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Blu-Ray has been detrimental to the Video game Industry.

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BANGS

Banned
Blu-Ray started video game installs. No longer was it as simple as reading from the disc, parts of your game, or all of your game, had to be installed to the hard drive more and more.
Load times for games got worse instead of better. Especially since early Blu-Ray lasers were not very stable under extreme use.
Lol, did you even put any thought into this topic at all? It sounds like you're just making it up as you go...
 
I am not arguing in favor of copyright. I was just addressing the usual argument from people who say 'you've never owned a game'. These people who only started gaming this gen and have no idea that gaming hasn't always been such an anti-consumer thing.

Yes games used to be less stringent with regards to drm.
all future games should be drm free, and breaking drm should be legal. If I buy a lock it is quite bold to say I cannot break it.
 

Futaleufu

Member
I'm the only person I know that owns a BD-R burner drive. Two of them actually.

For backup purposes you can't really go wrong with a spindle of 50 Maxell BD-Rs for ~$15.

I'm also in the minority that wants another breaktrough in optical media for consumers.

If anything, Bluray has served his purpose well. The movies look much better than streams. Whats the point of watching 1080p/4K media with encoding artifacts?
 
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Three

Gold Member
No official releases of HD-DVD games, but MS did test them for game software. The results showed much faster loading than 360 discs and better laser tension. But MS never had a full stake in HD DVD. Sony needed it to win they were bleeding, and they still would have lost if not for bribery.

Blu-ray Disc companies wanted to use a Java-based platform for interactivity (BD-Jbased on Sun Microsystems' Java TV standards), while HD DVD companies wanted to use Microsoft's "iHD" (which became HDi).

This was MS' stake in it.
 

TLZ

Banned
Can I have PS1 CD load times back please. It helps me get more sleep. Much needed Quality of Life.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
I lived through the format war and although his argument means nothing (it barely made a blip of a difference in video games) the HD-DVD advantages are true.
At the start, Blu-Rays had a hard time with simple menus and had to use Javascript type programming to work.
HD-DVD would have been easier and cheaper to transition to but Blu-Ray winning the format war had nothing to do with which was better, Sony and others wanted it to succeed and they got their way.
Blu-ray was better dude. Bigger capacity, higher bitrates. The better format won.
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
And you just proved my point MS didn't have full stake in it.
MS sold purpose in the format war was to push digital by forcing stalemate.
MS was one of the first big digital platforms but in typical MS fashion they let other platforms demolish them which is defines the entire Ballmer era.
 

Kadayi

Banned
I can't comment on whether HD-DVD was better than Blu-Ray, but I do know that MS opting to cheapskate on the 360 and not ship with an HD-DVD drive as standard, coupled with their rather draconian multi-disc licensing charges meant that a lot of games were basically constrained to a single DVD in terms of size limit (which most games were already hitting up against by the time the system launched...) . Which is why repetitive assets and dialogue are so prevalent in games from that period. All because some suits at MS were fretting over initial sales figures, they fucked third-party AAA development in the ass for most of its lifecycle. Even more damning is that for most of that period, MS also had about 1.5GB on the DVD set aside for security features, the vast bulk of which wasn't used. Probably one of the most short-sighted and boneheaded executive decisions ever made in truth.

giphy.gif


Got fucked. Developers & Gamers alike with that call.
 
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petran79

Banned
5. Blu-Ray never really took off after the "war" ended. DVD handily smacked it around. Pushes for PC blu-ray drives cratered, Blu-Ray Laser for scanning and media transfer equipment also faltered. This aided not only point #3, but also caused game development prices to rise. Some people forget how much money some third-party devs like THQ, Square, etc spend on game development tools to take advantage of Blu-ray capabilities. The fact that it wasn't replacing DVD and many plans were scrapped that would increase demand, made it so that the prices of these tools also never really dropped. In fact over time it INCREASED.

This is the one I agree on. Blueray on PC is useless for movies. I have an 8 year old BD player for PC and it is impossible to watch BD movie discs without decrypting the movie to HDD or use a program like DVDFab Decrypter for watching on the fly. No wonder PC game publishers abandoned BD discs in favor of digital. With all this who would have bough a BD player for PC....
 
