The Progression of Storage

Few gamers know what games were delivered on in the past and what they will be delivered on in the future. Here is where storage has gone and where it's going.

[archemides518]

guess what everybody.....hard drives crap out, blu-rays don't.

[Young_ART]

I agree, and also I find they are very hard to scratch

[Spitfire_Riggz]

Its a fact, every Blu Ray has a coat of scratch resilient solution

[JellyJelly]

Blu-ray readers also crap out.

[zero_cool]

You're always gonna have an percentage of faulty defects in the assembly line that end up at retail it happens!

Cheers Gamers & Happy Gaming!

[archemides518]

yeah but you can always pick up another one without having to:

1. redownload gigs and gigs of content (if you are lucky enough to have fast and unlimited internet)
2. lose content entirely if there is no backup
3. going through the hassle of switching licenses, which you are limited in terms, if even possible

also tvs crap out, power goes out, you don't have any money etc etc etc...what you are failing to acknowledge is that the shelf life of hard drives are about 4 years before they are virtually GUARANTEED to die and the data is LOST, the info on blu-ray discs will outlast your lifetime.

[kneon]

Optical media also craps out, some cheap DVDs and CDs can start to degrade in less than 10 years. Blurays are probably more robust but they haven't been around long enough to know for sure.

How about we all meet back here in 50 years and see how many of our blurays are still working :)

[tiffac008]

Bro I don't think some of us will be alive by then. lol!

But regarding Blu-Ray my Assassin's Creed (PS3) got left in the car for days. It was sat on, it was unhinged from its lock inside the case while being tossed around in the car and of course it baked inside the car, under the sun.

The only thing that came out of all that, was one small scratch and the game was still playable.

[archemides518]

the "cheap dvds and cds" you are talking about are burned copies, the professionally replicated ones that are used for ps3 games and blu-ray movies will last around 100 years (i make no claim for 360 dvds, and also dvd quality has seemed to nose-dive in the past 5 years)

[kneon]

Burned discs are worse as the main issue there is that the dyes used can be affected by UV and heat. And I'm aware of the various claims of anything from 50-1000 years that you hear from various manufacturers. Some of those claims may be true but it will be a while before we know.

But the fact is that many commercial CDs and DVDs have degraded due to oxidization of the metal layer. The manufacturers claim that those problems are resolved but again the only way to know for sure is to wait and see what happens.

[kingnick]

I have always thought the addition of Blu-ray to the PS3 was in Sony's interest not gamers.

If Sony had spent the extra on more RAM we'd be playing much more impressive games then are available for the 360.

Worse still Blu-ray added its own issues like slow seek speeds to impede game development.

[Stealth2k]

Its stupid to think games would use that much space

Use that much space, go bankrupt, one less company, 1 game a gen per company.

Thats basically what would happen

@ Below

Yes it does

The more time spent to fill a bluray or any huge medium= more money and more time.

[arnyftw]

lol the amount of space a game uses doesnt reflect the time taken to develop it

[Megaman_nerd]

You can easily fill a disc with pre-rendered cinematics, multiple languages and sound. Uncharted games are pretty short yet they take more than 20GB of a blu-ray disc. FFXIII took 3 discs on the Xbox but more than half the size was taken by cut-scenes.

[arnyftw]

Interesting, hopefully HVD's will cost about the same as DVD's or Blueray discs by 2016-2018, till then its gonna be DVD and Blueray

[kneon]

HVD might very well be a stillborn technology. Many of the companies that pioneered it are roadkill as they've never managed to get the costs down to anything even remotely reasonable.

Bluray has the potential to go up to several TB of storage. If they manage that then there is little hope for HVD as it's inherently more complex and therefore more expensive.

[zero_cool]

Just as cosmic wear happens to all hardware & all hardware has it's share of faults & limitations as well that's just common knowledge!

P.S.Science is unique in that its methods demand not only that the ideas proposed be tested ... but everything science comes up with is also inherently falsifiable. In other words, unlike religion and politics, science has no ego, and everything it suggests accepts the possibility of being proven wrong eventually.

Cheers Gamers & Happy Gaming!