What is Digg?99 Comments
- RichPowers, on 10/12/2007, -6/+31I was reading how PS3 games are already filling up Blu-Ray discs!
I don't own an Xbox, but it seems like limiting file sizes will promote tighter game design and more innovation. Hell, devs might have to rely on gameplay more than graphics to sell a title.
Some of the best games I've ever played were under 50MB though... - Zero2aHero, on 10/12/2007, -6/+25Yes, I think it is. In Major Nelson's podcast last week had the guys who made Roboblitz on the show, and they said they had to simplify the game concept a little bit to fit it under 50mb. If you haven't played the game, it's pretty boring... graphics aside... if game developers are having to remove actual content (not just lessening the graphics) to make it fit under 50mb then there is a problem.
Which I feel there is. - whatthegeek, on 10/12/2007, -4/+22Well, I'm not surprised that they had to cut corners, however, I think that's what will drive developers to innovate.
In today's XBLA games they're cutting corners. In tomorrow's XBLA games they will be using development techniques that ensure that they don't have to sacrifice any gameplay elements - Guspaz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+17Let us not forget all the games produced for legacy consoles and current handhelds. The N64 only allowed games up to 64MiB in size, for example, which isn't that much higher than XBLA's 50MB limit. And most games used significantly less space since smaller cartridges were cheaper to manufacture. Look at all the great titles for the N64 that used less than 50MiB of space, and how much entertaining gameplay they managed to supply, graphics aside.
Of course, the N64 didn't have the processing power for compression nearly as sophisticated as the XBOX 360 does. The 360 also has a huge amount of system/graphics ram by comparison, 512MiB, which allows for large amounts of decompressed data to be cached.
I'm of the opinion that 50MB isn't a limit on gameplay at all, only graphical/audio complexity, which frankly is secondary to gameplay. Besides, this may lead to a revival of real-time rendered music (wavetable synthesis, for example), which I'm a big fan of and favour over pre-recorded audio.
There's also another issue that everybody has ignored; download times. Say you're in a broadband-challenged location (For example, many parts of the US) and only have 512 kilobit downstream internet. 50MB would already take you no less than 13 minutes to download, which isn't really annoying, but is still a decent chunk of time if you're sitting there waiting for it (Thank goodness the 360 supports background downloading, unlike the PS3!). Imagine if the limit had been set at 500MB instead. You'd have to wait over two hours for a game to download! That severely curtails impulse buys (have some friends over, decide to purchase a game to play, for example).
Of course, I'm a bit of a hypocrite; I'm a huge supporter of Valve's STEAM platform, and have purchased many multi-gigabyte games using it. - whatthegeek, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16I've been wondering the same thing myself.... I suspect they'll be reencoding the audio, as well as tweaking and compressing the rest of the game. That's probably the reason that a port could take so long to come to the XBLA
- slushpuppie, on 10/12/2007, -9/+22 It's funny that you mention blogspam, I wrote an article on that topic just last week.
http:://iseriouslydontcareaboutyourblogandnooneelsedoeseither.com
I totally agree that people who blogspam on digg should find a better way to promote their sites... I mean, how many people really think that this is the way that popular websites get started... probably not too many, and that's probably the best advice for blogging of all time - Diggtatorship, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14The limit is absolutely NOT a problem. After-all, it's not as if they're saying NO games over 50MB. If you need more than 50MB then you're probably making a full-fledged game, and you can release it as such... on a disc. People forget what the XBLA is supposed to be.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Yes, PS3 does. And the limit for it is 500MB. This is perhaps part of the reason that this question is being asked.
There aren't a lot of titles yet, and none of them are as good as Geometry Wars (unsurprisingly).
There are a few games available (Blast Factor) and some available soon, like Calling All Cars seen below.
http://ps3.ign.com/objects/858/858887.html - djSyndrome, on 10/12/2007, -3/+13I'm curious as to how Konami is going to squeeze Symphony of the Night under the 50MB limit. The PlayStation original used redbook audio, which even compressed would probably still go over the limit. Are they recoding all of the audio? Or is Microsoft going to lift the limit for higher-profile games?
