messiah

Bizarre Creations are reporting that PGR4 will not feature night-time tracks as they are unable to fit them on the DVD - although they dont say whether this just applies to the new cities or the existing ones too.

I'm starting to think this is going to become a serious problem for Microsoft before the 360 reaches the end of its life - its already affected a few games, who says we didnt need a next-gen format built in from day one...

edit - it does affect existing tracks.

PeteBrant

It was bound to happen. Although most games will be able to go multi-disc and swap - But obviously for a racing game, that isn't really going to work.

I am quite surpirsed that Bizarre have expressly given the space on a DVD as a reason though, given that they are a first party devco.

Neanderthal

iTrader: (6)

Aye, I'm surprised Bizarre where allowed by MS to make such a negative statement about the 360.
However, as you say, it's worrying!

messiah

Bizarre Creations has divulged the final list of cities to be seen and recklessly raced through in the upcoming automotive extravaganza, Project Gotham Racing 4:

• Macau, China
• Las Vegas, USA
• London, England
• St. Petersburg, Russia
• Tokyo, Japan
• New York, USA
• Shanghai, China
• Quebec, Canada
• Nurburgring, Germany

The sequel to the Xbox 360 launch title will also boast weather effects, motorcycles and a Michelin-sponsored test track, with some of the returning tracks from the previous game seeing adjustments to enhance the flow of racing and prevent pileups. They will also be presented at a different time of day, though this aspect itself will not be adjustable. Posting in the official Bizarre Creations forum, a staff member noted, "You won't see different times of day per city because this involves recreating all the textures again (one for day and one for night). Whilst this wasn't a problem for our dev team, it was a problem fitting all this data onto a single DVD."

To counter this issue, however, Bizarre points to the game's varied lighting models: "For example, Macau is always in the daytime, but if you play it during a storm everything looks darker and more foreboding. If you play during a blizzard then things are slightly tinged blue and everything seems more frozen. Of course, playing this track in sunshine will make everything appear bright and yellowy."

Expect to drive around a bright and yellowy Macau sometime in September (if the game's done, that is).

PeteBrant

Blimey. That's quite an admission.

bob269

Or will they simply offer it as d/l content at a nice fee

messiah

there's another storage woe, my HDD is running a bit low on space too...

bob269

Havent they solved that one the end of this month, get your credit card out

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

If you cant delete content then it may be worth doing the cache clear on your HD. Deletes all the game updates but will free up some space and you'll just download the updates when needed.

messiah

just did the cache clearing a couple of weeks ago.

down to about 2.8gb now (after I deleted a demo or 2 yesterday) and could probably delete some other stuff - but still, I'd rather not have to do it at all...Shivering Isles will get me another 1gb back if I ditch that...

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

So you're just lazy

messiah

lol - well I am a northerner!

no point in me keeping shivering isles when I sold Oblivion on anyway...

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

I've got about 6 demos on mine. I'm not going to play them again but I've just not removed them yet.. I'm lazy as well I think the 20Gb is fine for most users.

bob269

Until the downloadable HD movie service becomes available later this year.

messiah

Ms have completely underestimated the storage required if you ask me - 20gb might not have been so bad if you did actually get the 20gb, and not the 13 you did get.

Can anyone tell me what storage space is available to the user of a PS3?

STi wanna Subaru

iTrader: (1)

Then you buy the bigger drive. Fact is it's a games console first. That is extras for most and if you want it then it's cool you pay for it but I'd rather not have to pay for a large drive I'll never use. Depends how you look at it i guess

Markus

Can you, without voiding warranty, add an additional hard drive and/or upgrade the internal drive to a larger capacity?

20GB is rather small these days. MS must have known that people would download things, and, I presume, store music on the 360, granted that could be seen as an extra to it being a games console, but were they not going for the media center thing with it, akin to what XMBC does for the original xbox, perhaps I'm mistaken on that point though.

Price could come into it, but having a quick look, I can get a 120GB Western Digital drive for CAD$80 (inc taxes), and that's probably not the cheapest place I could find. a 320GB Seagate is CAD$129 (inc taxes). If you take into account the volume discount MS would get, and that's before any haggling taking place, I doubt the price difference would be too much.

You could still sell a model with larger capacity drive even if 100GB was the standard size, as you know people would want it, even if they don't *need* it.

If there were larger sized drives available I could see how a download system for variable light condition tracks would work, or you could supply multiple dvd's and have the game install the tracks to the hard drive, but leave the main executable stuff on the DVD. That might even speed things up a bit.

spectrum48k

Its interesting to note how much texture space is required for a game these days. iD sofrware revealed recently one LEVEL of their next-gen game utilised 20GB of textures.

I suppose the options are to stream and dynamically de-compress or put the game on HD-DVD

PeteBrant

MS have categorically stated that games will never go over to HD-DVD for 360.

It was a bit short sighted of MS, I mean you can see the reasons for it, they would never have been able to ship it at the price point they did with a HD-DVD drive.

But if you look at the growth in media capacity with every generation, you didn't have to be a fortune teller to see that 9GB wasn't going to be enough for this generation.

Having said that, I think MS are relying on Digital distribution to come along and save the day.

bob269

They also said all games will be playable without a hd but isnt Final Fantasy gonna use around 5gig of additional hd space?

PeteBrant

They did say that, but that rule was broken almost immediatly with Football Manger 2006, which required the HDD.

Which FF are you talking about? Obvious XI came out on 360, but no other is, for now.

I really do wish more companies would make use of the HDD, it really would cut down loading times.

messiah

Also - 1 savegame of football manager is 70mb, and the "old" memory unit only had 53mb.

FF might be one of those double disc'ers - you install 1 disc to the HDD and then play with the other disc in like a lot of PC games do.

Agree though - MS have underestimated the amount of storage required, given this era of convergence we're living in - these consoles need a lot of storage - and developers releasing DLC aren't exactly helping with mammoth DL sizes.

Jeff Stryker

They should of fitted the hddvd drive to start with instead of selling it as an extra and they wouldn't be this problem. Greedy tw@ts

messiah

It was in the original spec - they pulled it save costs, in a move I still think has been the downfall of the entire format.

bob269

Microsoft game studios have released a 120meg live game today (marathon something), doesnt this go against their policy of 64meg max for live games

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Do keep up The limit was raised to 150Mb back in about January The first was Castlevania:SOTN. With Microsoft's approval, certain games might even span 450MB.

bob269

This could be the downfall of live arcarde, gameplay will go out the window in exchange for more candy and prices will rise

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Don't talk *****

Anyway, back on topic . . .

This thread is all tosh anyway

PeteBrant

Well It's wasn;t rumours - It was on thier forums direct fro Bizarre themselves, and all over every news site. Bit more than "rumours spread by fanboys"

What site is that quote from?

In any event, good news if its true - But it sounds like a bit of a u-turn to me, maybe Bizarre got a slightly irate phone call from MS

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Studio News - Bizarre Creations