@4-5-6

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This week's world-wide top 25 multi-platform title

We do not have worldwide weekly figures.

The only true data we get on global sale figures are from financial reports. Sadly Microsoft stopped directly reporting software sales / attach rates since the PS3 software started to outsell XBox 360 software sales despite a smaller install base at the time.

The only website I know which tries to do global tracking is VGChartz. But they are so much off all the time compared to official and 3rd party tracking data with regard to hardware sales their software sales can't be taken seriously (and is far more off than their hardware estimates).

@MikeB

Quote:

Quote: Then you agree that 6.8GB of storage remains 6.8GB of storage. So the physical media is limited to 6.8GB of data. Correct, how efficiently this data is structured is a different matter.

When you talk about 'Game Data' most people (heck enough to simply claim all) are going to view that as the size of the entire game (example 12GB). That 'Game Data' is then more efficently structured into 6.8GB of DVD area. (aka compression) They wouldn't call the DVD the 'Game Data' size they'd call it the compressed data file size. Again I don't recall being part of this but seeing how you defined these terms different from others here if you did that I'd expect you would create conflict.

Certainly a Blu-Ray stores more data than a 360 DVD. Though most (again if not all) people will tell you that a 360 game data can be larger than 6.8GB. Most people don't consider uncompressing part of the "Game", which is what your definitions do as you claim 6.8GB is the 'Game Data'.

Last edited by BrianK on 21-May-2011 at 12:42 PM.

@BrianK

It's 1s and 0s.

What we call compression are tricks with coding or remove not needed data (such as removing sound data humans can't hear), etc.

Imagine it like this:

1=Brian
2=goes
3=to
4=school

1234 then codes for "Brian goes to school". 1234 takes fewer 1s and 0s to store.

5=church

1235 "Brain goes to church"

6=god

6231 "God goes to Brian"

etc, etc.

Lossy compression techniques degrade quality. Most of modern game data regards the storage of graphics and sounds. With less data storage, developers will sooner opt to sacrifice quality (or use less varierty in assets than they would have wanted to).

Last edited by MikeB on 21-May-2011 at 01:17 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

What we call compression are tricks with coding or remove not needed data (such as removing sound data humans can't hear), etc.

Discarding 'not needed data' is one such type. It's a lossy compression. MP3 is a type of lossy audio file compression. Another type of compression that's lossless. Dolby Digital TrueHD is a type of lossless audio file compression.

BTW your example of coding each word with a # was a lossless comperssion as you didn't discard any data.

Quote:

With less data storage, developers will sooner opt to sacrifice quality

There are other options. A developer could choose to use multiple media methods. 2 DVDs instead of sacrificing to get it onto 1. Or 1 DVD + Download of add-ons. And another thing that can be done is choosing a different programming technique may provide a smaller dataset with maintaing graphical desired results. Procedural Synthesis is one approach change that can make differences, as we've seen with the .kkreiger example. There's also different programing optimizations that can be made. Certainly games are made by people and optimizing code is part art and part science. Again while developers may sacrifice quality that's not the only option.

But none of this changes that most people when talking about 'Game Data' talk not about the restricted compressed file size but the uncompressed full data set that makes up a game. Again this is why I see you had problems as you are defining this differently than most people.

Last edited by BrianK on 21-May-2011 at 01:39 PM.

@BrianK

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2 DVDs instead of sacrificing to get it onto 1.

Yes, that's why I state they opt sooner. There are plenty of reasons why developers would like to stick to 1 disc. For example consumers preferring one disc. Linear games are relatively easy to spread on multiple discs (but usually involves a lot of data duplication). Non-linear games are harder to spread across multiple discs as developers will do everything they can to prevent disc swapping.

There are extra costs involved (such as casing, multiple discs related and extra development time / effort (extra planning and structuring involved by developers).

All in all developers prefer to stick to as less discs as possible. And this is evident if you look at 360 games, later 360 games almost all use the available 6.8 GBs to its limits.

