the fly, something that wasn’t possible last gen. Because compression and procedural content generation is the future, reliance on storage space is greatly reduced, because reliance on storage space is reduced, the need or use for bluray is greatly reduced see my point? We’re just going around in the circles. You can talk up the potential of bluray all you like and pay for it, while I’m actually enjoying next gen games with massive detailed worlds right now. Once again 360 has no shortage of detailed sandbox games, once agian showing dvd isn't an issue, thanks to compression techniques that weren't possible last gen.

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 12 Sep 2006 01:20 pm

lestat wrote: The US is still getting the tard pack, 20% of units allocated with be tard packs, Europe is getting premiums only at launch.

Who cares. You can still cache with a 20G drive. Can't do anything like that with the 360 tard pack.

Talez wrote: And if the person decides to turn around, do a quick turn right or left, you’re at the mercy of the optical drive. If you’ve played saints row and how fast the cars are in the game, you’d realise there are lot of situations where caching wouldn’t help, where you are basically held up by the optical drive.

Oh noes. They turn around. That means it'll still be in the cache and you won't need to load it at all. And if they turn left or right? It'll start streaming and filling the cache up again as it goes. Most efficient use of the resources available.

Talez wrote: GTHD, yes that’s really an example of a truly next gen game. Once again talez it will be pulling compressed assets, I’ve been saying this all through out the fucking thread, compression is the best universal answer to loading times and streaming. Caches help but don’t eliminate the problem all together.

Since when did I say caching isn’t needed? Still with a hdd cache, there will be plenty of times where you are bound by the optical drive for reading data, a cache helps but doesn’t remove the problem entirely.

Yeah. But there are going to be plenty of times when you stop and the optical drive keeps going stuffing more and more of the area around you into cache ready to be pulled up as soon as you start gunning it through the city or what not.

You’re the one who starting ranting on about caching,

Because its an obvious solution to the problem of insufficient transfer rate. Put it on a faster medium.

I’m saying that compression is the universal answer for the optical transfer issues.

Compression isn't a universal answer. It's a tool that developers will have in their toolkit to make the gaming experience better. For you to exclude every other technique simply because compression is the universal answer is retarded.

Compression helps for loading times, next gen cpus have extra cores for doing decompression on the fly, something that wasn’t possible last gen.

Compression has been used for ages. Textures for instance are loaded up compressed and have been since the freaking Dreamcast for god's sake. Audio has been compressed since the N64 days. Video has been compressed since the god damn Playstation and Saturn.

Because compression and procedural content generation is the future, reliance on storage space is greatly reduced. We’re just going around in the circles. You can talk up the potential of bluray all you like and pay for it, while I’m actually enjoying next gen games with massive detailed worlds right now.

First of all, I never said anything about compression being useless. I suppose it would be easy to infer that from this paragraph:

I don't know why you're fighting the fact for next gen, caching is going to be heavily required to get the best experience.

FYI, in the future, I'll be more careful to clarify.

Also, what's with the us vs them mentality? I'm planning to buy all 3 and not dismiss one as as a gimmick and the other as "potential plus RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDGE RACER/mud racing".

lestat · Post by **lestat** » 12 Sep 2006 01:54 pm

Talez you've gone on all sorts of fucked up tangents, I think I've given ample evidence and information as to why i don't see a lot of developers escalating the sizes of their games beyond dvd9 for next gen and why i feel bluray isn't justified in terms of cost and all the other problems it brings.

You're not gonna change my opinion that bluray is not a good thing for gaming when it pushes up the cost of admission into the console market. You know the market that is driven by cheap affordable hardware. If i had the choice where to spend the extra money, it wouldn't be on a optical drive, it would be more ram, a more powerful gpu. Things that give an immediate impact to gaming and the life of the system.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » 12 Sep 2006 01:58 pm

Multiple discs didnt hurt the popularity of FF7, RE2, Metal Gear Solid, FF8, FF9 or Gran Turismo 2.

mech · Post by **mech** » 12 Sep 2006 02:09 pm

No but it still sucked having multiple discs.

Pat · Post by **Pat** » 12 Sep 2006 02:22 pm

No game has ever come on two cartridges, so they should keep using them!

Talez · Post by **Talez** » 12 Sep 2006 02:50 pm

lestat wrote:Talez you've gone on all sorts of fucked up tangents, I think I've given ample evidence and information as to why i don't see a lot of developers escalating the sizes of their games beyond dvd9 for next gen and why i feel bluray isn't justified in terms of cost and all the other problems it brings.

Sif I went on fucked up tangents. You're the one that keeps dragging shitty anecdotal evidence into arguments.

You're not gonna change my opinion that bluray is not a good thing for gaming when it pushes up the cost of admission into the console market.

You really think I give a flying fuck what you think? I'm just calling your bullshit so that people don't start parroting you thinking they're entirely correct just like I'll do to mech, rocco or anyone else I think is acting like a moron and spouting off stupid shit.