A refreshing read. It would be interesting to see market studies on the current and projected makeup of game purchasing households. Maybe then we'd be able to make some more sense as to the decisions put into each console. I know generally families with children tend to go with what's cheapest. But now we have a generation of generally young parents who are gamers who will not only buy the systems for their children but also for themselves. Whats the makeup of this demographic and is it shifting significantly. My brother, who has means, bought his kids a PS1 in the 90's over nintendo becuase of the large selection of games for $20. For budget minded families, the PS2 seems the way to go for next couple of years. But for families considering a next gen purchase, will the ps2 families balk at getting a ps3? Will they just keep their ps2 or jump to another platform. Judging from the PS2 fall lineup and current console sales numbers my prediction is that PS2 is here to stay, and that the xbox 360 may end up competing as much against the PS2 in some market segments as it compets against the PS3 in others. The hardcore demand for PS3 will be there for the first 6-12 months (or maybe just the first 3?). Will be interesting to see what happens after that. Anyhow, just musings.

ps3 in your area November 17,go get it!

For once nobody is arguing over a post.

...I know this truth already for months, it's nothing new that 12xDVD is faster than 2xBlu, but what you probably don't know is that Blu has a constant transferrate of 9 MB/s, whereas DVD doesn't have a constant rate and reads often below the mentioned 16MB/s ;-)
As mentioned in this article, Sony already came with a solution - HDD. It may rise the costs of PS3, but who wants nowadays a next gen system without a HDD?
And well besides that we get games with HD CGI and don't have to worry about some games getting splitt in future, we also get games with 7.1 sound ;-)

"The post prompted a fast response from DeLoura, adding a litany of reasons why capacity was indeed a deciding factor:

"Audio on PS2 was mostly stereo, two channels. PS3 is 5.1. That's a 3x size increase without even considering fidelity.

Default video format has moved from 480i, or roughly 640x480 at 30 frames per second (9.2 million pixels per second), to 720p. 720p is 1280x720 at 60 frames per second (55.3 million pixels per second). That's about a 6x size increase. 6 x 2GB would again push us over the DVD-9 size."

In his most recent post, Vrignaud takes issue with those claims, mentioning the Xbox's already standing 5.1 audio and increased processing power offsetting the cost of video resolution with more powerful compression schemes."

But are these compression schemes powerful enough to fit 1080p and 7.1 sound on a DVD9? Probably not ;-)

But only 5.1 suround sound. I'm upgrade to 7.1 in about 4 or five years. My current system rocks hard.

...I'll upgrade my PC first when dx10 comes out and after it, I'll get me a PS3 with a 1080p HDTV. This will be a nice dreamteam. Some time later a 7.1 system will join the party :)

"Audio on PS2 was mostly stereo, two channels. PS3 is 5.1. That's a 3x size increase without even considering fidelity."

Thats if its uncompressed. 5.1 is encoded in a regular streo signal.

That Blu-Rays slower loading times, coupled with giving developers more space and therefore allowing them to be lazy with their coding, could add up to even longer load times on the PS3 than on the PS2. And if this "doesn't matter" why do most reviews of games that are multi-platform (Xbox and PS2) comment more on the faster loading times of the Xbox version than its also better graphics, online features, better sound, etc.?
Because it DOES matter! What is so "Next-Gen" about having to wait longer for games to load than ever before, and now for movies (Blu-Ray) to load as well? Aparrently this is the Chang3 Sony is talking about, a change for the worse...

Yeah slugg, i agree. I'm not satisfied with some 360 games loading times. But just think how worse PS3 loading times will be. Ouch.

loading time is something that is hard to comment on, for one no one has played a ps3 game to know and two it depends on the game and developers. some of the games i have like madden or saints row have pretty fast loading times but i am sure there are 360 games that take awhile to load. the one point you can make is about the read speed etc... where the 360s drive is much faster than the BR drive but if the ps3 game devs do a good job it may not be bad, i guess we find out in november. although i won't notice since the only game i "had to have" was assassins creed is comeing to the 360 i will be spending november playing gears of war!

Im not sure if this was mentioned previously, but I think you should know that a Blu-Ray can go faster than 2x.
Im not sure if DVD-9 can...

I would like to bring out a common misconception in the video game world, that the size limit of a xbox 360 game is 9GB. It isn't. Any company can, with negligible extra cost, put a game on two or more disks. It's very simple, and if games ever need that much data (yet to be known) it can be done easily and cheaply, without limiting the size of a game. Therefore the limit is not 9GB, but in fact there is no limit. All it requires is for every once in a while gamers may have to get up off the couch and switch disks. Is that such a bad thing? I know it's an inconviniance, but I would rather switch disks every once in a while than sacrifice textures and AI and such.

.

soo how many ppl are there able to get a 1080p tv???????????
we aint all rich ;) and all of you dont pretend that you are rich

lets face another thing!
sony blows when they make a Disc reader for the consoles.....they are slow as hell.....allot of data will be saved on the HDD is a good thing...i cant imagen the horror of seeing the 1 hour of loading screens.