This is the one I agree on. Blueray on PC is useless for movies. I have an 8 year old BD player for PC and it is impossible to watch BD movie discs without decrypting the movie to HDD or use a program like DVDFab Decrypter for watching on the fly. No wonder PC game publishers abandoned BD discs in favor of digital. With all this who would have bough a BD player for PC....

Heck, some PC companies use DVD even now.

It was hard to get the average consumer interested in computer BR playback, especially on laptops, due to the very issues you said.
 

LordRaptor

Member
lmao @ games would cost $50 instead of $60 if they were on HD-DVD.
Games don't cost what they do because of the cost of the medium they ship on. Even Switch gams which come on actually expensive to produce flashROM.
A DVD / HDDVD / BluRay costs cents to manufacture in bulk.
 
Bluray was the better format, it was more secure and held more space. Something that bit Sony on the ass with Betamax abs it's 90 minute tape length.

What's interesting is how aggressive Sony actually is in the DRM protection. Rootkit in Cd's anyone? They are also involved with Denuvo. That's why I think they were right there with Microsoft with the whole DRM fiasco that took place and Microsoft took the brunt of it after Sony smartly pulled back.

People will not support two formats. They will with console gaming though. Disney is also the other company who is all for DRM and they too wanted bluray. They are also the same company who backed DivX. A video player that would actually erase itself after viewed so many times.
 

Airbus Jr

Banned
When you look at the many interviews and books, it was clear that Blu-ray only won the war due to the bribing of two big holdouts, one being FOX, and it convinced many to line-up behind that flag. But HD-DVD losing the war was not only devastating for media in general, but for video games as well.
gona need some real evidence on this one piece of information you re telling us otherwise I'm going to report this as a hoax information/fake news, this is a serious accusation
 
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Bluray was the better format, it was more secure and held more space. Something that bit Sony on the ass with Betamax abs it's 90 minute tape length.

What's interesting is how aggressive Sony actually is in the DRM protection. Rootkit in Cd's anyone? They are also involved with Denuvo. That's why I think they were right there with Microsoft with the whole DRM fiasco that took place and Microsoft took the brunt of it after Sony smartly pulled back.

People will not support two formats. They will with console gaming though. Disney is also the other company who is all for DRM and they too wanted bluray. They are also the same company who backed DivX. A video player that would actually erase itself after viewed so many times.

You could easily make higher capacity HAD DVDs though. It was also cheap so it would have actually replaced DVD imo, which is what Blu Ray failed to do. Badly.
 

demigod

Member
You could easily make higher capacity HAD DVDs though. It was also cheap so it would have actually replaced DVD imo, which is what Blu Ray failed to do. Badly.

You seriously don't know what you're talking about. MS jacked up the price from $49.99 to $59.99 and that's using DVD.
 
gona need some real evidence on this one piece of information you re telling us otherwise I'm going to report this as a hoax information/fake news, this is a serious accusation

Agreed. More studios were supportive of bluray. Like I said consumers will not support two formats. Transformers was basically the last hooray for HD DVD to try and persuade users over. It didn't work.

Sony leverages its Playstation brand to help win the battle quickly. It worked but also almost sunk Sony financially.
 
gona need some real evidence on this one piece of information you re telling us otherwise I'm going to report this as a hoax information/fake news, this is a serious accusation

I got Warner and fox mixed up but it's the same thing look it up on old articles, will, warner was the hold out and they got an "incentive" to leave which was then followed by the hold out retailers dropping HD DVD as well.
 