Development for many games developers is now more PS3 centric than in the past and so future 360 games are more likely to span multiple discs. If Nintendo's new console will feature a Blu-Ray drive (or similar), it's likely 360 games will start to come on more and more discs or will see significant sacrifices in quality compared to the competition.

@MikeB

Though I want to be sure before proceeding along a different conversation you understand that most other people when talking about Game Data are referring to the total uncompressed data in the game which is more than the limation of the media format. In the case of earlier 360 DVDs this was 6.8GB.


Quote:

There are plenty of reasons why developers would like to stick to 1 disc

I agree.

While I haven't seen this yet the other thing the 360 can do (like the PS3) is load the DVD content to harddrive. For the consoles with a harddrive (appears to be the majority) a 3 DVD game is less worring as one can copy the 3 DVDs to the harddrive and play the game from there. This would reduce if not eliminate disc swapping.

Also, the Spring 2011 Update has a new 7.8GB format. This ~15% more space will give a bit more room to those games at the edge of the current 6.8GB DVD limitation. (Halo Reach for example is 6.6GB) If the Wii2 launches with Blu-Ray there's probably still a good year before anything takes advantage of Blu-Ray. Very few, but increasing more, PS3 games are over 7GB. Often that Blu-Ray disc has duplicate content to better ensure smooth loading.

I suspect when Blu-Ray is a major game requirement the Xbox3 will be here and have a solution to deal with those larger games.

Last edited by BrianK on 21-May-2011 at 03:54 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

Though I want to be sure before proceeding along a different conversation you understand that most other people when talking about Game Data are referring to the total uncompressed data in the game

Not really, for example we Amigans often stated 3.5 inch diskettes (1MB) supported 880KB of data storage (original filesystem), instead of 720KB on MS-DOS discs.

Using for example mod music (patterns) takes a very small amount of storage capacity compared to storing a complete sample. It was thus heavily used for Amiga games, but never did we Amigans claim the diskette was able to store many MBs of game data, as that would be very misleading.

Copying compressed lha file(s) to a diskette (patterns), the diskette can still only hold the same amount of data as when dealing with uncompressed files. For example 880KB remains 880KB.

It seems in the past people were simpler, back then nobody would cry about this. Technically the situation is very much the same as is was back then, but now with the console wars people seem to invent new complaints for discussing the same stuff.

Last edited by MikeB on 21-May-2011 at 08:13 PM.

@BrianK

Quote:

Very few, but increasing more, PS3 games are over 7GB. Often that Blu-Ray disc has duplicate content to better ensure smooth loading.

The technically most impressive PS3 games such as Killzone 3, God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 go far beyond this.

As for data duplication as applied to both 360 and PS3 games makes entirely sense on the PS3 as you have so much spare data storage (this helps with loadtimes as it takes less time to seek the data if you have duplicate data nearby the current reader position). Why wouldn't you duplicate data if you have enough extra storage? It serves to improve the end user experience which is of course the most important.

On the 360 developers are stamping as much data on the disc as the disc allows. Data duplication thus makes less sense as you will be able to store ever less data the ever more you duplicate your data.

@MikeB

Quote:

Quote: Though I want to be sure before proceeding along a different conversation you understand that most other people when talking about Game Data are referring to the total uncompressed data in the game Not really, for example we Amigans often stated 3.5 inch diskettes (1MB) supported 880KB of data storage (original filesystem), instead of 720KB on MS-DOS discs.

Mike this wasn't because of compression this was because the Amiga formatting was different than the PC formatting which left more room on the floppy for data. For example the DVD formatting changed in the Spring 2011 update allowing a different formatting now provides for 7.8GB of data on a DVD instead of 6.8GB of data. And yes when people talk about 'Game Data' they don't mean the compressed version of the Game Data. Which is why I see you had this conflict. You're using a term differently than others are.

Quote:

Quote: Very few, but increasing more, PS3 games are over 7GB. The technically most impressive PS3 games such as Killzone 3, God of War 3 and Uncharted 2 go far beyond this.

