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AIAS' Olin: Blu-ray Not Long-Term Advantage For PS3
by Leigh Alexander, Staff
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August 28, 2008
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Is the console war reaching a turning point? The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, for one thing, are reaching graphical parity, while software exclusivity, formerly a great differentiator, is becoming more and more rare.
Speaking to Gamasutra recently, Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences president Joseph Olin -- whose organization puts together the DICE conference and Interactive Achievement Awards yearly -- pegs another console advantage that might lose its relevance as the space evolves.
"I look at Blu-ray being the obvious short-term differentiator, but if everything goes to digital download -- and over time, it will -- then the Blu-ray device no longer has the same competitive advantage, or the benefit is not as strong as the feature is," says Olin.
But how long will it take for digital distro to be a large enough force in the space that it blunts the advantage of a disc player, and how long will the growth of downloadable games keep accelerating?
"Perhaps maybe five years? Maybe seven years? I think the challenge with digital distribution is more because of piped-to-the-home bandwidth than the technology within the systems," says Olin.
"Digital copyright issues have been resolved, largely. The cable companies have certainly shown that you can digitally encrypt and prevent theft of intellectual property over broadband. If they can do it, certainly our industry can do it."
Despite any remaining gating issues, says Olin, the current generation is becoming more and more accustomed to content delivery on demand, and that trend will drive the games space as well.
But, of course, the PS3 has other movie-centric advantages beyond the obvious. Olin concedes that, in his opinion, conventional DVDs running through the PlayStation 3 look better than the competitive players such as on the Xbox 360.
"The PS3 has a nice upscaling chipset that really does make a standard-definition DVD look a little bit crisper and better," he says. "Is that enough to get you to buy one [console] versus the other, as opposed to someone who is buying it for a game franchise?"
The AIAS president concluded of the increasingly homogeneous nature of the next-gen war: "Over time, I think you've always seen software drive hardware selections... if [the game franchises are] all available on everything, it's sort of hard to know."
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In the UK, many people have bandwidth caps on their broadband which would make downloading a 9GB DVD game unfeasible (never mind a 50GB Blu-Ray). Besides, at current speeds I could get the train into town, buy the game from the shop, have time for lunch and a haircut, and still get home in plenty of time to watch the download finish.
Digital downloads often feel like a way to eliminate the second-hand market and place extra controls on gamers. For it to be viable I'd also have to be assured that I would always be able to re-download my games, that I would be able to play them even if my account was banned, and that transferring games to a new account would be painless. In an ideal world I'd also like to have the ability to loan a game to a friend (temporary account transfer?) - surely it's not technically impossible but I can't see it happening.
I know why he doesn't mention this hard drive fact...look at his picture, you think he's a gamer? No, too busy sailing his yacht...
With products like Apple TV and growing popularity of video streaming, investing in new disc technology doesn't seem to be viable. And like john said above the ability to add a hard drive to the PS3 makes it much more impressive than its Blue-ray tech in my opinion. Granted Blue-ray looks amazing but what value would the consumer place on a product that can play a library of high quality movies and fit on a 2.5 inch hard drive. Backup your movies onto another hard drive for safety or a portable drive for mobility.
It just seems obvious to me that the next next-gen systems (assuming they continue this effort to consolidate home entertainment into their machine) would be an oversized ipod on crack.
The nay sayers about digital download are thinking in terms of HD distribution when standard definition is what people are used to. They are comfortable with that.
I think that rather than focusing on increasing storage size, people need to be focusing more on compression and quality of storage. Also on the transfer scene.
Of course that would require more money to research and develop than most companies are willing to spend. Most companies want return on investment sooner rather than later.
So the real question should be who can access purchased content on what terms..
There are still parts of the world - such as New Zealand - where these internet connections are not even available to the public. "Full-speed broadband" in these parts is generally around 2Mbps (megabits, not bytes) and not expecting anything faster anytime soon.
I now like the fact that 360's lifecycle is likely be shorter than PS3's. Not that PS3 is bad or anything...
I think Microsoft went the right way with the 360 by focusing on games and how to make the gaming experience better with a solid online infrastructure. The fact that it plays dvd's and streams content from pc's is just a nice extra, not a big selling point.
I live in the heart of the US and that is about all that I can get in my area. So I feel for you.
Quite right, but compare today's available bandwith to that 8 years ago - then factor in statements made by Sony about their projected lifetime of the PS3 being about 10 years. Surely it is possible that the next generation of consoles will face the technical feasibility of realtime streaming of arbitrary visual content.
If you are still sceptical, check out services such as Google Docs; hard drives are becoming the same as RAM ist today: a simple way of temporarily caching centrally stored information. The same might apply to local CPUs, which in future could be reduced to the task of de- and encoding data streams between the server host and the client machine.
sorry about the confusion of names
Just out of curiousity, are there people that STILL believe PS3 doesn't have a game library? Wow, I thought I was on Gamasutra...not Joystiq.
Personally, I think streaming is a good option but not having the option to store my content is ridiculous. Not having the option to backup or run it locally is even worse. Hence...larger HDD support and the speed to not have to wait
Now with games, your gonna need that 300 gb HDD or 1000gb depending on how much you buy games. Me I will be simply out of luck. I trade my games in and out. Mass Effect Beat it, its gon( Gears, Lost Oddessy, etc) 1 games will get me 3 if its thats easy to beat. Thats 1 used game.
I can download a used games? take it back in 7 days to get another used game.
I buy a uesed game about a week before what i want come out. return the used game pay the difference 10$. Just to make sure i dont spend the money on something else.