- joquarky, on 10/12/2007, -0/+9@RichPowers
"Also compression by definition is losing quality."
I think you mean *lossy* compression. If all forms of compression inherently lost quality, then zip files would be corrupted.
You can procedurally generate even HD quality content from a few kilobytes of code, it just means you have to write more code. - IceCreamMatt, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11Some of the best video games ever made were under 50MB, So it can't really be that bad.
- JeffH, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9It'll be quite a task, but it's possible. You see, game companies are really lazy, especially when it comes to compression. Use the right compression and you're gold though.
Companies like SNK can't launch their games on XBLA (despite it being a perfect place) because their games are over 50MB. But they're so goddamn simple they could be compressed immensely. Just because a company choses not to do it doesn't mean it's not possible. Symphony of the Night will hopefully hush all those developers that say PS1 full games on XBLA isn't possible. - serenejen, on 10/12/2007, -3/+11Ha ha! The blog spam thing is funny because IT'S THE SAME AUTHOR OF THIS POST! I think he can blogspam his own article. Lol. ^_^
- KibibyteBrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+8I think its mostly a way to keep the brick-and-mortar game distribution system happy. I know from direct experience that the brick-and-mortar video game selling establishment has been doing everything in their power over the last ten years to keep the primary mode of game distribution on physical media. By limiting the size to 50 MB, its sort of MS's way of saying "We think online distribution is a great idea, but don't worry, we still remember you guys too!"
- posure, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7There absolutely needs to be a limit, especially when the 360's come with 20gb hard drives. 50mb is a bit small though. I'd like to see it increased to somewhere between 150-250mb, with an absolute cap at 250mb. I don't think they'll increase it until the new hard drives have been selling for a while though.
- lucas448, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8the only reason they do that is so they can fit one game and a gamer tag on there memory cards... for the poor people who got tricked into buying a core system
- whatthegeek, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13Small Arms
Lumines Live!
Roboblitz
Assault Heroes
Geometry Wars
Nothing worthwhile other than emulations of decade old arcade titles? Look again.
Bigger isn't always better. - OpCzar, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9True, all the Nintendo 64 games are under 32 MB and most of them were 3d...
- robbiedo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Its not like this is Koranic law. If the 50 MB limit becomes a serious impediment to profits, then I suspect that will change as needed.
- HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8Well, the limit isn't a good thing, I'll say that.
There's no reason to artifically constrict just to drive innovation.
Also, you can't really compress textures like they say. You can generate textures from a mathematical formula if you want. But you can only generate certain textures, like the very repetitive ones seen in Roboblitz (look at that expanse of floor grid). You can also do this with any texture you create mathematically. You cannot generically take a complex texture and reduce it hundreds of times.
You could compress it arbitrarily with a wavelet-based scheme like JPEG2000, but past a certain point, you're just throwing away resolution, not compressing it more. - computerdude33, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6And, so that people with too much time and money can buy a ton of games off XBLA and keep them all under a few GB on their hard drive.
- TheG2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Don't bash serenejen, games use vectors to create fantastic textures. Granted it takes tons of processing power to do so, its very do-able. Another way of producing low sized but nice textures was used in .krieger (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.kkrieger). Anythings possible ;)
- dacheetah, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5You can get good gameplay from small files.
Hell, when I was younger I spent hours playing IBM's "Alley Cat". The entire game was smaller than a single bitmap screenshot of the game. (Something like 65KB) - slimpip, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5@ Diggtatorship
And what is the XBLA supposed to be? A haven for $10 mini-games? If there's a 50MB limit there should be a low point/price limit. - OpCzar, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Wow, that sucks for everyone else if this is the case...
- OpCzar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I don't own an xbox yet but have calculated that a 800 MS point game is around 14 $ CAD. That's in line with most budget pc games that are in retail stores right now and these multiplayer arcade games are more popular than any of pc counterpart I know of...