Three

Gold Member
I can't comment on whether HD-DVD was better than Blu-Ray, but I do know that MS opting to cheapskate on the 360 and not ship with an HD-DVD drive as standard, coupled with their rather draconian multi-disc licensing charges meant that a lot of games were basically constrained to a single DVD in terms of size limit (which most games were already hitting up against by the time the system launched...) . Which is why repetitive assets and dialogue are so prevalent in games from that period. All because some suits at MS were fretting over initial sales figures, they fucked third-party AAA development in the ass for most of its lifecycle. Even more damning is that for most of that period, MS also had about 1.5GB on the DVD set aside for security features, the vast bulk of which wasn't used. Probably one of the most short-sighted and boneheaded executive decisions ever made in truth.

giphy.gif


Got fucked. Developers & Gamers alike with that call.

I remember that Rage had to change the games structure due to the DVD limit.
It also didn't help that they didn't make the HDD come as standard meaning games couldn't install. As a console the 360 was pretty barebones and that kept price low. It didn't even have wifi I remember. Everything was an add-on HDDVD, HDD, and Wifi.

So you really were limited by the disc and couldn't decompress to a HDD. This was both a blessing and a curse because the game ran off the disc at least. people complained about mandatory installs for the PS3. This however meant extreme asset pop-in on 360 open world games like GTA4 if you didn't install because of the seek/read rate.

The size limit didn't affect them though because MS had a parity clause meaning publishers couldn't include extra content on the PS3 blu-ray version of games so you often had multiplatform Blu-ray games that were only the size of a DVD anyway.
 
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I remember that Rage had to change the games structure due to the DVD limit.
It also didn't help that they didn't make the HDD come as standard meaning games couldn't install. As a console the 360 was pretty barebones and that kept price low. It didn't even have wifi I remember. Everything was an add-on HDDVD, HDD, and Wifi.

So you really were limited by the disc and couldn't decompress to a HDD. This was both a blessing and a curse because the game ran off the disc at least. people complained about mandatory installs for the PS3. This however meant extreme asset pop-in on 360 open world games like GTA4 if you didn't install because of the seek/read rate.

The size limit didn't affect them though because MS had a parity clause meaning publishers couldn't include extra content on the PS3 blu-ray version of games so you often had multiplatform Blu-ray games that were only the size of a DVD anyway.

Don't forget MS used to have actual memory cards early 360 as well for those that didn't want to pay much for an HDD. They stripped everything for the Arcade and Core models to be cheaply priced.
 
I remember that Rage had to change the games structure due to the DVD limit.
It also didn't help that they didn't make the HDD come as standard meaning games couldn't install. As a console the 360 was pretty barebones and that kept price low. It didn't even have wifi I remember. Everything was an add-on HDDVD, HDD, and Wifi.

So you really were limited by the disc and couldn't decompress to a HDD. This was both a blessing and a curse because the game ran off the disc at least. people complained about mandatory installs for the PS3. This however meant extreme asset pop-in on 360 open world games like GTA4 if you didn't install because of the seek/read rate.

The size limit didn't affect them though because MS had a parity clause meaning publishers couldn't include extra content on the PS3 blu-ray version of games so you often had multiplatform Blu-ray games that were only the size of a DVD anyway.

And yet even then the Xbox 360 often had better multiplat games. Sony's ram split made it extremely difficult. That's why the OS was so shitty too. MGS 4 was also laughable on the loading.
 

Kadayi

Banned
I remember that Rage had to change the games structure due to the DVD limit.
It also didn't help that they didn't make the HDD come as standard meaning games couldn't install. As a console the 360 was pretty barebones and that kept price low. It didn't even have wifi I remember. Everything was an add-on HDDVD, HDD, and Wifi.

So you really were limited by the disc and couldn't decompress to a HDD. This was both a blessing and a curse because the game ran off the disc at least. people complained about mandatory installs for the PS3. This however meant extreme asset pop-in on 360 open world games like GTA4 if you didn't install because of the seek/read rate.

The size limit didn't affect them though because MS had a parity clause meaning publishers couldn't include extra content on the PS3 blu-ray version of games so you often had multiplatform Blu-ray games that were only the size of a DVD anyway.

Good points. I forgot about the cheap no HDD version which was basically the weak link in the chain. But yeah the whole approach was one that basically hamstrung development for the entire generation.
 
