A Partial Answer Behind Why Some PS3 Games Need to Install
By Chris on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 1:28 PM PST In Capcom, Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Platforms, Gamer Life, Games, Games Industry, Sony, Unreal Tournament
There were plenty of people who were up in arms over Devil May Cry 4 and Lost Planet (just to name two) having a mandatory install on PlayStation 3. After all, the same game is on Xbox 360 without any sort of installation, so why should an install – which does improve loading times – be required?
MTV Multiplayer has been seeking an answer to that question, and needless to say, publishers and developers haven’t been particularly forthcoming. However, there is the inherent technical challenge (I won’t call it a problem, as it’s simply something new that is being taken on) with Blu-ray that developers need to find a way around. As Multiplayer puts it, installations are simply a way around this problem.
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.
Personally, I would much prefer the option to install. I’m all for decreasing load times, but actually requiring gamers to install seems more like laziness than a necessity.
They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they provided the option then the people who decline the option would bitch about the load times between levels and the people who take the option would bitch about the install time. At least this way they only have to deal with one side of it and send out one message.
Wow, Blu-Ray has loading issues and it still won the format war….I demand a recount….
ManOfTeal … the article does nothing to state what HD-DVD’s load times were. With the information present in this article, which compares BD to DVD, two totally different formats which were never in war with each other, there is nothing to suggest that had HD-DVD won over BD as the preferred HD disc format that load times for HD-DVD would be any different than BD.
And after recounting, BD still had significantly more studio support, and Sony got far more BD players into people’s homes than Toshiba got HD-DVD players. Recount results … BD still won over HD-DVD. Though, it’s not even a matter of counting anything … Toshiba quit.
I was fairly annoyed that I had to install over 2GB of data onto my PS3 to play a rented game (Heavenly Sword) … but not annoyed enough to care. Of course, having to immediately do an update meant it was 10 minutes before I was even able to get to the game’s main menu screen and made the whole thing more annoying. A game I’m glad I rented because 8 hours later I was watching the ending credits.
Though, putting in a couple minutes of install time at the beginning to save loading times through the entirety of the game is an acceptable compromise to me.
The whole of point of this generation of games, was to install on the hdd. I wonder if the people who wanted to install a portion of a game to the hdd, are they the same one’s complaining about the mandatory install??????
And when i refer to “the people” i meant before the launch of the ps3.
Oh well it dosent matter, Im stoned
That MTV article is technical fluffery. The authour does not have any idea on how a DVD drive actually works, and he never actually explaines the need for installs.
The only cause that I can theorise from the article is that Blu-Ray has a higher seek time that DVD, due to the varing the spin rate when jumping to different sectors. That makes sence, but since Patrick Klepek never actually talkes about seek times, we can not know for sure. What a waste of time.
Sagarat is Right, there is no validity to this article is just a pointless rant.
so you have to install onto the hard drive. It improves loading times and besides, don’t forget the pc has been doing and I never heard anyone complain about that. As a matter of fact, I believe the complaint was actually needing the cd to run.
cheers
xbox 360 sucks
# jooboo says:
April 3rd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
The whole of point of this generation of games, was to install on the hdd. I wonder if the people who wanted to install a portion of a game to the hdd, are they the same one’s complaining about the mandatory install??????
# disintrested says:
April 3rd, 2008 at 7:38 pm
Sagarat is Right, there is no validity to this article is just a pointless rant.
so you have to install onto the hard drive. It improves loading times and besides, don’t forget the pc has been doing and I never heard anyone complain about that. As a matter of fact, I believe the complaint was actually needing the cd to run.
cheers
I find these two comments quite funny. Firstly the mandatory install defeats a the point of the games console and b one of the draws of the console. NOT needing an install was the joy! Its a pain to have to install games…not just the sitting around waiting but also it takes up space. If all the games need an install then how long before you cant play any new games without losing the ability to play one of your other games?
Plus the argument about the need for cds is that if you install all the game data onto the pc then why do you need the disc. Not the need for one in the first place. Besides, this is set to change as Microsoft are writing into their OS’s the ability to play straight from disc. I am sure most (desktop) pc gamers wont care as now huge HDs are cheap and its easy to install several of them, plus HDs read quicker than cds.