Tuesday, September 6, 2005

360 degrees.

I don't know who of you reads 1UP.com, but a few of the things they've been reporting lately have gotten me thinking. 1UP does a lot of good things. Their cover stories and some of their more unique features are really a breath of fresh air as far as big video game media is concerned. But there are times when their reporting really annoys me, either because it's filled with opinion (and we all know that news and opinion do not go together), or simply because they create inferences that are highly shaky or flat-out false. One of the biggest stories lately relates to the whole HD-DVD versus Blu-ray situation. It's understandable that gaming sites would report on this issue, afterall, media format has a direct impact on the game industry. But really, the only company right now who is making a big deal of next generation media formats is Sony - and the only reason they're doing it is because they have a distinctly non-gaming agenda (ie: use PS3 to push their format into position to become the successor to DVD). But somehow a story came about that Microsoft were considering HD-DVD for Xbox 360. Obviously, this simply could not happen at the launch period - the system is only a few short months away and next generation disc formats are not even completed yet. Including a new and somewhat experimental drive in a system due to launch in a matter of months could be very tricky (and significantly increase the cost of the system). Microsoft did say that HD-DVD is a possibility for them in the future, but now sites like 1UP are constantly linking HD-DVD to Xbox 360. I think it annoys me because it's as though they are trying to create some kind of artificial battle. Microsoft has been leaning toward supporting HD-DVD, but they haven't exactly been very vocal about the whole subject. Yet various sites are trying to turn the situation into some giant war between MS and Sony. We then get told that Xbox 360 and Revolution will suffer if their makers do not include a next generation disc drive in those systems. This kind of logic seems to come from people who think that next generation automatically means "better". Yeah, Blu-ray is very high capacity (50GB on average per disc), while HD-DVD is not quite that high (around 15-30GB on average per disc). But apart from the fact that Blu-ray is more expensive as an investment (because you need all-new equipment to manufacture the discs), there are some potentially major issues on the user end as well. First of all, there's the whole capacity question. More capacity is always good, right? Well, theoretically, yes. But that's not always true. I remember that recently J Allard mentioned that around 90% of Xbox games were only using a single layer of the dual-layer DVDs that Xbox uses. So more capacity was always available, but it was barely ever required. Secondly, in the PC games market (where games are always pushing the barriers of capacity and computing requirements), the transition to DVD-based games is still ongoing. CD-ROM format games are still selling higher than their DVD-ROM counterparts, despite the fact that most computers built in the last few years are DVD-compatible. It is expected that it will be at least another few years before all new PC games only sell on DVD-ROM. Both Xbox 360 and Revolution are using dual-layer DVDs, which store around 9GB or so. Sure, there might be cases where more than one disc is required, especially if a game contains massive amounts of digital audio content and so on. But even then, the cost of a double-disc game won't be too high, because we're talking about an established media format. Also, since DVD has been around for a while now, DVD drives can now run at significantly higher speeds. This means that the seek time (the time taken for the drive to locate the required information) is much shorter than it once was. On a Blu-ray drive, where the disc is running at much higher capacity, the seek time is sure to be significantly longer. I can't imagine how this issue can be solved in time for PS3's launch, unless an extremely expensive drive is included (thus making PS3 prohibitively costly for consumers). So in actual fact, dual layer DVDs are probably fine for next generation games in general. Revolution and Xbox 360 may not be going as far-out as PlayStation 3 in this area, but I regard their solution as far more sensible. The required capacity is there, the cost is low, the loading times will be reduced from what they previously were...there really are no major downsides. I just don't know how Sony is going to make it all work seamlessly in PlayStation 3, without charging a fortune for the console. Even if the system is expensive, we're still talking about a fundamentally new technology. The possibility of disc read errors and long load times is extremely high with PlayStation 3 software. In actual fact, I do think that Blu-ray is probably ultimately a better way to go than HD-DVD, simply because it's a longer-term solution. But in the context of next generation systems, I don't really know why this is an issue at all. It really wasn't until Sony made it one, anyway. More importantly, J Allard seems to have pretty much confirmed that Microsoft is happy to stick with dual layer DVDs for Xbox 360. Why introduce HD-DVD on that system anyway, now that they're locked in? That's no different to having a 64DD attachment or something - it just means that consumers will need to buy more hardware and those who don't own an HD-DVD drive won't be able to play those games. What's the point? Considering that the Xbox 360 will not include the hard drive in the Core System package already, the concept of further splitting the market with an entirely new optical drive seems asenine to me. I'm actually glad that J Allard pretty much backed away from that entire concept. The hard drive thing is bad enough, but it's really the only significant issue in what is otherwise a pretty impressive total package. I just wish that 1UP in particular would stop drawing such long bows with things like this. It doesn't help and it feeds misinformation into the minds of gamers. And that, in turn, fuels debates that are predicated on shaky news reporting. Sammy: I think that part of the appeal of OBB was that people were being "isolated". Every time they visited OB, they could only post in that one area. For the casual user, it doesn't matter. It's probably a turn-off. But for the hardcore user, it means a lot of activity and variety in the posts. Afterall, you only have one place to post about any subject you can think of. Actually, I was somewhat surprised at the success of those two events. It was a very unique concept though, and I think the entire thing was very valuable for the site. My goal is always to create things on OB that nobody else is doing, because I think that tends to make OB a more interesting place in general. Anyway, as for your idea, I would definitely entertain that. Since Shy is our official event coordinator, it's something you might be able to create with him in the future as our next event. It might be worth planning out now, because it sounds like it could require some serious organization. Ajeh: You got that right.

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