PS3 is only bright spot for Blu-ray – Xbox 360 Rage to suffer graphically
We all have different ideas about what makes our choice of games console better than the competition. Whether it’s the graphical prowess, the online functions, the control method, or a whole host of other things, we all have our own needs and wants. There is one clear advantage that the PS3 has over the Xbox 360 though (and the Wii for that matter), and that is Blu-ray. It’s not me saying so, it’s John Carmack, co-founder of id Software.
The PS3 is an expensive bit of kit, retailing for higher than either of its competitors, but when you realise that you get a Blu-ray player included in the price, it’s actually a sweet deal. Not just any old Blu-ray player either, but one of the best currently available on the market due to regular firmware upgrades.
There’s no doubt that Sony purposely took a hit on profits to get the Blu-ray player on the PS3. The current gen console has been used as a kind of trojan horse for the format, putting it in the homes of millions of gamers who may or may not have alternatively chosen HD DVD instead.
A new study on the subject of Blu-ray by ABI Research back this up. According to Edge, the Blu-ray: Consumer Survey describes the PS3 as “a bright spot” in the overall Blu-ray market. ABI principle analyst Steve Wilson said:
While you might think gamers purchase fewer movie discs than others, we didn’t see any significant evidence of that in our results. PS3 console shipments will go a long way to help bring down manufacturing costs and drive down Blu-ray player prices.
The Blu-ray format doesn’t just benefit movie fans either, as the amount of storage it offers games developers is proving a boon for the PS3. In his keynote speech at QuakeCon, Shacknews reports that Carmack stated the Xbox 360 version of Rage will suffer graphically due to the compression required to fit the game on to DVD.
While the PS3 version of the game will ship on a single Blu-ray disc, and be graphically sound, the Xbox 360 version requires two or three DVDs for the title. Due to Microsoft’s royalty fees, using three discs is not feasible, meaning that the texture data will need to be compressed substantially. That will however result in a loss of quality.
When the PS3 was first released, Sony’s decision to include a Blu-ray drive as standard was derided, but with the death of HD DVD, the decision now seems to have been inspired. Blu-ray is still a long way from being the dominant storage medium, but it is at last starting to prove its worth. And with games as well as movies.
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18 Responses to “PS3 is only bright spot for Blu-ray – Xbox 360 Rage to suffer graphically”
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August 1st, 2008
First
August 1st, 2008
exactly…i have no idea why people dont realize buray is good for games too…some people are just stupid…how can you say bluray sucks and is a waste?..who ever does is a complete retard that might be jealous.
August 1st, 2008
“Buray”??? lmao whats that? Lol
August 2nd, 2008
When Bluray can run faster then 2X, only then will it be good for media other then movies. DVD’s 12X speed is flexable for any media/data. It’s like a turtle vs a rabbit.
August 2nd, 2008
yeah but CAD four words.
Metal Gear Solid 4.
well really three words and a number lol
August 2nd, 2008
CAD, rabbit vs turtle / hare vs tortoise, tortoise won remember.
August 2nd, 2008
but the turtle won?
and plus the drive in the PS3 is quiet. now thats better than having a jet engine in a confined space.
if life is to slow then make a jam pece and enjoy the rest.
August 2nd, 2008
If you put your Metal Gear Solid 4 disc into a PC equipped with Blu Ray, you will see that EVERY SINGLE piece of data is repeated 4 times. All the storage is good, but if the disc read speed is only 2X, thus making the developers have to copy the same data into different sections of the disc just so the game doesn’t splutter, is it really THAT much of an advatage?
Imagine if HD-DVD won and both machines were equipped with it. There would have been tons of storage and with the read speed as fast as it was on HD-DVD, there would have been no need to replicate data.
Why do the better formats always lose? I.E Betamax and HD-DVD?
August 2nd, 2008
what killed HD-DVD was bad marketing. Betamax got killed by the length of the tape and porn.
But i agree that MGS 4 is being obtuse when it wants to install every time so snake can get through cancer. MS could lower the price of the 120 HDD and then the game will work but the likelihood of MS dropping the price is like getting Noel Edmond to try buying normal shirts and not go on a cruse in a TV studio.
