Is blu-ray the way forward in gaming?

I'm curious, I've noticed that some laptops (especially the larger ones) have an option or come configured with a HD optical drive or blu-ray drive, I know this is an advantage as you can watch high-deff DVD's etc. but in the future, will game company's make the switch to putting their games on blu-ray/HD disks? If so, will that mean that people with a standard optical drive wont be able to play new games? I haven't heard about this from anywhere, I was just at work today and it came into my mind that PS3's games are on blu-ray disks, so will PC games make the switch?
The only reason I ask is I'm looking for a laptop and if this is so, then I should consider getting one with a blu-ray/HD optical drive!

 

only when there is a winning in the HD format war, once HD DVD or Blu ray wins.


there are still a lot of games that ship on multiple CD's AoE3 any one? 3 disks? why?

 

year i can so see bluray used for games with more than one cd, that will be so useful as im always loosing 1 of them !! very useful compared to ps3, pc are in need of bluray, ps3 dont reli need it except from uncharted as that does not fit on a regular dvd, good luck x box

 

Whatever language he speaks, I think I agree with.

 

From what i heard, the production of HD DVDs is going to be stopped i read on a german website, the last stats were bluray 85% of the market and hd dvd 15%, so it should be quite obvious..
(if you can read german, the website was gmx.net , search=Formatkrieg)

 

i thought blu-ray only had majority in film industry. anyways i'd think online distribution would be the way forward before any of those two formats.

netflix > blockbuster/hollywood

 

Personally, I wouldn't get a blue-ray drive at this time.

Yes, it'll probably win the "format war" and eventually become the standard PC/laptop drive (replacing the DVD), but right now it's too expensive and frankly, too slow. I'd wait until 8X (or faster) Blue-Ray drives/recorders are common and cheap. Then I'd just buy one and swap out my current optical drive---assuming of course, it's not time for a whole new laptop by then.

Better, IMO, to get $500 more laptop (cpu, gpu, etc) than spend that $$$ on an early gen Blue-Ray drive. I've already made that mistake twice, when CD and later, DVD drives were the new thing. 1X-4X drives, in any format are garbage.

 

I'd like to see PC games use DVDs already...

 

I think they do use DVD's as of now....

 

yup games now come in multiple DVD.

 

Take the orange box for example. 2 dvds, if I`m not mistaken. Unreal Tournament 3, etc...although they might come in dual layer, not all dvd roms are dual layer just yet. And you want a transition to blu-ray? what ever for? 50 gigs for a game? maybe for cinematics and audio,but my opinion is that it`s much too early for such a slide.

 

digital distribution is the way of the future. optical media is pretty much done for altogether. blu ray will be the last optical format, and even if it wins the "format war" the long term prospects of blu ray are low.

 

No way. Try to live in Australia where they have monthly bandwidth limitations. Want to download 1 HD movie? Forfeit internet access for the rest of the month because you hit your limit.

I don't know what $500 drive you are talking about, but the BD drive for an Inspiron is only $160 as of now.

And by the way...1x BD = 3.4x DVD = 30x CD

According to the Blu-ray Disc specification, 1x speed is defined as 36Mbps. However, as BD-ROM movies will require a 54Mbps data transfer rate the minimum speed we're expecting to see is 2x (72Mbps). Blu-ray also has the potential for much higher speeds, as a result of the larger numerical aperture (NA) adopted by Blu-ray Disc. The large NA value effectively means that Blu-ray will require less recording power and lower disc rotation speed than DVD and HD-DVD to achieve the same data transfer rate. While the media itself limited the recording speed in the past, the only limiting factor for Blu-ray is the capacity of the hardware. If we assume a maximum disc rotation speed of 10,000 RPM, then 12x at the outer diameter should be possible (about 400Mbps). This is why the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) already has plans to raise the speed to 8x (288Mbps) or more in the future.