A good example as the handful out of a hundreds would indeed fit into a 'very few' category.

Quote:

As for data duplication as applied to both 360 and PS3 games makes entirely sense on the PS3 as you have so much spare data storage ...Why wouldn't you duplicate data if you have enough extra storage? It serves to improve the end user experience which is of course the most important.

And if I recall correctly the Oblivion developers stated because of the Blu-Ray slower seek and access time duplicating content enabled them to find content and start the load quicker which then allowed them to get Blu-Ray performace equal if not a bit better than the 360 DVD drive. So of course you'd duplicate content as it's able to offset some of the Blu-Ray's negatives. I just wanted to be sure to warn that looking at GB on a Blu-Ray won't give one game size as there may be a couple copies of the same game on there.

@BrianK

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Mike this wasn't because of compression this was because the Amiga formatting was different than the PC formatting which left more room on the floppy for data

Just reread, I didn't claim this was due to compression.

Quote:

A good example as the handful out of a hundreds would indeed fit into a 'very few' category.

I would category it as quite a lot of games instead of very few. The bulk of high profile exclusives and a large amount of newly released high profile multi-platform titles.


Quote:

if I recall correctly the Oblivion developers stated because of the Blu-Ray slower seek and access time duplicating content enabled them to find content and start the load quicker

To be correct, dealing with only ~7 GB of data on a Blu-Ray disc the seek times are less than for the 360's DVD drive (this is due to a higher density per track).

But if you cram a Blu-Ray disc with 40-50 GBs of game data worst case scenario seektimes are worse. Is it difficult for you to understand as I quoted their follow-up interview for you before? (The worst case seektimes scenario [due to bad design by the programmer if that's the case] will however still be many times faster than swapping discs)

As for the widely reported (by US media and fanboys) out of context quoted developer, within a second interview they stated they were surprised why their informative comments were abused so much. They clarified they used the same techiniques for the XBox 360 disc. Sadly that corrective interview got under-reported by the US media and fanboys...

Last edited by MikeB on 22-May-2011 at 12:55 PM.
Last edited by MikeB on 22-May-2011 at 12:43 PM.

@MikeB

Quote:

Just reread, I didn't claim this was due to compression. Quote: [quote]Though I want to be sure before proceeding along a different conversation you understand that most other people when talking about Game Data are referring to the total uncompressed data in the game Not really, for example we Amigans often stated 3.5 inch diskettes (1MB) supported 880KB of data storage (original filesystem), instead of 720KB on MS-DOS discs.

Okay then restate this please. I stated that when people talk about 'Game Data' they are referring to the size of the game uncompressed. You stated 'not really' and compared the size of floppies. Those floppies are different due to formatting. Just as DVD has different formatting which can contain different data sizes. I was highlight that the DVD size is not the Game Data size, again as considered by most people. So what did you mean?

Though again when people are talking 'Game Size' they don't mean compressed Game Size which is what the 6.8GB limitation of the DVD forces.

Quote:

(The worst case seektimes scenario [due to bad design by the programmer if that's the case] will however still be many times faster than swapping discs)

Certainly will be faster than swapping discs though again the 360 isn't forced to swap discs as one can put the extra content on the harddrive and avoid that. And the plus is the harddrive is faster than either Blu-Ray or DVD.

Last edited by BrianK on 22-May-2011 at 03:11 PM.

It's totally feasable to do on-the-fly installs.

For instance, the first time you play a game, it loads from the various discs as you need them but also copies them to HD as part of the 1st play thru. There after, game data would be available on HDD after initiating the game with the original disc only.

@BrianK

Quote:

Certainly will be faster than swapping discs though again the 360 isn't forced to swap discs as one can put the extra content on the harddrive and avoid that. And the plus is the harddrive is faster than either Blu-Ray or DVD.