August 2nd, 2008
Because the people vote with their wallet, and your logic is incomprehensible Hairy.
August 2nd, 2008
The people didn’t have much say in this war, it was the $$$ of Sony and the HD-DVD group that won this. Similar as to how JVC beat Sony in the VHS vs Betamax war.
Any my logic is sound and solid, have you put your copy of MGS4 into a blu-ray equipped PC?
August 2nd, 2008
Because Blu-Ray got porn, just like VHS did.
But if repeating content works just as well, then surely it doesn’t matter. Don’t fill the disc? Repeat content. Fill the disc to the rim? Do an install on the harddrive if necessary. That is what it is there for. It is good to have the extra storage space on the disc in case developers need it, DVD has no work-around for that aside from heavier compression and multiple discs (like the article just told me).
August 2nd, 2008
The PS3 is practically the only ‘Blu-ray player’ selling right now.
Even so it’s still bolted firmly in 3rd place in the sales numbers for this gen of game console.
Minute graphical variations do not mean jack to anyone (sane).
The PS3 is slightly better at one thing compared to the XBox 360 and the XBox 360 slightly better than the PS3 at another.
There’s nothing serious in it…….except the XBox 360 actually has a decent catalogue of games to play.
Blu-ray won because the industry wanted to higher margin and supposedly more secure niche, that’s all.
They know the mass-market is not going to go Blu-ray now.
That’s how come you are seeing so many high price box-sets (like the Matrix – why no Matrix 1 on it’s own, hmmm?, Planet of the Apes etc etc)
August 2nd, 2008
Hairy you just proved your stupidity, why would i want to put a video game designed for the ps3 into a blu-ray player. I’d like to know the logic that went through your head when you thought “hey i know what would be interesting, how about we put mgs4 in a blu-ray player!”
Hairy – its also similar to how microsoft buys out its competition and how it throws money at every problem is has, which is why i’m a mac owner.
August 2nd, 2008
why is it that ignorant people always bring up the speed issue….. bluray 2x isnt the same as dvd 2x! bluray 2x is roughly 72mbits (around 9mb/s)…. whereas dvd 2x is only 21mbits! so bluray is actualy closer to dvd 8x. ( and hddvd 2x is exactly the same speed at 72mbits)
August 3rd, 2008
I love the way people still dis blu-ray even tho its picking up around 5 times faster than dvd did sales wise and dvd didnt have downloads to contend with. And also the games are better on blu-ray and you have to be a total idiot to disagree (or jealous because you cant afford a ps3). Go back to your 360s you sad gimps.
August 3rd, 2008
Isn’t it funny how sites are picking up on this story, but ignoring the rest of the things Carmack said about the 360 and PS3. Taken from his interview on 1UP: -
Development and Tool: It’s almost unequivocal across the board that the 360’s a better platform to develop for.
GPU: On almost anything on the strictly graphical side, in terms of pushing vertexes and triangles on there, the 360’s hardware is superior to the PS3’s RSX. If you’re just pushing allot of fragments across it, the 360 will be faster in almost all cases. You have to kinda push hard for it to find cases where the graphics side would ever be any better [on the PS3].
CPU’s: . Given a finite time of development time it’s much, much easier to get things working well on the 360 than it is on the PS3, and that’s pretty much the case across the board.
Memory: The other major difference is the memory partitioning, and one of the biggest things that Sony does poorly for developers is their system stuff sucks up allot more resources than Microsoft’s does on the 360, so memory is MUCH more painful on the PS3. We spend a lot more time trying to crunch down the memory for that, as well as optimizing up the graphics rasterization for performance.
Storage: That’s the only real advantage that the PS3 has over the 360 from our point of view is the extra space.
PS3 fanboys need to STFU and take it from a guy that knows what he’s talking about.
August 3rd, 2008
dave – why don’t you at least wait until the game arrives before making a comparison and drawing such fanboy conclusions. its funny you don’t address the hit to publishers margins they take for authoring on bluray over dvd. hmm..i wonder why; oh that’s right becuase it’s 1. a fact 2. a fact that makes bluray a sound business decision very suspect.