If a game doesn't fit on a DVD-9 that the solution is to use multiple discs. Free-roaming titles can't do this, and they're by far the largest titles around. If your game is 30Gb, you cannot separate it over 4 DVDs because everytime you switch to a different part of the world you have to switch discs (which of course have to be labeled correctly so you don't put in the wrong one). If that's the future of next-gen, I quit.

It's a nuisance to the developers, publishers, and gamers alike. Plus, the developers would have to be very careful to make sure you don't have missions that require you to travel very far, and make sure that the segments are designed so that you don't have to switch discs more often than every 30 minutes.

In Jak 3, which is free-roaming, I can travel to anywhere in the world I need to without disc-swapping and without load times. And considering how far i have to travel in such short amounts of time (literally going from one side of the world to the other constantly to finish missions and tasks), disc swapping would be idiotic. This particular PS2 title was over 4Gb, a 17x increase over the company's previous PS1 title, Crash Bandicoot:Warped which was 236Mb. Can you imagine how much space this developer is going to need for their next-gen title?

Put constraints on developers and only bad things can happen.

i remeber when people where saying the same things about the psp.

and the psp would of had slow times, but the developers put in programs in the actual umds to make the games load faster and they did, but the only game which didnt have that programe was midnight club 3 and it was so slooow, so even if 2x speed is slow, developers can put programs in the blu rays to speed things up and dont forget every ps3 will have a hard drive so developers are probably not restricted and are happier to have 25gb of space.

Having Bluray & Hard Drive as standard on both SKU's will make for short loading times not long ones.PS3/Bluray are the future.

I would like pick out some of the more enlightening points people have made in this discussion and comment on them.

From Phytonadione:
"I have to give Sony credit for trying to make the PS3 "future-proof". Yeah, so what if the masses will only be adopting 720p capable tvs (and that you're too poor to afford a 1080p tv)? I'm not in that group, I can afford (and currently own a 72" 1080p DLP $3999) a 1080p tv and 7.1 surround system. It's not like Sony built the PS3 to only output in 1080p, so if you can't afford a $4000 tv, don't get one. It comes down to choice. Sony gave me a choice of going the 720p route or the 1080p route. And I chose the latter. Don't go and start talking for everyone."

I could not agree more. People are always praising the 360 for making the HD-DVD drive an add-on so people have a choice. Well, Sony made 1080p a choice for the few that want it, and I, too, applaud them. Yes, for those of you that are wondering, I own a 1080p TV as well. It is the new 46" Samsung 1080p LCD TVs (LN-S4695D) - the sister sets to the Sony XBR2 model aside form the fact that the Samsungs cannot do 1:1 pixel mapping over HDMI at the moment. Anyway, however, the costs are already dropping. One can now find the 40" Samsung for around $2100. That's right - a new 40” native 1080p LCD TV for $2100. I could go to Circuit City now, and find a 720p LCD of the same size for equal or greater cost. Again, that is for an LCD, not a DLP too. You can only imagine how much less a 1080p DLP is going to cost with these new LCD 1080p TVs arriving on the market.

From DJ:
"There's a common misconception that if a game doesn't fit on a DVD-9 that the solution is to use multiple discs. Free-roaming titles can't do this, and they're by far the largest titles around. If your game is 30Gb, you cannot separate it over 4 DVDs because everytime you switch to a different part of the world you have to switch discs (which of course have to be labeled correctly so you don't put in the wrong one). If that's the future of next-gen, I quit."

I, for one, would rather wait a bit longer in the beginning waiting for the game to load than having to stop play and change discs. The time to change discs probably equals or even exceeds the time to load in the beginning.

You bring up a good point about free-roaming titles. This led me to wonder about large online titles then. If you are playing in a massive online player game with over 30 opponents, and the level is huge, would you be able to change discs?

From XbugTerminator:
"I know this truth already for months, it's nothing new that 12xDVD is faster than 2xBlu, but what you probably don't know is that Blu has a constant transferrate of 9 MB/s, whereas DVD doesn't have a constant rate and reads often below the mentioned 16MB/s ;-)"

Thanks for reminding me of this little fact - it was even a news article posted on the old ps3today site I think :). People need to be reminded that DVD optical drives do not constantly operate at their peak drive speed whereas blu-ray drives do. So although DVD drives have the advantage in loading times if something is to be loaded for a long period of time, the battle between the two can be quite equal in the short run. That is why the load times are dependant upon the game. If the game is developed where the loading is done in small parts over the game, the load times between the 360 and PS3 would be minimal. However, if developers decide to load most of the data at one time, you may then start to see an advantage for the 360's drive over the PS3's.

I welcome discussion. If you disagree with me, please let me know instead of just flaming me and labeling me as a Sony fanboy. The last thing I want though is to be providing misinformation.

