

Because of new video codecs like H.264, HD videos don't need to take up significantly more space than non-HD video encoded in MPEG2.





If you want to stream varied, high quality textures from disc, 50 GB won't be any better than 9 GB. One Blu-ray disk can fit a texture large enough to cover a square with a side of one or two kilometers (that's about 3 - 6000 feet for imperials) with a mipmapped, non-repeating, non compressed high resolution texture. That's not even nearly enough for a large game world like Oblivion, San Andreas or Just Cause. If you want to create large non-repeating textures, your only option is to use texture synthesizing algorithms to create new textures in real time. And the SPUs of the Cell processor in the PS3 should be perfect for that task.



PC games have been using resolutions comparable to the PS3 in games that ship on a small number of CDs for years. Sure they use the HDD on the PC to cache compressed data, but that option will be there on the PS3 as well.



Since I had access to the actual sales during that period, I can attest to the fact that at the time it was canceled THUNDERSTRIKE was actually selling more copies than both THOR and AVENGERS combined. Why were profitable titles like THUNDERSTRIKE, WAR MACHINE and all the 2099 books cancelled? The answer I was given was that the guy in charge of marketing had decided that these additional titles were hurting the core company franchises. He believed that the sales on THOR would go up as soon as THUNDERSTRIKE was cancelled, and AMAZING SPIDER-MAN would increase with SPIDER-MAN 2099 gone.

Sony are just about to release the PS3 in Japan and the US. It is going to be so expensive that all the people who complained about the price for the Xbox 360 last year are looking like cheapskates today. The main reason why the PS3 is even more expensive than the comparatively powerful Xbox 360 is said to be that it plays Blu-ray films. The Blu-ray drive is also said to be why the initial launch was delayed from this spring to November. It is also given as the reason why Sony had to back down from their plans for a worldwide launch. (Worldwide means Japan, North America and Europe these days. Third world countries like Australia don't count)Some people argue that the Blu-ray drive will enable the PS3 to have bigger games, and that it will be a major benefit in the long run. While I'll admit that some games will benefit from more than the 9 GB of storage offered by DVD's, I really doubt that there will be many such games. Here are a few reasons why I believe Blu-ray won't be a big win for game programmers:These aren't all the arguments against Blu-ray, and there are a few valid counter arguments, but that is not the subject I'm writing about, and it's not a conversation I'm interested in having, so I'm going to stop there. Please don't email me about how Blu-ray on the PS3 is a good idea for gaming. I've heard your arguments and I don't think they are strong enough.If we accept that the PS3 won't be getting a Blu-ray in order to make it a better gaming machine, whyit get a Blu-ray drive? If you've read the title of this entry, you know what I think. The answer is obvious. To make sure Blu-ray wins over HD-DVD. But if you look at the numbers, they simply don't make sense.Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Pictures Entertainment both have a gross revenue of ~$6.6 Billion. The movie subsidy is losing over $100 million dollars each year. Manufacturing DVD players and other non-gaming home electronics isn't going too well either for Sony. Computer games are making a nice profit of roughly $1/3 billion, though. That's one third of Sonys entire profit. (See e.g. these for more information)What does Sony stand to gain of Blu-ray wins? Sony will sell a few extra high profit Blu-ray players before they are pushed out of the market by cheap no-name players. It doesn't really matter that much which format wins for the movie studios Sony owns - a few extra cents on each DVD sold will go to Sony in royalties, but not huge amounts of money for a company like Sony. Look at all the money JVC didn't make by inventing VHS, or how Toshiba who largely invented the DVD format aren't a presence in the DVD market today. In all honesty, Sony doesn't really stand to win that much money on Blu-ray.So why would Sony risk the market dominance of a very large and profitable subsidy doing something that doesn't even have the potential to be a huge monetary win for them?The first thing to note when explaining it is to note that this has been done before.Consider the case of Commodore Business Machines . Commodore went out of business by trying to force closed and slow systems like the CDTV and the Amiga 600 and expensive high end systems like the Amiga 2000 and Amiga 3000 on the market, while their buyers wanted affordable, powerful and extensible home computers like C64 and Amiga 500. Why didn't Commodore release a follow up system to the Amiga 500 for seven years? Commodore could have released a new Amiga system with significantly higher performance at a comparable price any time they wanted to, and I am convinced it would have sold extremely well. I believe they chose to release closed toy-systems like the CDTV and the Amiga 600 instead because releasing a true heir to the Amiga 500 would have cannibalized the already almost non-existing market for high end systems like the Amiga 2000.For another example, take this quote from an article about Marvel comics choice to scrap the Thunderstrike comic book:Marvel chose to scrap comic books that sold well in order to ease the pressure on comic books that weren't selling, but where considered 'core company franchises'. While Commodore made much of their money on home computers like the C64, I believe the people running Commodore didn't want to produce 'unprofessional' hobbyist computers; they desperately wanted their core franchise to be professional computer systems, and threw their business down the drain trying to make it so.I think that what are deemed 'core company franchises' doesn't come down to rational reasoning, it comes down to things like company politics, illusions of grandeur and clinging to past greatness. In the case of Sony, I don't think there are any rational reasons why they are willing to risk losing their dominance of the console market in order to 'win' Hollywood. They are caught by the glamour of Hollywood, it's the same glamour that makes computer giants like Intel and Microsoft, who have enough spare change to buy several movie studios, to bow down to Hollywood and implement expensive, fragile, inherently insecure DRM systems that none of their customers are asking for.It shouldn't be surprising that Hollywood, who are in the business of selling illusions, are exceptional at selling themselves to investors and business partners. Who doesn't want to mingle with the stars?