PS4 Stuck With Discs "for the Foreseeable Future"

[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.