I remember that Rage had to change the games structure due to the DVD limit.
It also didn't help that they didn't make the HDD come as standard meaning games couldn't install. As a console the 360 was pretty barebones and that kept price low. It didn't even have wifi I remember. Everything was an add-on HDDVD, HDD, and Wifi.

So you really were limited by the disc and couldn't decompress to a HDD. This was both a blessing and a curse because the game ran off the disc at least. people complained about mandatory installs for the PS3. This however meant extreme asset pop-in on 360 open world games like GTA4 if you didn't install because of the seek/read rate.

The size limit didn't affect them though because MS had a parity clause meaning publishers couldn't include extra content on the PS3 blu-ray version of games so you often had multiplatform Blu-ray games that were only the size of a DVD anyway.

Speaking of the game Rage,

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-rage-face-off?page=2

That game highlighted just how poorly designed the ps3 was for a system that was $200 more and came out a year later.

Thank Christ Sony finally dropped the ego and made a system (PS4) that stopped the proprietary nonsense and made a system developers wanted to work on.
 
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LordOfChaos

Member
1. Blu-Ray started video game installs. No longer was it as simple as reading from the disc, parts of your game, or all of your game, had to be installed to the hard drive more and more.


You recon we wouldn't be installing games to internal storage when they got to 50, 70, more gigabytes in size, if we were on HD-DVD? There's no way. Granted Blu Ray in the PS3 was slower than DVDs at the time, but installs for this gen just came with the territory of massive game sizes. No mass market optical media would get around that.
 

Fbh

Member
Your post takes a whole lot of assumptions and presents them as facts.

You seem to think that the entertainment industry (and others) steadily transitioning to digital is mostly due to blurays ?.
And somehow blurays are also at fault that 4K is a thing?

And yet the least believable part of your post is thinking games would have dropped to $50 with HD-DVD's
 

JohnnyFootball

GerAlt-Right. Ciriously.
Mods should close this thread. This is without question the single most/pointless thread I have seen on GAF. Blu-ray won and it won over 10 years ago because it was the better format. There were no direct payouts to get the other studios on board to back Blu-ray exclusively. The studio financials proved that to be the case with one exception: money from Toshiba did show up in Paramounts financials.

OP is spreading nothing but pure meaningless and unsubstantiated FUD. These kinds of debates had value in 2007-2008, but here in 2018 they are meaningless.

By most metrics, Blu-ray has been a success unless you compare it to the champion, DVD by which nothing or nobody has been a success.

This thread feels like nothing more than an old HD-DVD fanboy who had that old urge to troll.
 
Speaking of the game Rage,

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-rage-face-off?page=2

That game highlighted just how poorly designed the ps3 was for a system that was $200 more and came out a year later.

Thank Christ Sony finally dropped the ego and made a system (PS4) that stopped the proprietary nonsense and made a system developers wanted to work on.

Well they wanted devs to be stuck on PS3 like the PS2. Luckily for me the 360 was very easy to Dev for comparably
 
So you're a developer? Which MS branch do you work at?

The one that's hiring since you think their future is so bleak. Anything else you want to add because it's well known devs didn't care much for the PS3 in comparison to develop on. I know it makes you feel like David Banner.
 
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thelastword

Banned
Freedom Gate Co. Freedom Gate Co.

HD-DVD was the superior format in almost every way and every way it wasn't could be solved with an update, including size. The only one thing that SOME argue is a pure advantage was the covering on Blu-ray discs, damage protection wise. But otherwise HD-DVD was faster, more relatable to DVD, cheaper, and was interactive compatible. The latter of which Blu-Ray had limited features for.

No, it was not, this is storage we are talking here, more capacity wins, better durability wins, it's as simple as that.....


1. Blu-Ray started video game installs. No longer was it as simple as reading from the disc, parts of your game, or all of your game, had to be installed to the hard drive more and more.