Storing a game uncompressed which would take 40+ GB to store compressed on a Blu-Ray drive can take maybe 100 GB on a harddrive. XBox 360 harddrives despite they are just standard 2.5 inch harddrives are very expensive compared to the harddrives available from many 3rd parties for the PS3. You could only store 2 such games on the biggest available (overly) expensive XBox harddrives.

For highly optimised DVD optimised games there doesn't have to be significant loadtime advantages though, as for when loading from the harddrive (like Halo 3) as the streaming is optimised for DVD in the first place (in-game textures for example are only needed to stream at a certain speed as this is what the game was originally designed for).

With regard to Sony PS3 exclusives they usually try to keep installs to absolute minimums and instead opt for streaming in data on the fly for data caching. This is my preferred method as stated since the PS3 launched.

@MikeB

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Storing a game uncompressed which would take 40+ GB to store compressed on a Blu-Ray drive can take maybe 100 GB on a harddrive.

Lots of supposed in there. I don't believe there is any game of 100GB in size. And why would one want to store the uncompressed version? PS3 and 360 can both decompress on the fly might as well store it decompressed, save the room, and put more games on the harddrive.

That line was in response to my line that multiple DVDs on the 360 aren't a big deal because one could put that 7GB content on the Harddrive and there by eliminate the need to swap the DVD. Not sure why you posted lots of PS3 stuff as the topic was multiple DVDs being a big deal on the 360, what the PS3 does or doesn't do really isn't the point.

@BrianK

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Lots of supposed in there. I don't believe there is any game of 100GB in size. And why would one want to store the uncompressed version? PS3 and 360 can both decompress on the fly might as well store it decompressed, save the room, and put more games on the harddrive.

That was my point.

Everywhere where compression makes sense on the PS3 compression is used (stored as patterns translated on the fly). And with regard to graphics and audio storage data for exclusives are usually stored in the least quality degrading option that is feasible.

@4-5-6

Capcom fiscal year results (and forecast):



http://www.andriasang.com/e/blog/2011/05/23/capcom_ps3_expectations/

@MikeB

Quote:

Quote: Lots of supposed in there. I don't believe there is any game of 100GB in size. And why would one want to store the uncompressed version? PS3 and 360 can both decompress on the fly might as well store it decompressed, save the room, and put more games on the harddrive. That was my point. Everywhere where compression makes sense on the PS3 compression is used (stored as patterns translated on the fly). And with regard to graphics and audio storage data for exclusives are usually stored in the least quality degrading option that is feasible.

I agree, good point. Never stated anything different.

Sony expects a $3.2Billion loss this year. So far $171 Million for the security breach. Sony's PDF

Additionally Sony has more problems with it's TVs. The UK is now broadcasting 1080p and 1080i content. Some Sony HDTV can't handle the broadcasts. Sony to fix in 7-10 days

It appears Nibiru is bringing Sony problems.

@BrianK

Most of the losses are directly due to the Japanese disaster.

IMO the ever more malicious that cyber criminals are causing additional losses for Sony (or any other company for that matter). What a waste...

@MikeB

Quote:

IMO the ever more malicious that cyber criminals are causing additional losses for Sony (or any other company for that matter). What a waste...

Sony, some want to claim the company with security central to their business, appears to have another fail. Sony Greece is hacked. I know Sony's been focusing on SOE and PSN but it's time to turn that crack team that shored up those networks loose on the rest of Sony's network. Successful security needs to be central to Sony's business.

Oh and the ~$170 Million for PSN hack appears to be the smallest ever estimated loss to hacking at under $2/ account. Most other hacks are in the hundreds of dollars per account to fix. It'll interesting to see their current quarter, that's not in the financials, I suspect the overall loss will be more.

Also, there's no indication that Sony has settled with 3rd Party vendors. I hope they'll pay the vendors something for this issue. It's certainly not the vendors fault. If I were a vendor and my network provider cost me sales/profits I'd certainly be continuing if not ensuring diversification to better protect my business financials.

Last edited by BrianK on 23-May-2011 at 10:04 PM.