PS4 Stuck With Discs "for the Foreseeable Future"

[solemnwar]

Oh, good. Call me old-fashioned if you'd like, but I still prefer purchasing physical copies. Just something about being able to hold what I paid money for in my hand that I liked. Plus, um... I don't actually have all that much bandwidth per month, and my connection speeds aren't necessarily the greatest, so going entirely digital would make me very sad. I still download small, cheap things, sure, but a game like, say, Watch Dogs, which one would have to assume is fairly large, would probably take me a couple of days. And a large chunk of my monthly bandwidth limit. I'm perfectly happy sticking with Blu-Ray.

Yep, same here, although I loathe Blu-Rays and stick to DVDs (I do not have a ps3, so I guess this doesn't really apply to me anyways?). Although I do have a blu-ray player for my computer. I just can't use it because I don't have the proper thingymagic to hook it up to the monitor or something idk.

Also if physical sales die completely, that's a lot of jobs gone :/ Both production and retail. That's not really a good thing.

Also having a physical collection is so much more impressive. I mean, what's more impressive to people: a steam library, or rows and rows of shelves full of discs? Also easier to use them as improptu projectiles!

Blahblahblah I'm stuck in the past and dragging my heels into the future.

 

[Evil Smurf]

I like optical drives, computer companies are removing them because "the PC is dead." While sony sondiers on with the PS4. Good on them.

wha? I dont get the connection between optical drives and PC's being dead

Cnet and engadget say that sort of thing all the time.

 

[Vault101]

wha? I dont get the connection between optical drives and PC's being dead

Cnet and engadget say that sort of thing all the time.[/quote]
which makes no bloody sense since computers would get rid of optical drives faster than consoles (though really youd have to be pretty confident in your internet connection and reliance on downloadable media to not have an optical drive)

 

[putowtin]

With last Tuesday's PlayStation 4 announcement,

Escapist got the announcement two days before the rest of us.... no fair!

(Oh and I want a console that plays disks, my internet speed is so bad it took 5 days to download the Lair of the Shadow Broker dlc!)

 

[Dan Burcea]

I call BS on this guy with his southern europe big bussiness and low internet connections. I dont know what excatly he means by Southern Europe but I am pretty much south of every European country and I can tell you around here Sony does not even have a presence as a company. They dont have a Sonny office or distribution center and they dont have a PSN store.

About slow internet connections I call BS again. We have very good Internet around here, I can download Steam games with around 5 to 8 MB/s (that is MegaBytes not megabits).

All this is BS they want Blu Ray discs not because of customers needs but because their needs, because they own the disk technology, they are selling the players and they dont feel comfortable in a 100% digital downloads market.

 

[Evil Smurf]

wha? I dont get the connection between optical drives and PC's being dead

Cnet and engadget say that sort of thing all the time.

which makes no bloody sense since computers would get rid of optical drives faster than consoles (though really youd have to be pretty confident in your internet connection and reliance on downloadable media to not have an optical drive)[/quote]I'm not confident enough yet.

 

[Robot Number V]

Eh, I'm OK with that. When I play my PS3, I like the ability to just play my games right out of the box without a time-consuming download in my way.

OH WAIT.

 

[Arina Love]

i'm glad it do. When i'm buying games i like to have physical copy.

 

[Fanghawk]

With last Tuesday's PlayStation 4 announcement,

Escapist got the announcement two days before the rest of us.... no fair!

(Oh and I want a console that plays disks, my internet speed is so bad it took 5 days to download the Lair of the Shadow Broker dlc!)

Damn it, I've been displaced in time AGAIN. Where's Doc Brown and Sam Beckett when you need them?

Fixed. And thanks!

 

[Roxor]

Just look at .kkreiger: It's a one-level FPS which looks as good as Doom 3, but it only takes up 96KB. If that can be done by amateurs ten years ago, then there's no excuse for professional developers today to not be matching them.

Although efficient programming and what not is a nice thing to aim for, with 50Gb blu-rays it isn't really needed.

That is exactly the attitude I'm complaining about: "Screw efficiency. We have disk space to burn."

If everyone coded with .kkreiger's levels of space efficiency, we'd be thinking "What the hell is up with Sony? Why are they giving me a thousand times more disk space than I need for my game?"

 

[The Hungry Samurai]

Discs should always be an option. With my ps3 I buy a 300g hd for $100 and its full of digital content a year later, I'm left stressing over what to delete to fit more things on it. OR I can stuff a shoebox full of games on a shelf and fill up my games collection indefinitely like a good little hoarder.

I have boxes full of dream cast games I can play at the drop of a hat but a bunch of ps3 digital purchases I got months ago that I forgot I had because I cleared them out to make room for the latest additions to my instant game collection.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Wait, STUCK with discs? They make it sound like it's a chore! I'm OK with this, but it would be better if I still played PS3 discs on it.
I'm not the first person to say that, am I? I skipped the rest of the comments here and went straight to posting my thoughts.

captcha: "It's Super Delicious"
said Sony about our money

 

[Easton Dark]

Stuck with?

