400GB Blu-Ray disc, good for games?
Pioneer has come up with a whopping 16 layer Blu-Ray disc capable of holding 400GB. The disc has 16 layers, each layer being 25GB, thats a lot of information it can hold.
Now the question is, can it be played in the Playstation 3 for its games or movie playback, whatever? Pioneer has stated:
“Since the optical specifications of the objective lens…are the same as those for the existing BD discs, it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs.”
This means that we can probably put one of these 400GB disc in our PS3’s, but why 400GB, we will see any gaming benefits from this? Of course we will, simply because developers will be able to add a lot more content. Games such as Metal Gear Solid 4 and Heavenly Sword reached nearly full capacity of a dual layered 50GB Blu-Ray disc. But then again developers can use a 100GB blu-ray disc if they ever need to go above 50GB, i highly doubt they will go above 50GB this generation.
Games can fit on an 8GB DVD, HD Movies can Fit on a 25GB Blu-Ray disc so why do we need a 400GB you may ask? Here’s a famous quote:
“Nobody will ever need more than 640 kB RAM [Bill Gates, 1983]“
Anyway, down to a technical point of view, we won’t be seeing 400GB games this generation simply because they won’t be able to mass market them due to the failure rate each layer produces.
400GB this Generation? No.
100GB this generation? More than likely.
I can see Final Fantasy XIII being on a 100GB quad layer disc.
400GB Blu-Ray disc’s for the Playstation 4 anyone?
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Comments
400 gigs not with these lazy developers they cry n cry about space and power now they have both and what they do port….. ha ha
Here’s what I think.
No, we will not need 400Gb discs for games this gen, or mabey as long as video games are being made. But who knows when we start playing on Holo-Decks how much data space that will take. And the PS3 can only be updated to read up to 8 layers anyway. The PS3 is can read 2 layers right now, through firmware it can start reading 4 and 8 layer discs (100 and 200 Gb discs). And I DO think that we will need 200Gb discs in the PS3’s lifetime.
I have publicly predicted for 2 years now that FF13 will be the debut of the 100Gb disc, though I though they MAY have given it to Kojima when I heard he went over 50Gb with MGS4. I think FF13 will fill up around 90Gb of those available 100. And I think the PS3’s Swan Song later in it’s life, will be games that need the 200Gb discs. Don’t get me wrong. I don’t think any of those later games will need close to 200Gb of data space, but they will need over 100, And it’s not like you can jump up in layers by 1’s. It has to double.
So I think games on PS3 will get REALLY big, but not over 200Gb. And 200Gb is as much as current PS3’s can read anyway. I believe Sony thought ahead with using Blu-Ray exactly as much as they needed to. I think they purposely planned it all out thinking that the PS3 was going to be around for 2 whole generations of the competition without being surpassed. I love when a plan comes together.
400 GB will push what the PS3 is capable of and give you more content and better graphics. The thing is that it is too early, but for now keep on making it bigger!
WRONG!!
MGS4 is on a Dual Layer Blu-Ray disc but doesn’t fill it, it occupies 33GB
Developers are hardly using the huge space on Blu-Ray Discs so don’t hope they’ll use 400GB adecuately, maybe in a distant future though
content is still expensive to produce in hd, and that combined with the stigma that gamers do not want long games anymore, what exactly would they use the space for? even the epic 100 hour rpgs these days are more like 10 to 15 hour games split into trilogies… I personally think sony would have been better served to have put 1-2 gigs of ram and a more powerful graphics card for the less then the cost of a blu-ray drive and games would have benefited more. But games are clearly not the primary focus this generation.
The thing that some what boggles my mind about the need for such massive storage is the fact that pc games have been in hd for awhile now and almost never require more then 10 gigs.
For rendering movies in hd the space is wonderful, but I question ultimately how important having all that space fore movies is if you actually like playing games versus watching interactive movies like metal gear solid 4, which in the end is only about 5 hours worth of gameplay.
The cost to produce 400 gigs of content for a single game would be astronomical and I think it might all be too much for the gamer to take in even if it were.
Likely the space could be used for quad hd movies, but if hd content is so expensive to produce and requiring the consumer to purchase compatible devices for playback how would this ever be financially feasible, really for the developers or the consumers?
It’s great for backing up data off large hard drives but rather redundant for games. I’d prefer more memory, more cpu/gpu cores in the next gen. It’ll be interesting if the next generation sees a the rumored all digital platform, how in the bloody hell do they expect to deliver 30 gig or larger games when in America they still charge you $50+ for a 1.5 meg download?
Actually MGS4 was exceeding 50GBs, so Kojima had to cut things out and compress things and eliminate multi-language audio, subtitles and lip synch animation against his wishes to make it fit, and that’s why it’s probably around 33GBs if what you say is correct. Otherwise we know from Kojma himself that having the game the way he initially wanted meant going over 50GBs.
Sony is also on record stating that future games like Resistence 2 will be necessitating 50GB discs. As well when you consider it if hese games which are already using 50GB discs want to get bigger and better, being ready with higher capacity discs will be a good thing.
And 400GB discs can have their uses people! One of the first things I’d envisioned is developers releasing multiple PS2 game anthologies on blu-ray. Imagine getting the entire Metal Gear Series or Resident Evil or Devil May Cry or Silent Hill or Final Fantasy or Fatl Frame games all on one disc as a re-release collection! Of course it’ll take a bit of reprogramming emulation work but there’s tons of potential there! It might even work on 40GBs! Publishers can take great advantage of it with back catalogue anthologies for the hardcore gamers who are always looking for old games and they can make some good money off of them too! I know I’d love to get a bunch of old games I’d missed in a neat blu-ray package! We need to let publishers know about this!
no company would ever re-release an entire ps1 or ps2 series all on one disc when they could break them up and sell them individually. pirates might though.