Thanks for reading,
Jared

have you heard about Rogue Galaxy (RPG) on ps2.
it have no load times throughout (except just when u load the game and that is also very little) the game with such huge areas. ps2 has a dvd drive of 4x and no hdisk.

i think we cannot compare 360 load times to ps3 load times at this point

points in favor of ps3
- 360 drive do not read at a max speed of 16mb/s where as ps3s does
- every ps3 has a hard-disk while every 360 does not so developers would most likely use it for caching if required

points in 360s favor
- dvd drives are faster we only dont know how much faster on avg. due to peek limit performance
- the same data would be more compressed on 360 and hence it would have to read less data as compared to ps3

another point is that the greater the compression rate the more time it would require the processor to decompress the data after reading which would take up processors time.

i think i have heard that the INITIAL games on 360 did use one core for decompressing and some small tasks. (plz dont flame me for this if i could find a source for it i would post it until then if u dont want to agree, u have every right to but dont flame)

Who give a Fuk What you can afford, Not Everybody can or is in the Same predicament. Don't Come on here bragging. Chances are your Excessive buying is a do to Short-comings in your Manhood.

From DJ:"There's a common misconception that if a game doesn't fit on a DVD-9 that the solution is to use multiple discs. Free-roaming titles can't do this, and they're by far the largest titles around. If your game is 30Gb, you cannot separate it over 4 DVDs because everytime you switch to a different part of the world you have to switch discs (which of course have to be labeled correctly so you don't put in the wrong one). If that's the future of next-gen, I quit."

FF7 Was 4 Disc at time with about 37 hrs of gameplay to comepletly finish it when PS was the strongest out. RE4 had 2 discs on gamecube after about 5 hour of gameplay What Fuking Game will be that open Ended that it needs a Fuking new Disc for a New fuking map?

DJ Make some fuking Sense When you run on.

Heres Something DJ Said again:
"It's a nuisance to the developers, publishers, and gamers alike. Plus, the developers would have to be very careful to make sure you don't have missions that require you to travel very far, and make sure that the segments are designed so that you don't have to switch discs more often than every 30 minutes."
When Fuking Last time Anybody had to switch Discs? GTA Does'nt Require this and thats open ended and Huge.
no one. want to do a whole lot of traveling to areas that take away for the Excitement of the game. As far as gaming go i took mind switching disk it not a Problem is a Sense of accomplishment know i completed a Huge part.

Please i Beg of you STFU your doing more harm to the PS3 than GOOD.

How big the Fuking City in Crackdown is?
I Rest my Case.

Yeah Aight. Don't get stretch. East 93st Brooklyn N.Y. Rutland plaza act like you know.

Now that Jim Ryan is gone just need to remove Herman Hulst from his position! And maybe give Shuhei the position he deserved.

This gen hasn't been the best for games, last gen consoles are still out there and now there's been talk of the PS6 and Xbox Two for a year or so. Many games this gen will be ported to next gen and the cycle will continue. The re-release of the Neo Geo AES+, games on cartridge for £70 ($95), gaming is going back in time. Gaming has gone pricing mad with the high cost of games, consoles and controllers. The men and women at the top are clueless.

It’s always interesting to hear behind-the-scenes stories like this, especially involving veterans like Shuhei Yoshida and leadership figures like Jim Ryan. That said, there are usually multiple sides to decisions at that level. It could be less about not “listening” and more about differences in long-term vision for PlayStation. Yoshida played a huge role in shaping the brand, so whatever the reason, his impact is undeniable.

If true, and I'm inclined to believe it is, it goes to show that Sony lost their way when they became more western/didn't respect the PlayStation origin story. Andrew House and Jack Tretton did great work, but they also didn't try to fundamentally change the PlayStation DNA. Ryan oversaw the death of Japan Studio and a live service direction.

I already figured this, good lord imagine if Shuhei took over instead, would've been a platinum era 😩

I miss the first three generations of PlayStation. The way they turned PS3 around, we knew they meant business. We were all worried for a bit there around launch. Eventually from 2008 they started shifting slowly. But since Yoshida was fired, it's never been the same. Still enjoy my PS5 daily. I got a backlog dating back to PS2 lol So I'm fine but new games aren't as appealing anymore.

It seems like we were thrown on to the worst timeline possible where everything is too expensive and the wrong people were put in positions that makes the world a shitty place. We could have had Shu as the head of PS but we got the shitty alternative. Same goes for everyone in power around the world. Doesn’t matter the company or country the majority of us got the shitty picks and the world is declining like never before. I do think PS can come out of this because of their studios, talent and IP but they need someone more in touch with gamers leading things like Shu was. They’re still the best place for console gaming imo but it could be much better than it is especially without the massive live service failures. The rest of the world I have a lot less hope for right now. Hopefully the pendulum swings back towards the good ole days but I’m preparing for the worst.

There goes illuminati distraction story

So now there's certifiable proof that Ryan was in fact "fired", as opposed to when it was first announced that he "retired", in order to save face.

There's another guy who recently "retired" as CEO of another large gaming company, after doing a dismantling job as lead for well over a decade.

seems legit, the business man, fires the one who has ideas to move the business forward.

Jim Ryan is the reason why we are entering year 6 since the PS5 launch and many of us don't feel like the PS5 has gotten started as yet.

I hope going forward, we will see a return to form.