Yes, lets recount the ways that HD Optical Media has affected Sony...

Sony had to delay due to HD Optical Media.

Sony had production issues due to HD Optical Media.

Sony came in at $500 -- and went up to $600 due to HD Optical Media.

Sony had to include a standard HDD with HD Optical Media due to a number of technical issues, even though it is well known that the HDD on the Xbox was under utilized with no killer apps or functionality and killed price reduction.

Sony has lost market leadership and is on the verge of being irrelevant due to price point due to HD Optical Media.

Sony has lost a crapload of money due to HD Optical Media in the PS3.

HD Optical Media sales have been slow and incapable of offsetting the losses of inclusion.

There is no market leader with significant fragmentation in the HD Optical Media market halting cost reduction, market penetration, and market significance.

Few games make noticable/relevant use of HD Optical Media because the reality that most games can a) span disks b) content is the MOST expensive part of game development and developers don't have the money to build such content in most situations c) with dynamic non-prebaked lighting and shadowing and the use of shaders for materials and diversity content size isn't exploding in many situations d) most of your huge open world games aren't actually that large last gen and have been managable this gen, e.g. Oblivion which is huge.

Maybe you are happy to shell out $600 for a console.

But there is a balance; the PS2 had this right. A balance of power, price point, release, and publisher support.

$600, regardless of technical merits, stalls market penetration which in turns turns of publisher support. You kill publisher support your special features get further under utilized, especially when they cost a crapload of $$$$ to support.

If you want cutting edge at no expense the console market isn't the right market. Look to the PC.

Not including HD Optical Media was one of the best moves MS made.

I will comment on the technical aspects later, but for consideration: PGR4 is essentially 2 games:

PGR3 (5 tracks)

+

PGR4 (5 new tracks, new features, upgraded graphics, etc)

I commented in the past how people are overlooking how excellent the ambient lighting is in PGR4, notably in overcast situations. And now we know why -- they are prebaking day / night scenarios into their textures. It is difficult to over estimate what BC has done artistically in delivering convincing ambient lighting in low contrast environments -- personally I think they should be showing more night / day scenarios that are WAAAY Sexier. The fact they give you day or night + various lighting conditions is pretty good as this isn't "day or night" but "pick a time of day OR time of night + atmospheric conditions".

10 tracks, by far the most detailed out there (blow away Forza and GT5) with various lighting conditions and weather is pretty significant. Not perfect of course.

But 10 courses with dozens routes, time of day, and weather in realworld locations is significant when compared to a game like FM2 with about the same number of tracks and only a couple different variations and limitations in time and weather.

Btw, PGR4 could have easily spanned disks and, if present, pre-installed disk 2 on the user's HDD. Technically there is no real issue delivering content in this situation. BC didn't want to span disks, while it would not have been a technical hurdle in the least.

Because PGR has a LOT more textures than Oblivion. Further, Oblivion may look good in its genre, but the reality is, like most games (almost all), it suffers in low contrast areas. Introducing low contrast lighting scenarios and weather systems (which cause light occlusion) can result in really flat lighting. Look at PGR3 on the Ring with overcast lighting -- flat and washed out.

The reality is prebaked assets are higher IQ than dynamic ones. PGR4 does have a lot of dynamic elements -- lighting, shadowing, AO Maps, HDR, etc -- but it appears to get the results they wanted they would need to recompile their textures for day / night scenarios.

This seems pretty reasonable considering the image quality they have shown in non-ideal lighting scenarios. I know I sound broken... but full bright day time and night with spotlights are ideal, high contrast lighting situations with low ambient light requirements to trick the eyes. Obviously it CAN be done, but the reality is there is a cost. We see very, very few games that have day/night cycles *in realtime* and in all cases they look less - or use more power - to solutions with static elements. Obviously art and design are the major factors in deciding which route you go. After all the hubbub about Killzone and its static precomputed scenarios (and pretty crap dynamic shadows) and all the praise it got for awesome graphics I am pretty convinced most people call good art good graphics. And it is true to a degree as the best tech decisions are the ones that highlight your art, but there does become a point where you scratch your head.

In BC's case I think they made a mistake in regards to consumer "eye of appeal" namely they won't really appreciate what they have done in regards to low contrast lighting. People want the perfect settings -- dark, ominous with outrageous lightning and thunder or summer days, wind in the hair, sunglasses and glitzy cars.

Half overcast with minor sunbreaks with drizzly rain and puddles? People hate that weather and don't really dream about it to begin with.What? Lazy? What do you do for a living? I bet 90% of 360 developers put in more hours per year than the typical 40-per-week worker does. I know a lot of developers who average 60 hours a week during most of the year and 80hrs+ during 3 month+ crunch periods for each title.

Pretty lame to call them lazy.

As for compression... games are compressed to hell and back. It is vital to compress the titles to get quick transfer from the disk to the system memory--essential. And then you run into redundancy issues because you may have packed a texture or model or another asset with one stream for one level and need it in another.

A game like PGR isn't easy to compress. You have 10 distinct locations, and instead of being a tiled art game (think of a game like Battlefield or Halo where the ground is repetitively tiled) the city is VERY diverse with a TON of unique content. A lot of variety in signs, window displays, and world geometry.


This will be a good game, and it will look great, no doubt there... 360 needs the 65nm and better venting with a slot loading quiet dvd drive.[/quote]

MS did exactly this with caching on the Xbox, where there were 3 active caches.

And for those, like youself, you refuse such (and the performance improvement to boot) you can do the ol' disk swap.

Or your bitterness & PR mess of disk swapping/caching can mean less tracks. Hey, I guess you won afterall!

Seriously, take your stance: HD Optical Drive, and all its baggage, or DVD9 and its baggage.

Which would you have done Lebato?

Yes, and actually they can lead to more dynamic worlds and lower artist interaction (reduced cost) as your damage, weather, wear and tear, etc is all impacted mathmatically. And you can create them at runtime as well, as Roboblitz did.

There are a lot of reasons to do procedural textures, and some textures are generated right now with such in the creation process.

PGR3/4, though, use high resolution photographs cleaned up and mapped to geometry. This is NOT procedurally compatible, nor is it compatible with the typical, "tile repetitive grass, rock, etc surfaces, intertwined for variety" to produce unique results. PGR is a bitmap intensive design -- and hence why it looks so awesome and very similar to the real world. Each course has over 100k unique photos.The gyro/accelerometers in the Wii are $7USD in bulk. They charge you $70 for a Wii mote and Numchuck.