But I thought the big ol' benefit of the consoles was the ability to just stick in a disc and play.

Apparently the console manufacturers do not agree.

[HEADING=2]Next generation, consoles and PC gaming will form together into one amorphous blob that will shamble its way towards hand-helds, and then finally absorb the arcades still active in the world.[/HEADING]

 

[Strazdas]

Congratulations plastic lovers, you have just made sure you will pay more for games to give retailers their cut.

Also his claims about southern europe are ridiculous. on a cheapest internet my ISP can offer i can download a 30 gig blueray in a matter of 13.3 hours, not 3 days. and thats internet plan that costs 15 dollars per month. I woudl just set it up ion the morning, go to work, and can watch it in the evening already.

With my ps3 I buy a 300g hd for $100 and its full of digital content a year later, I'm left stressing over what to delete to fit more things on it. OR I can stuff a shoebox full of games on a shelf and fill up my games collection indefinitely like a good little hoarder.

Not sure if PS4 will accept external HDDS, but you can get a 2TB external HDD for that price. you wont be lacking space soon in this unless your chronic donwloader like me. but then there is always a choice of delete what you dont use, you can redownlaod the game any time you want anyway. Oh and i burn my downloads to dvds manually too.

 

[bluegate]

Although efficient programming and what not is a nice thing to aim for, with 50Gb blu-rays it isn't really needed.

That is exactly the attitude I'm complaining about: "Screw efficiency. We have disk space to burn."

If everyone coded with .kkreiger's levels of space efficiency, we'd be thinking "What the hell is up with Sony? Why are they giving me a thousand times more disk space than I need for my game?"

I think I misspoke in my earlier post; instead of saying 'efficient programming' I should have said 'efficient use of disk space'.

Because although it is efficient in it's use of disk space, it isn't as efficient in it's use of time, cpu and memory usage.
Whereas conventional games have the files for their 3D meshes and textures stored on a disk, ready to be read into memory, .kkrieger apparently has instruction sets on how to generate these 3D meshes and textures. Creating these files 'on the fly' takes up 'precious' time, computing power and memory.

You can kind of compare it to buying a prefabricated desk and buying an IKEA desk. The box in which the prefabricated desk comes is indeed bigger than the box of the IKEA assembly kit, however, it takes less time to set up this prefabricated desk than it takes to assemble the IKEA desk.

but then there is always a choice of delete what you dont use, you can redownlaod the game any time you want anyway.

And as they announced, you can play the game as you download it (most likely by using Gaikai's streaming ability while the PS4 downloads the install data in the background), meaning you can access your games any time you want, providing you have a steady internet connection.

 

[Roxor]

Although efficient programming and what not is a nice thing to aim for, with 50Gb blu-rays it isn't really needed.

That is exactly the attitude I'm complaining about: "Screw efficiency. We have disk space to burn."

If everyone coded with .kkreiger's levels of space efficiency, we'd be thinking "What the hell is up with Sony? Why are they giving me a thousand times more disk space than I need for my game?"

I think I misspoke in my earlier post; instead of saying 'efficient programming' I should have said 'efficient use of disk space'.

Because although it is efficient in it's use of disk space, it isn't as efficient in it's use of time, cpu and memory usage.
Whereas conventional games have the files for their 3D meshes and textures stored on a disk, ready to be read into memory, .kkrieger apparently has instruction sets on how to generate these 3D meshes and textures. Creating these files 'on the fly' takes up 'precious' time, computing power and memory.

While .kkreiger may be efficient in the department of disk space (and thus network bandwidth needed to get it in the first place), it still uses as much RAM and takes about as long to load on start-up as more traditional games of its era due to generating the models/textures/etc at load time.

You could be more efficient with the memory usage by generating textures at render time, which would also increase texture sharpness, but it would have a trade-off of requiring more computing power, which might be beyond what a games console GPU can provide.

The .kkreiger approach of "store as instructions, but generate on load", however, is not beyond the capabilities of either the PS3 era consoles or the upcoming PS4 era ones.

You can kind of compare it to buying a prefabricated desk and buying an IKEA desk. The box in which the prefabricated desk comes is indeed bigger than the box of the IKEA assembly kit, however, it takes less time to set up this prefabricated desk than it takes to assemble the IKEA desk.

Maybe, but it's also a lot slower to move the pre-assembled desk up the narrow staircase to your office than it is to carry the kit for the IKEA desk up the same staircase, so either way, it takes about the same amount of time. Getting the furniture to your house, however, is a lot easier with the IKEA approach, as you can fit a couple of pieces in the boot of your car, while the pre-assembled stuff needs to come in a moving van.