Installs was always coming, bluray or not....It's the same way disc-platter discs will soon go the way of the dodo, things evolve and change....Do you think people would continue to want to juggle a million discs or be limited by portable disc read speeds, at any new optical medium's inception? On PS2 you had multi-disc games, on PS3 you had some of the bigger games utilizing DL BD......so bluray was definitely necessary then, especially with games utilizing high end audio, several language files etc.....Right now graphical fidelity is on the rise, in game cutscenes are pretty much the standard and we're seeing less of CG movies, but people still prefer their games to load fast, and games do load faster off an HDD or SSD over an optical disc.....Hence why I want the faster drive format in new consoles......

Sony always gauge where they're at and what they need to run their games and they pack in hardware to conform, most of their first party games are below 50Gb, some outliers obviously, but they knew they would be good with DL BD, since games would be installed, so they focused on quick installs...Digital is also on the rise, and so is streaming, so it makes sense to focus on SSD's for the future and higher capacities as opposed to just pushing optical media on consoles...Yet Sony pushed optical media, when it was needed....the shift now is for faster and higher capacity drives, digital downloads and streaming.....You can't download your games to Bluray discs can you, so it makes sense to evolve.....All these decisions were/are relevant based on the generation....You make decisions based on how things are trending/changing...and adapt..


2. Blu-Ray is responsible for the fast and complete eradication of owning the video games you brought. Blu-Ray was great for DRM and other features that made it easier to use the DISC more as an authentication measure than a physical product. Which moved the industry to buying "licenses" instead of Consumers owning games. Once those few court cases settled things changed for the worst.

Understand business, there was alot of pirating PS2 games, do you remember that, of course the manufacturer is going to protect it's business. PC? let's not even go there, Steam was inevitable...Is any body complaining about Steam, When was the last time you put in a disc to play a Steam game...The same for movies, music etc....Piracy was a major issue in the 90's to the mid 2000's...Let's not only look at things in a vacuum....There were/are reasons why there's software protection and anti-piracy mechanisms....

3. Blu-Ray discs were slow to drop in price as well as the technology running them. This kept the prices of consoles that use it, and the games, from dropping in price. Analysts show that games could have been $50 new and with quicker price drops due to the lower prices of HD-DVD in 2009.

HDDVD was cheaper because it was cheaper to produce, it had less capacity, it had less durability and security mechanisms.....It sold less compared to bluray, so of course it will be cheaper. If there's less demand for a product it's always discounted, it's how this works, check how XBOX-ONE is always discounted as an e.g...and FYI, most of the blurays in my library I got for $10 or less, Transformers, Troy, 300, Baraka, Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy set etc. etc...


4. Load times for games got worse instead of better. Especially since early Blu-Ray lasers were not very stable under extreme use.

Load times under Optical Disc Media was never it's selling point, capacity was....That's why cartridges was better for loadtimes, but at the expense to lower quality audio, less CG movies etc....In the earlier gens, I think higher capacity optical made sense.....DVD was greater than CD in the PS2 era, Bluray was greater than DVD in the PS3 era, this gen, faster capacity harddrives, quick installs and extended storage is superior over optical media this gen, especially with the rise of digital downloads and the fact that all games must be installed on the disc anyway.....I don't agree that you need an internet connection to play your disc games though...

5. Blu-Ray never really took off after the "war" ended. DVD handily smacked it around. Pushes for PC blu-ray drives cratered, Blu-Ray Laser for scanning and media transfer equipment also faltered. This aided not only point #3, but also caused game development prices to rise. Some people forget how much money some third-party devs like THQ, Square, etc spend on game development tools to take advantage of Blu-ray capabilities. The fact that it wasn't replacing DVD and many plans were scrapped that would increase demand, made it so that the prices of these tools also never really dropped. In fact over time it INCREASED.

Where is DVD now? I don't even have movies on DVD anymore, Black Hawk Down, Fifth Element is best on bluray....Bluray made many upgrade their audio equipment and it was well worth it....That 7.1 lossless audio just pops and don't talk about the games that used it.....Resistance FOM is still one of the best games I've played on my 7.1 HT...

