Resistance = 17.75GB of garbage?

[dmiller68]

Resistance: Fall of Man was billed to be the defining game for why Blu-ray exists in the first place. Resistance developers Insomniac stated that the game took up 22GB of space and that all those bits and bytes were necessary to make the game work. It would seem that ripping the disk in Linux shows otherwise.

A NeoGAF forum member by the name of squatingyeti posted a long list of padding files on the Resistance disk; the padding took up approximately 17.75GB of space. Padding is frequently used to push data to the outer edges of the disk to improve read times, but Blu-ray is supposed to be a constant read over the entire disk.

It is possible that the data isn't fully true and we would like to see some confirmation. However, if this report that 81% of Resistance is just empty filler and could fit on a single-layer DVD is true, will this put a hole in Sony's claim that Blu-ray is absolutely necessary this generation? The padding isn't needed to make the read speeds any better and (if true) is a lame way for Sony to justify Blu-ray for gaming.

Source

[Jon Liu]

I knew that they did that as a way to slow down the speed of drives but, I'm surprised that they did that much just to "pad" the disk!

[D_Litch]

I love Sony's truthiness

[Frodo 13]

Ouch!

[SpOoNmAn]

Fellas, Insomniac themselves confirmed the 17 gig size drop due to compression way before the game was launched. I didnt post in here at the time because that was during the "spoonie isn't posting in sony forum because it's all negative"[even though all sony news is negative lately].



Funny how Insomniac were the big supporters of bluray and very vocal about the 360 and its storage problems at E3

[BrewCityUpstart]

So, developers are obligated to fill every bit of a disc?

[Jon Liu]

I guess it makes sense to do it this way, though. I can't really say I blame them, either.

Most first gen games aren't amazing, nor do they really ever utilize the medium or the system it goes into. So to say that a first-gen game isn't taking up the whole amount of the Blu-ray disk shouldn't surprise me, I guess.

That's a whole lot of storage packed into the Blu-ray disk! I think it'll be a while before we start seeing it "Filled" a lot more. I mean, the same thing basically happened with DVD storage as well. The amount actually utilized even for years was very little, which is why MS chose DVD over HD-DVD for a storage medium for their games!

[SpOoNmAn]

Originally Posted by BrewCityUpstart

So, developers are obligated to fill every bit of a disc?

According to sony and the shady developers they have in their back pocket, Yes. They said many games couldnt be done on the 360 because the 9 gigs wasnt enough.

Just calling out the liars is all, someone has to do it

"because we have the space and the other guys dont, games will be better, expect more"

yeah riiiiiiiiiight

And at the same time..."discs wont be used in 5 years, it will all be downloaded onto a harddrive"

Make up your freakin minds!

Direct any comments @ the ones who deserve it, the arrogant lying loudmouths that deceived naive gamers for the past 18 months.

[BrewCityUpstart]

Spoonie, ol' chap, this is the point I WANTED to make lol. Jon's Asian and is much smarter than me:

Originally Posted by Jon Liu

I guess it makes sense to do it this way, though. I can't really say I blame them, either.

Most first gen games aren't amazing, nor do they really ever utilize the medium or the system it goes into. So to say that a first-gen game isn't taking up the whole amount of the Blu-ray disk shouldn't surprise me, I guess.

That's a whole lot of storage packed into the Blu-ray disk! I think it'll be a while before we start seeing it "Filled" a lot more. I mean, the same thing basically happened with DVD storage as well. The amount actually utilized even for years was very little, which is why MS chose DVD over HD-DVD for a storage medium for their games!

[Jon Liu]

I'M ASIAN!?!?!?!

No wonder my parents looked kinda funny!

It's all making sense now!!!

[Fragmintz]

I have always thought that the disk storage debate was a bunch of hot air. A blue ray disc fits 50GB of data on it. An HD-disk fits 45GB - if I am not mistaken Oblivion (one of the biggest games I have ever played - graphically, etc) is only 4BG. By the time developers ACTUALLY get around to using 45GB or 50BG for a game, disks will go the way of the dodo bird. Most content will be delivered digitally, via Live, and what we really need are sleek, fast, easy-to-use hard drives that can hold a terabyte of info. Amen.

[Wondermonkey]

They have an update on Dmill's original jump:

[Update: We got our answer. The entire thing is blown way out of proportion. There are still padding files, but they're a relatively meager 420MB per region.]

[GoatMother]

Straight from Ted Price, I'll take his word over some Neogaf forum member anyday:

As we moved into the final week of finishing up the game we made two big changes which dropped the size of the final disc to just over 16Gb – still pretty large nonetheless. What were the changes? We removed PAL movies and further improved our data compression. It turns out that the NTSC movies (not HD, but NTSC just in case Lachamania is reading this) could be converted on the fly to look really good on PAL TVs and therefore we saved space by removing them. It's something that was a pleasant surprise. Why did we bother when we had so much space to work with? It simply saved us time when burning discs. When you're making revs every day and distributing them to a large test team, saving burn time is crucial. We could have left the PAL movies on disc and not improved compression to keep the size around 20Gb but that would have been inefficient and a little disingenuous. We don’t want to pad the disc just to get it to a certain size. Whatever the game needs is what we put on the disc. Still, having a lot of space on Bluray means that we’re including things we wouldn’t have been able to include if we had had to use dual layer DVDs: higher res game assets and more of them, HD movies, higher fidelity sounds, more dialogue, all languages on one disc, etc.

And of course, as others have pointed out in the many threads on this topic, the debate over disc size is a little silly. What really matters is whether your experience in the game is fun.

http://blogs.ign.com/Ted-Insomniac/