Sure they can… Of course they’ll price that one blu-ray disc accordingly… It won’t be the same price as one blu-ray game, but it would be cheaper than buying them all separately. So in the end selling all the games on blu-ray will net as much money as selling them separately.
Also consider that PSOne games are damn hard to get re-released on CDs anymore since Sony has stopped manufacturing them, so one would have to jump through enormous hoops just to get it going again and only very few do like when Konami got the Metal Gear Solid Essential collection which they stressed they had to beg Sony to do, otherwise good luck finding many of these sorts of games re-released outside of Japan. And it’s a good alternative for those of us who don’t ever want to bother with digital distribution. Inevitably Sony will do the same for games on DVD one PS2 manufacturing is halted.
And for publishers it’ll be more cost effective to simply have everything on one disc at some point in the future. Publishers re-releasing older games in this way will have everything to gain as those players looking for older titles won’t have to pay enormous prices for old games on E-bay and their money will end up with the developer instead of through used games at retailers where the proceeds don’t get back to the original creators. Once Sony pulls the plug on the PS2, it’ll be a great opportunity for publishers to make some more money off their back catalog aside from digital distribution methods which realistically many people are still shying away from so as to save hard drive space and not waste time and internet bandwidth downloading. And besides releases of this sort are mainly attractive to collectors and hardcore fans who by and large prefer physical products.
I really want to say that the Next Generation of Gaming Systems would be purely Digital which I would really hate since I like having a Physical Disk so I don’t have to worry about DRM Schemes etc etc etc…
I do have to agree with LC above in saying it would cost alot to create 400GB of HD content for games. Espically like he said they are making games smaller and smaller when it comes to actual play time. That way they could make more money of course.
Now you have to think why aren’t they filling the 50GB discs now? The only people taking advantage of it are 1st Parties and the only 3rd Party to take advantage of it was Konami and that was with a PS3 exclusive called MGS4. So why aren’t they using the extra Space to put more content in the PS3 versions? Well… because they aren’t going to do more then they really have to for the PS3 when they aren’t getting any extra money for it. Sony would have to pay the 3rd Parties extra for the content like Microsoft did for the DLC for GTA IV. As we all know it is doubtful Sony will ever do this. They will focus on there 1st party games and try to encourage 3rd Parties to take advantage of the Space but they won’t.
See the sad thing we all have to remember is to us this is all about Entertainment but to them the CEO’s and Stock Holders this is a Buisness and is all about Money not about what is best for us gamers. So until Sony either pays 3rd parties or the 360 advances significantly we will be stuck with the short end of the stick and end up with ports of 360 games.
400Gb disks….. Just imagine the install space that would take on your PS3 HD.
Sony pay 3rd parties? it’s the other way around, people pay sony for the rights.
So Microsoft paid for extra content for GTA IV, if your XBox360 lasts long enough before breaking for you to play this extra content, then good luck. But you Microsoft Fanboys really should wake up and smell the graphics chip burning inside your rushed out console, 75% of the game are just made for online play. PS3 has for more CO-OP games and game that don’t require you to play online.
I havn’t used my xbox for 8-9months, its a damaged ship in the water and waiting to sink. 400GB disks, GREAT but Microsoft will never get them…….. ha ha
The reason you don’t ’see’ many games taking advantage of 50GB discs… is because many games are multiplatform and therefore must fit on the 360’s DVD disc. But there are plenty of examples of developers taking advantage of it. Stranglehold released an LE exclusive to PS3 that included the film ‘Hard Boiled.’ The Darkness took advantage of blu-ray to add more TV channel content. Square Enix said that Final Fantasy XIII is exclusive to PS3 primarily because blu-ray is the best format for storing HD FMV. Rockstar has made a deal with Sony to create 2 PS3 exclusives because they want to make use of blu-ray. Plenty of current exclusive games on PS3 like Resistence, Heavenly Sword, Uncharted and MGS4 have content way beyond the storage of DVD.
I laugh at people who say 50gb BluRays aren’t really needed.
If not for the fact that most games are multiplatform, they would be filling up 50gb BluRays by now. Games such as Oblivion or GTA or MMOs. Games with huge worlds all in HD quality.
Yea, computer games have been in HD resolution for awhile now, but they’ve only in the past few years had HD quality graphics. No doubt once BluRay becomes standard in computers, PC games will start utilizing it too.
MGS4 only filled up 33gb because they couldn’t fit in multiple different languages and extra content. It would have required 100gb if they hadn’t omitted those extras. And if MGS4 had been a sandbox game, it would have required 200-400gb BluRays.
What really interests me is Rockstar’s exclusive PS3 games. They are exclusive for the fact that PS3 has BluRay. I can’t help but wonder how big and how awesome the graphics and audio will be with the freedom of BluRay. I’m pretty sure those games would require 100gb BluRays at the least if they don’t compress.

















Odd that Heavenly Sword filled a 50 gig disc when it was on a 25 gig disc?
MGS4 is the only game to use the 50 gig disc so far, and for you to even insinuate that any title in the next 5 years would take even close to 400 gigs is beyond laughable.
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