Widescreen Gaming Forum

Anyone heard anything on this subject as of late?

We see it for PS3, but no PC? Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

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Not really a requirement, Just like previous media formats, PC's have the ability to take in multiple storage files from multiple storage mediums. I remember back when all we had were 1.44meg floppy disks, Falcon 3.0 and Wing Commander IV required over 25 floppies wasn't until a year later that you could get the came on 1 CD, then it became multiple CD's before DVD came along. now you have dual layer DVD's and even triple layer soon to be released. Since most games are DX9 still and slim on the SP side where all the extra data and sound files would be. As well PC games get loaded onto a HD, it used to be that games on CD used to utilize the CD as an active storage system, they've gone away from that now with the PC due to faster systems and data access. The PS3 needs the blu ray as an active data storage centre accessible at high speeds due to very small amounts of RAM and HD space. As well it was a selling feature, back when the PS3 came out, BR players were in the $350 range and there were almost no add in BR drives for a PC.

As long as they are targeting the 360 we will have DVD's.

I believe it's not feasible to have BR yet. The cost of a BR-drive is still too much for many. Add the need to support 2 different media for the same platform (DVD and BR), as you would still need DVD to reach the mass population. Also, how many games need more than two dual layer DVDs? Age of Conan or SW - The Force Unleashed (?), I have these on Steam and it doesn't do data compression I guess, so retail might be 2 DVDs.

The only use as I see it would be (leaving out movies of course), say, get a collection of high data games in a single box with a premium price.

Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sony-bd-5300s-0b-super-fast-bluray-writer-x12-bd-r-x8-dvddl-x16-dvdr-x8-dvdrw-writer-oem

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

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[quote]Guess PC was slower to adopt then other mediums. What say you?

http://www.scan.co.uk/products/sony-bd-5300s-0b-super-fast-bluray-writer-x12-bd-r-x8-dvddl-x16-dvdr-x8-dvdrw-writer-oem

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

Unless of course your like me and your PC is in your living room, and is hooked up to your TV ^^ *Upgraded to a Blue-Ray drive a couple of weeks ago because my new motherboard didn't come with any IDE ports*

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"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality."

I've had no reason to get a Blu-ray drive on my PC. My PS3 reads 'em, and the two laptops that I've had (one replaced the other) that had Blu-ray drives have never actually had a Blu-ray in them... so that part of the functionality was wasted completely.

That and the fact that currently Blu-ray requires software to decode it that doesn't work on linux, and my media rigs are linux+XBMC based.

Blu-Ray writer for pc, no slow addoption really, the tech is there, just most folks tend to rather watch movies in the living room and not on a pc, and of cause to be fair there is only a handfull of folks that use a pc as a media center compared to most home setups.

I've had no reason to get a Blu-ray drive on my PC.

I think hes talking specifically about shipping games on Blu-Ray disks opposed to DVD's guys. ;)

It takes time though. The first console to use DVD's was the PS2 in 2000, in 2004 we were just barely starting to see the first DVD releases, Far Cry 5 CD's , Doom 3 was 3. World of Warcraft launched then as well. The game was 4 CD's, but the collectors edition contained a DVD as well.

Now look at that compared to where we are today. Was Crysis 2 a single DVD? Portal 2? The current gen consoles are holding us back. The 360 still uses DVD's so they have to aim for the lowest common denominator. It's far easier to design your content to run on all platforms than to develop content for each platform independently. The few games that have actually used multiple DVD's are almost all PC only (e.g. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

The number of XBox 360 games I've got that come on multiple DVDs puts the lie to that; but then they're all JRPG monster-games that take hours and hours and hours to get anywhere in.

Far Cry was DVD only in the UK AFAIK, Doom 3 came on 3 CDs, true. UT2003 came on CD (three of 'em) but UT2004 came on 1 DVD or 6 CDs! (I saw the CD version in HMV...)

...

You're right, though - the 360 is holding back the adoption of Blu-ray as a disc format for games.

Having said that, because PC games install everything to the HDD, and rely on the DVD as merely a disc check mechanism (if that, now) PC games can run some serious compression mechanisms on the install discs. You couldn't do the same on the 360 or PS3 as they'd spend too much time decompressing files to do anything else. The latency involved with a HDD is nothing compared to the latency involved in an optical disc. ;)

Having said that, because PC games install everything to the HDD, and rely on the DVD as merely a disc check mechanism (if that, now) PC games can run some serious compression mechanisms on the install discs. You couldn't do the same on the 360 or PS3 as they'd spend too much time decompressing files to do anything else.

Indeed, I was saving that point! ;)

Compression algorithms have gotten really really good. I mean Portal 2 is some 12 GB installed for example and it's certainly not pushing the envelope.

Also Yeah I guess there was two copies of Far Cry, the 5 CD version and a single DVD version.
http://www.gameskb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/pc-games-action/3254/Far-Cry-how-many-install-CDs-5

The problem with basically every single game released on multiple DVD's on the 360 is that none of them are on the PC I don't believe.

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To jump back to Blu-ray Drives (not game disks!) not picking up steam in computers, That's another problem. It's a chicken and egg thing. There isn't much of a reason to ship a game on Blu-Ray if less than what? 25%? 15%? 10%? 5%? of people have a Blu-Ray reader in their PC.

The fact that most of people don't is a separate problem stemming from a few problems. CD's and DVD's were often used to store Data, how many people do you know that store data on Blu-Ray disks? A 16 or 32GB thumb drive and free falling hard disk drive prices have eliminated the need for burning Optical Media. The other big problem that PS mentioned is that support for Blu-Ray is really piss poor. Can you even play Blu-Ray movies on OSX yet? Playing on linux is non trivial. et cetera