1x Blu-ray = 36Mbps
1x DVD = 10.55Mbps
1x CD = 1.2Mbps

2x Blu-ray = 72Mbps
2x DVD = 21.09Mbps
2x CD = 2.4Mbps

This means that while most players are "only" 2x, that already equals the fastest of the CD generation of 60x.

It simply means 1x or 2x the specification of the format. You can not compare speeds between technologies.

Blu-ray discs have a capacity of 25GB. 50GB would be a dual-layer disc

For high resolution textures, video cinematics, audio, it is definetely necessary. We have multi-DVD games, we need a higher storage capacity.

 

Soulburner--I'm well aware of the speed differences, I'm talking about backing up Blue-Ray sized (50GB) media---CD/DVD/Blue-Ray all take FOREVER when making a backup of their respective sized media @ 1 or 2X their native speeds. This makes buying an early gen burner a mistake as you'll end up buying a faster one later.

How long does that $160 drive take to record a 50GB blank Blue Ray disk?

 

I don't know the speed of the drive.

Let's assume its 2x. If it sustained 72Mbps throughout the entire write (not likely) it would take 92.5 minutes.

Since the speed ratings are usually referred to as maximum and not average, the actual time would be longer.

But keep in mind 50GB would be a dual-layer disc and we don't have those yet as far as I know. Most people backing up to BD would be using a 25GB disc.

 

So an hour and a half best case? Or, you could use a 25GB blank and re-encode your Blue-Ray movie/title to fit (wonder how long it takes to rip and re-encode 2hrs of 1080p content...2 hrs? more?---has Blue-Ray even been cracked yet?)

I would hope this illustrates that this isn't a good time to be buying a Blue-Ray burner--Current ones just aren't fast enough (to say nothing of the cost of blank media.) Unless you really NEED one now, it seems clear it's better to wait another year or 2 for a cheap 8X or faster drive. (just like DVD and CD burners before them)

 

GG games in the future will required like 20gb or above if they fully utilize blu-ray.... ><

hopefully we'll all have TB harddisks by then...

 

maybe in like 30 years blu ray might become game involved but its difficult to even make a 4gb game let alone a freakin 25gb game.

 

...every Playstation 3 game is printed on a Blu-ray disc.

 

err----less than 30 years ago, a game that used an entire 1.44MB diskette was considered big. If Blue-Ray catches on, I bet we'll see 25-50GB games become the norm sooner than later.

FWIW, X-Plane version 9 now requires 70GB to install everything.---Ships on eight dual-layer DVDs.

 

what is x-plane? and holy crap 70gb??!!! as for the thirty years ago its true the games went from 1.44mb to 4gb+ but that was probably due to the 3d revolution and massive amounts of improvement in rendering games with good graphics. its not always an exponential increase. there really isn't anymore revolutionizing to do, more likely "evolutionizing" and improving.

but with technology you never know...

how much does xplane cost by the way??

 

Flight sims have always been demanding---I remember when Falcon 4.0 shipped and people were talking about how Quake (forget which version) was demanding to run on "high" settings---they had absolutely no clue what demanding was....

X-Plane.com is the website, I think, if you're curious--costs about $80 or so for the good version. Flight Simulator X on its highest settings is arguably more demanding (from a CPU/GPU) than X-Plane or even Crysis, but noone gets excited about flight simulators these days.....to say nothing about wargames that take hours to process a single turn even on a Core 2 processor.


Forgot to add, there were 3D games 20+ years ago...although not dedicated 3D accelerators, those came out during the CD-ROM times. Real-time 3D rendering actually SAVED space as back then FMV cut-scenes took up more room than the game itself. As far as useful limits on space is concerned, give a developer more space and they'll always find a way to use it. Even if Blue-Ray is replaced in 5-8 years by a 1-2 terabyte disk, there'll be games made that use it all.

 

Games just recently came on DVD from CD. Don't expect a higher format any time soon.

 

Games have been on DVD for over 7 years.