6. 4K Blu-Ray offered very few fixes to many fixable problems. The only thing 4KBR was designed for was an increase in resolution and asset compatibility. The BR council did not think that their new revision should have included fixes, even though Panasonic had partnered with 4 other board members to discuss fixes. Nothing ever came of those meetings, no one even leaked what the final result was. But whatever it was, it led to 4K Blu-Ray basically having all the same issues.

4K bluray was less sucessful because, everyone and their grandmas are streaming now, netflix, hulu, hbo, showtime, crackle, amazon.....They offer 4k streams too, obviously it's not the same quality as the physical disc, but it's pretty slick looking..... Moreover, 4k movie adoption was not ripe for mass penetration this gen since 4k tv's were still at it's infancy in 2013, consoles were 1080p spec too.....Even now, 4k tv adoption is inching to 30%, with a forecast for 50% in the US by the end of 2019.....so by 2020, when our consoles are actual 4k gaming consoles, it will make more sense to offer 4k bluray playback.....Ding Ding, it just makes sense to offer 4k bluray playback, when the majority will have a tv capable of viewing 4k movies....So here's the dilemma with UHD movies not selling well, because 4k TV adoption was not there yet....FYI, I had a 1080p TV for the entirety of the PS3 generation, so I actually bought and watched a few blurays....

7. Lastly, Blu-Ray has caused the rise in 4K asset creation for CG due to rising costs and the fact many movie and game studios distribute primarily on Blu-Ray. This mean that pretty much every industry employing CG in their products and uses BR as the main distribution platform are fighting off rising costs. This is why you're starting to see more outsourcing for cutscenes and other assets that would originally be done in house. Contractors however are asking for more money due to rising prices, and eventually everything is going to collapse into itself as we already have reached and passed the point of un-sustainability

CG, is just not big anymore, right now, in game assets are pretty impressive visually, anti-aliasing is much better and higher resolutions boosts IQ up even more.....So in game-cutscenes is always preferred and bodes better for BC and remasters, which offer higher resolutions and upticks on older gamers....So you should expect less CG next gen....Look at this gen and how so many times you hear tech guys or even gamers say how CG looking a game is....It's because rez, asset quality, textures, AF and AA has improved quite a bit from prior gens, where prior to now, devs needed the high budget CG to give them that visual splendor, now we're seeing great visuals almost on par in-game...Next gen, expect that to improve ten fold, with better AA, improved TAA, HRAA etc..couple that with less low rez effects, less shoddy shadows, less AF issues and artefacting...In game assets and quality next gen should be all you need...and should be pretty mindblowing visually....

Due to trying to make profit due to rising costs, and trying to keep contracts in check, most attempts to replace BR with another format has failed. I take it next gen will still be Blu-ray with more rising costs. In hindsight Blu-Ray was one of the biggest mistakes. But especially for video games, and how fast it changed things.

BD will thrive next gen, BDXL will be in, Many MS games are already hitting 100Gb plus, Quantum Break is just insane.....So it makes sense to offer a disc that will hold the game before you transfer it to your hdd, for better loading etc.....All games will have high end textures, better audio, multiple languages etc...so it makes sense to offer 128 BD or even 256 BD.....More persons will buy UHD discs because more will have 4k sets, but streaming will still outclass bluray sales, notwithstanding, streaming quality will improve just the same....across games, movies music.....
 

demigod

Member
The one that's hiring since you think their future is so bleak. Anything else you want to add because it's well known devs didn't care much for the PS3 in comparison to develop on. I know it makes you feel like David Banner.

Its Bleak right now!
 

Kataploom

Gold Member
Well, I believe all the things OP blames BR for could still happen due to other factors like transitioning to digital.

I also believe that BR capacity made developers not to care about game sizes but non-compressed assets are also much faster to read so I think they'd still find a way to use them, just for the sake of making open world possible
 

Woo-Fu

Banned
Because you know, installing your game from 45 CD-ROMs would have been so much better. Hahahahahahaha.

Taking a luddite position to blame one platform holder---because let's be honest here, this isn't about BR and HD-DVD, this is about Sony and Microsoft---for the course an industry was already set upon seems like a bad idea.
 
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