PS3 installs - Blu Ray budget optical drive :gloomy:

[pilonv1]

http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2008/04/01/the-mystery-behind-playstation-3s-sometimes-mandatory-installations-as-far-as-we-know/

Tired of mandatory hard drive installs on PlayStation 3? Blame Blu-ray and DVD.

Capcom took a public stoning last month when “Devil May Cry 4″ was released on PS3 with a mandatory 20-minute installation not necessary on Xbox 360.

Since then, Capcom VP of business development and strategic planning Christian Svennsson told me his company didn’t realize the issue would “blow up.” He says the company will take the response into account for future releases.

Figuring out why some games require these installs has been like pulling teeth. Publishers don’t want to talk about it, and Sony won’t come clean for them. I contacted multiple parties — chiefly Capcom, Sony, and Ubisoft — while researching this story and hit stone walls at almost every turn.

Nonetheless, we’ve been getting close to an answer, and everything comes back to a developer spending enough time to understand the unique characteristics of Blu-ray. It’s Blu-ray’s “fault,” but not because it’s slow tech. It’s just different tech.

This is what I’ve learned:

The PS3 version of “Lost Planet” requires installs, too. As does “Lost: Via Domus” and “Hot Shots Golf” from Sony. But “Dark Sector” and many other PS3 releases don’t.

The issue arises from differences in the reading techniques of DVD and Blu-ray. By nature, the outer and inner parts of a disc move at different speeds while a disc is spinning, regardless of format (CD, DVD, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, etc.). While DVD drives can read data at those differing speeds, Blu-ray reads at one speed. Combine that with the extremely large size of Blu-ray discs, and simply dumping existing DVD data onto a Blu-ray disc will inevitably result in longer load times.

Installations are a way around this issue.

Bethesda Softworks executive producer Todd Howard recently publicly confirmed the duplicated data technique as a strategy on his company’s “Fallout 3.” “Small things like this can make a huge difference over the course of a game,” he told PlayStation: The Official Magazine.

Nothing overly new, just confirmation of what we already knew - the Blu Ray drive isn't quick enough

PS3 budget console

[MrAngryFace]

haha jesus, ps3 sux. Good thing it plays blurays and can be updated via the internet.

[y2kev]

like a lot of it is true, but klepak is really not a good "investigative journalist" unless he's copying gossip stories off neogaf

[Vizzys]

haha jesus, ps3 sux. Good thing it plays blurays and can be updated via the internet.

updates make your ps3 crash tho

lose-lose

[Joe Molotov]

I wonder how long the install will be for MSG4 with multiple 50GB Blu-rays. 

[hyp]

i just upgraded my hdd to 250gb today to future proof my system from the awesomeness of blu-ray gaming.   

stock hdd

[Mondain]

the Blu-Ray drive has different strenghts and reads discs differently, but not necessarily slower in all situations, or at least not drastically so, guess that DVD is more convenient for most development projects

it's not like the 360 DVD-ROM drives are monstrously faster, all games are on dual-layered discs and the practical reading speed is drastically reduced; if discs were really read at a full 12x people couldn't pirate games because none of the DVD-ROM drives can read burned dual-layer discs that fast... further proof of that is that when people reduce the drive speed to 8x to reduce the noise level, the load times don't change at all

anyhow ESIV did install data on the HDD but Bethesda took the time to do it the right way: it happened seamlessly while you played, there were no installation sessions or any prompts at all

if developers in the future somehow wish to install stuff on the HDD then they should copy that strategy

anyhow personally I just think it's cool that consoles finally begin to gain features that were once the apanage of computers

[drohne]

afaik blu ray's constant linear velocity is a good thing, and pragmatically ps3 and 360 have similar transfer rates. but i guess this is what you get when a game journalist asks a 'vp of strategic planning' about technical issues

[Smooth Groove]

Why would data duplication make a difference for PS3 games when location doesn't affect how fast a blu-ray disc is read?

[Smooth Groove]

it's not like the 360 DVD-ROM drives are monstrously faster, all games are on dual-layered discs and the practical reading speed is drastically reduced; if discs were really read at a full 12x people couldn't pirate games

Even if that were true, I doubt that would affect whether 360 games can be pirated or not.  People who pirate would just have slower loading times.  Games don't check for how fast data is being transferred. 

[calcifer]

haha jesus, ps3 sux. Good thing it plays blurays

is that the main reason why it sux (as a gaming console)?

[calcifer]

isnt*

pls give me edit option back, mod 

[AdmiralViscen]

Why would data duplication make a difference for PS3 games when location doesn't affect how fast a blu-ray disc is read?

Because either way the data can be found in more than one place

[CurseoftheGods]

like a lot of it is true, but klepak is really not a good "investigative journalist" unless he's copying gossip stories off neogaf

Word. He sunk to a new low when he tried to pass up the Jeff Bell incident as an actual news story on 1up.

[Mondain]

like a lot of it is true, but klepak is really not a good "investigative journalist" unless he's copying gossip stories off neogaf

Word. He sunk to a new low when he tried to pass up the Jeff Bell incident as an actual news story on 1up.

yep, what a complete douche

[disgruntled_jojo]

Why would data duplication make a difference for PS3 games when location doesn't affect how fast a blu-ray disc is read?

You're kind of looking at it from the wrong angle.  The speed at which the disk spins is what isn't 'affected'.  The rate at which data is read off the disk is a function of where on the disk it is physically located.  Data near the outside 'edge' of the disk is whirling past the laser at a much faster rate and is therefore read more quickly than data near the inside ring (even though the disk itself is moving at the same 1x speed).  The point in the article from the OP is that some devs just 'dump' the DVD data, only taking up the few gigs that a DVD would hold, and - this is key - data written to all optical formats is written from the inside out.  Meaning if you just take the data structure you were using on the 360 version and put it on a blu-ray disk, you're going to be using (for example) the innermost, slowest 3-4gb of space on the BD-ROM.  Some devs are getting around this by 'padding' the disk with dummy files for a couple dozen gigs, then repeating all of the frequently accessed data (or if they are lazy enough, all the data) on the very last 3-4gb of space, all the way on the outside edge of the disk where it spins (and is read) the fastest.

I hope that helped rather than muddled your understanding.   

[AdmiralViscen]

Uh, doesn't the center of the disc spin faster?

edit: not anymore, sort of
http://www.halfbakery.com/idea/CD-ROM_20padder

[disgruntled_jojo]

it's not like the 360 DVD-ROM drives are monstrously faster, all games are on dual-layered discs and the practical reading speed is drastically reduced; if discs were really read at a full 12x people couldn't pirate games

Even if that were true, I doubt that would affect whether 360 games can be pirated or not.  People who pirate would just have slower loading times.  Games don't check for how fast data is being transferred. 

That's also a bit misleading - depends highly on the game.  Some games could actually error out or crash if the data can't be read of the disk quickly enough... especially ones built specifically around the read speed of the drive in a standardized console (i.e. if it is key to their data streaming strategy).

edit: it's my understanding that MS wouldn't allow a game that would crash/error out under those circumstances to pass certification, tho

[pilonv1]

What happened there again?

[pilonv1]

Awesome

[Mupepe]

Remember the colossal fuck up of Star Ocean 2's original release in Japan because of the dual layer DVD?
I hope MGS4 has the same problems

star ocean 2 or 3?

[Joe Molotov]

Remember the colossal fuck up of Star Ocean 2's original release in Japan because of the dual layer DVD?
I hope MGS4 has the same problems

star ocean 2 or 3?

I think he means Star Ocean 3. Although if Star Ocean 2 was released on a dual layer DVD, I can see how the Playstation might have trouble reading that.