And again, I think I need to quote myself:

Any time soon? How about now?

If you give a developer the space, their artists will find a way to fill it. It happens all the time.

 

ps3 games are on blu ray format....they don't take up all the 25gb. i agree with htwingnut....dvd isn't going anywhere for a while. especially since they have the dual layer dvd's with like 8.5gb. besides dvds are cheaper to make...each blu ray disc is about $25 as opposed to $2 for DVD....add that plus the time required for game companies to fill 25gb or close to it+labor+greedy marketing=$$$$$$$$$...it'll be like $100 bucks for a game.

 

Not quite. You can buy 100 packs of the good 16x Verbatim DVD-R's for cheap, that come out to 20 cents each. And that's resale...imagine what they actually cost to produce.

 

True, although he might have been referring to DL media (my Verbatim DLs cost me $2 ea.)

That said, blank media is always expensive at first. Right now, a 50GB Blue-Ray blank is more expensive than a freaking 50GB movie. This was true also true of blank CDs (costing more than a music album) and blank DVDs (more than a DVD movie) for their 1st few years. Didn't stop either format from succeeding.....

Expect blanks to drop in price by 50% or so per year.--Just like CD and DVD did.

 

Cor I wasn't expecting a response like that. Everyone has been very informative and I'm grateful for all the time you've taken to reply. By the looks of things, I think i'd better hold off a Blu-ray optical drive if DVD's are still in the prime of their life, also by the time it gets to blu-ray gaming, I'll probably need a new laptop to actually run a blu-ray game! Thanks a lot!!

 

For sure. Imagine how intense a game with 25 Gigs of data could be.

 

They used CDs instead of normal DVDs, CDs only hold like 700 mb of space and normal DVDs hold 4.7 gb, why they used cds? I think because it was created in 2005 and they weren't on all computers yet.

 

How are PC games more in need than tlhe PS3? PC games use randering for everything while many console game use CGs. If they were to put hours of 1080p CGs (i.e, FF13 using pre-randered CGs for everything), you wuld need it.

Even though the increased price due to blu-ray may seem to be a bad move, how much money are they gaining for the non possibility of people playing with pirated games? A lot, especially since they loose money on each console, they need the revenue from the softwares.

And FYI: X360 games use dual-layer DVDs, so 8.5GB.

 

Nothing is going to willing distribute on Bluray for the time being. It comes down to costs and liscensing.

DVD = 4.7GB = (100 pack @ $21.99) = $0.2199 per disk (first thing that showed up on newegg search for DVD media)
Bluray = 25GB = $16.99 per disk (from newegg)

Now disks don't matter its storage you are after

So
DVD is 4.7GB/$0.2199 = 21.4 GB per dollar
Bluray is 25GB/$16.99 = 1.5GB per dollar

So you see a 14% increase in cost by moving to it, not to mention you need license the technology (for business use). Add in the fact that you need the players to be in ever system and you we are easily 10 years from mass distribution in either HD-DVD or Bluray - just look at how long it has taken DVDs to take hold for game distribution.

I tend to think online distribution is the way of the future, it eliminates many hassles:
1) packaging/shipping costs lots with rising fuel costs it will only increase
2) piracy - a digital only distribution is actually easier to manage because there is only 1 point of failure - media companies are still scared to death of this, but if each 'game' is uniquely identified and licensed to a person, and you require that they renew that licensee everytime they wish to play - it becomes very difficult to pirate (STEAM uses this model)
We are still a way away from this model though, it requires customers have high speed connections, and that they accept online tracking - which is going to be a point of contention for several more years.

But whatever model comes out on top, I am pretty sure that physical distribution is on the way out, people expect things to be instantaneous now, and with the internet this is a reasonable expectation 'On-demand' is the battlefield, and is probably why Bluray/HD-DVD don't really matter, the DVD was a 20th century model that worked well, but the 21st century is just bypassing this uneeded physical weak link.