As mentioned in a previous article, Sony has been using Resistance: Fall of Man as their poster child for Blu-Ray discs. But as the article points out, it’s got a lot of fluff that doesn’t really need to be there. But the argument stands that “the future” needs a lot of space and that those 25GB discs are a necessity for true next gen gaming. Let’s explore that idea a bit, shall we?

So the idea is that these discs need to be huge for our convenience. No disc changes, little to no loading… sounds great. But as we often learn, most things that sound too good to be true are a load of horse crap. Yes, you will never have to change a disc; that much is true. But Blu-Ray discs tend to load slowly. Not to mention, highly anticipated games like Riiiiiiiidge Racer 7 *cough* cache 5GB of data your hard drive while you play. What’s convenient about having to save so much space just for cache?

Again, this stuff is just about games that exist now… soon we’ll see games that will require Blu-Ray discs, not just make them a “convenience”, right? Perhaps. But perhaps there are other ways of getting full games to us that don’t push expensive technology. Take the Xbox Live Arcade title Small Arms as an example. As reported by 1up, Gastronaut managed to take almost 1 GB of textures and models and compress them (possibly with the use of magic?) so that the entire game fits within the Arcade limit of 50 MB.

So in the end it looks like Sony just really really hearts Blu-ray and chose to shout it from the rooftops via the PS3. Well, shame on you Sony! Next time, date around a little; see what else is out there before you bring a format home.

-JENNI CHASTEEEN

Tags: PS3, Sony

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