There’s been a lot of buzz about this lately, and it’s time I weighed in. Sony fanboys would have us all believe that blu ray discs are necessary for next gen games, and Microsoft fanboys would have us believe that it’s all a giant scam set up by Sony to part us with our hard earned money, however, the truth lies somewhere in between. Hit the jump to find out moreLet’s take a look at Resistance: Fall of Man for the PS3. Sony has been saying for some time now that this game was a prime example of why blu ray discs would be an essential part of next gen gaming. The game clocks in at just over 17 gigs. That would SEEM to justify the larger 25GB capacity of a blu ray disc, but lets take a look at how that space is used. Here’s a list of the files on the disc.

that breaks down like this :Total padding = 1.9GB.
Total FMV = 7GB.
Audio = 2.24GB. (605MB for music and English language only)
Game Assets = 6.12GBThe first thing here that I have to call into question is the 7 gigs of FMV. Most first person shooters tell the story using the in game engine, which makes sense - you tell the story without breaking up the action. Had Insomniac used the game engine rather than FMV’s to tell their story, that would take the game down to just over 10 gigs. Next up on the chopping block is the audio. If region specific discs were used, the audio would go from taking up 2.24 gigs to taking only 605 mb. There’s also the 1.9 gigs of padding files. Padding files have been used in the past to push the game data to the outer rim of the disc where the read speeds were better. I don’t know why they were necessary as blu ray is supposed to have a constant read speed throughout the entire disc., but we’ll leave them in for the sake of arguement.

So what does all of this tell us? It tells us that R:FoM COULD have been made to fit on a regular DVD. Reports are coming in from several sites that other games, such as Madden, are also clocking in at under 9 gigs. On November 10th, The 1up Show showed the bottoms of some of the games for the PS3, and the data very clearly took up less than half of the disc.

Untold Legends Ridge Racer 7So What’s the upside to blu ray? The larger capacity does leave room for developers to add more in game content, as well as more detailed graphics and sound. Just because no one’s really used it yet doesn’t mean that they won’t. So is blu ray necessary in next gen games? My answer is not right now. With games like Gears of War clocking in at 6.42 gigs, it’s clear that developers can go a long way with good compression. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong in the comments.-MIKE KURZ

Tags: PS3, Sony

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