- gamerzworld, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I think the size limit might be the reason why I haven't seen any good games on XBLA. Yea, it has DOOM but its 800 MS Points! (A little pricey compared to all the other XBLA titles) They might want to make the limit a little bit more since most of the new titles on XBLA are getting higher prices than the original ones that XBLA started out with.
- spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -3/+8Even if you can't fit the games of the future onto a single DVD, why does it matter?
I'd much rather have $200 knocked off the price of the console in exchange for games being spread over multiple DVDs.
I can understand it for films, getting up and having to switch disks during a film would be a chore, but either larger installs or switching disks during a game just doesn't matter as much. I consider both blue-ray and HD-DVD film formats, not game formats. I think it's wrong to attach them to games consoles in order to drive film sales.
As for the link above, it's related to the topic, doesn't spam mean it's completely unrelated and unsolicited? So what if it's not a big well known site, it's still related - coheedcollapse, on 10/12/2007, -4/+8Wow. When something bad happens on any console other than the PS3 someone goes out and turns it into a good thing. Developers are being forced to develop games in new and different ways because they're being put in a tight situation...how is that good?
Xbox 360 has a *****-ton of great things going for it, why can't we just admit that this one thing is a negative? Please. Anyways I'm sure if someone needs the limit to be raised, Microsoft will break the rules a little bit for them. - gweedo767, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Demo's can't be downloaded without a hard drive, that is why there is no cap. The 50MB cap is so people with core systems can fit them their memory cards.
- AARGH2K, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7Folks, these are meant to be "arcade" titles. Something fun to play, quick to download (for EVERYONE). If a developer is making a game that does not fit, and if it is "that good" then they should be able to get someone to distribute it for them as a disc based game. Arcade wasn't meant for your standard full size release games. If they put up huge games, of uncompressed content, all you would see is complaints of how long it took to download this game, and they should have done this or that to make it smaller.
Look at what the developers did when CD became popular, lots of useless FMV, and static images. Developers need a bit of a challenge to get them out of their "storage and bandwidth aren't our concern" mentality. - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Vectors and placing items what I refer to by creating mathematically. This is likely what Roboblitz does. Developers want to scan textures, not generate them by hand.
Adding randomness is fine, but it doesn't create enough variance in textures to get over the repetiveness. Furthermore, it's only useful for textures which are already repetitive on a small distance (like tile). To represent something which is less repetitive, you'd just have to use a large, low-res texture. You can add all the noise you want to that, and it isn't going to bring the lack of resolution caused by the limited texture space back.
All these things you mention are special cases. As I said, you cannot generically compress a texture in this way, just certain ones. - thefirstenemy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6"Small Arms is not very good. It just doesn't hold up for more than a few minutes."
I'll argue the exact opposite. At first the game didn't seem that great to me, but after playing with it for a while I found out that it's pretty damn awesome. The only thing I've had some issues with, is that a few of the maps are poorly designed that give some characters advantages. - HappyScrappy, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6I chalk the crappy level problems up to being because they knocked off the level designs from Super Smash Bros Melee, which also had problems like this.
But that doesn't enter into the main problem, which is the characters have no balance. Also all the distance weapons remove much of the strategy which was present in Smash Bros, which was how to defend against a character which is coming at you. In Small Arms, they don't need to approach you, they just shoot you from afar. In Smash Bros, the weapons were either really weak (Fox), or didn't last long (all the pickups). - zzz@tkz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6They managed to cram Small Arms and Lumines Live! (Well, part of it) in it, if that's any proof that the 50MB limit isn't that bad.
- spudnic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5Aren't they held on Microsoft servers? If they are then bandwidth costs are the limiting factor
- Diggtatorship, on 10/12/2007, -9/+12You think they would have any trouble getting Perfect Dark to fit onto XBLA?
You truly are a noob :) Its not like they're limiting awesomeness or anything, just disk space. Perfect Dark was released on a friggen 32MB cartridge to begin with! - serenejen, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I almost agree with you, but I more or less feel like the file sizes and games are fine, but the prices should go down.
- vermin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3This actually makes the most sense. The EB's and WalMart's know how popular Xbox Arcade is and they're probably pressuring MS into imposing this limit. The move to download only is already here, but these retailers are trying to hang on, and MS is for whatever reason, accomodating them.
- StarManta, on 10/12/2007, -4/+7Yeah, but Small Arms is a piece of *****. I'm sure compost compacts very easily :)
- swoosh_bnd, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6Yeah, I think it is a good thing to a certain extent, except when they take something out (Roboblitz multiplayer and Lumines) where they realize that they need to take it all out to make the 50 Meg limit, then they realize that they can charge for everything else in the game to make it complete which totally screws the customers. At least Roboblitz is making their multiplayer free unlike the additions for Lumines Live.
- Diggtatorship, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I don't think it will be all that hard. If anything suffers it will be the sound which is probably the bulk of the size. The sound can be compressed and the 2d graphics can also be compressed using newer techniques to use even less space.
- apoc06, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3technology advances for a reason. not embracing new technology will halt more advanced discoveries.
im not saying that everyone needs to be cutting edge [which is a big factor against blu-ray/hd-dvd adoption for games], but limiting an hd game to 50MB and justifying it by saying that it will drive innovation?
come on! everyone knows the real reason is so that games can fit on the 64MB memory cards. if MS had not made the decision to not include a harddrive in the core system, a limit like this would not exist. if MS had released a larger memory card in the first place, or included harddrives in both x360 models, there would be no 50MB limit. this is SPIN!
seriously, what drives innovation more: an imposed limitation on what youre capable of doing/ accessing, or the freedom to experiment and try new things without limitation?
i have never heard a developer say "yeah, we created this new cool facet of the game because of all these guidelines and restrictions and because we didnt have enough room on the disc", however, i constantly hear, "yeah, we had to leave out such and such level because we didnt have enough space". dont believe me? ask any developer that wanted to and couldnt port their games to the n64 or gamecube how they felt about space concerns. space or lack thereof is most likely the biggest factor against nintendo sales for the last two generations.
when they say drive innovation, they mean drive research into better compression methods and workarounds. thats not true innovation. - whatthegeek, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4By making a game small enough to fit on a regular DVD you avoid the need for a next gen optical disc format such as HD DVD or Blu Ray. Neither of those has a read speed that's as fast as that of a standard DVD. In the case of the PS3 developers have to compensate for this by preloading around 5gigs of data onto your hard drive. This is done to speed up load times, or rather make it so you don't see the load times. It works, but the same effect could have been achieved through better compression on a regular DVD, which would have saved everyone (sony, the developers, and the consumers) a lot of money
- staticneuron, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Thats funny because some of the greatest games I have ever played can only fit on DVD's.
- serenejen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5"There is no end benefit to gamers to artificially drive higher compression and procedural texturing by using a file size limit."
If we improve our compression methods, then maybe we wouldn't need large and expensive disc formats. How is that not any sort of useful? - aweraw, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5I have to agree here coheedcollapse... this is like Nintendo in the N64 days saying "The size limitations of the cartridge will drive innovations in game play!"
My guess as to why they impose this limit: they save money by not having to add additional capacity to their distribution network to support larger games. - gwolf, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Couldn't the PS3 play that from a standard CD. Seems like a waste of hard drive space.
- HDhandyman, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4I really don't see what the problem is. Driving innovation is a good thing. Microsoft has provided all of the required Dev. kits, Unreal engine, now XNA, etc., and done it with style and efficiency. Two years ago we didn't even know we'd be sitting here arguing over the size it would take to build a successful arcade title. If everyone wants ports and ***** then buy the original or get an emulator on your puter. Let other people find new ways to create games given the stipulations. There's an old phrase..."Give em an inch, and they'll take a mile!". I, for one, think that the size limit is a breath of fresh air. If it weren't for the 50 mb size limit we might not have Geometry Wars or the dual analog control scheme that we've grown so fond of.
- cyssero, on 04/18/2009, -0/+3Guspaz, that was an extremely intelligent response. I completely agree, particularly in regards to the download times and impulse buying. A 50MB limit is a good place to stop at.
-
Show 51 - 99 of 99 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is