CVG: Microsoft’s Aaron Greenberg has claimed that Xbox 360 has "nearly twice" PS3’s worldwide installed base – partly because its lack of a Blu-Ray drive allows it to be sold at a more attractive price point.
Microsoft’s Albert Penello tells News10 that gamers who want Xbox 360 blu-ray capabilities should "go spend $150" on a stand-alone player.
Contract prices for Blu-Ray machines are falling as the industry misses the point about what is putting on the brakes for the technology.
Digitimes reports that Contract-manufacturing quotes for PC-use Blu-ray Disk drives have dropped to $70-80. This is still much higher than the $20 for DVD drives, but is falling fast. However makers of Blu-ray machines are not finding that the gear is shifting at anywhere near the high numbers required for the technology to take off.
t seems Final Fantasy XIII has been forever under development, 4 years will make anything feel like forever. But it’s all over now, the game’s out in the west and Square-Enix felt the need to celebrate; who wouldn’t?
Gaming Target writes:
"With a runtime of nearly 2 hours, Halo Legends is easily the most impressive film to come out on Blu-Ray or DVD in 2010. With six strong films and one mediocre one, it’s a sweeping science fiction action piece that provides plenty of dramatic moments and heart pounding thrills."
Split-Screen: "Sony Computer Entertainment recently revealed that God of War 3 will occupy 35 GB of Blu-ray bliss. They then stated that it features no CG cut-scenes so obviously that’s not the question here. No, it’s every bit as possible that the cut-scenes are pre-rendered."
PSUni: God of War III won’t be utilising a PlayStation hard-drive install, despite using the complexity of a dual-layer Blu-ray disc. The last PS3 game to make use of the greater capacity 50GB Blu-ray was Kojima Productions’ Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots, which not only required significant HDD space, but also made a new lengthy install after every one of the game’s five acts. There will be no such suffering with Sony Santa Monica’s God of War III.
The Lost Gamer writes "Tim Moss, Director of Technology at Sony Santa Monica, has revealed the monstrous amount of space that God of War III is set to take up on Blu-Ray."
Some developers are starting to whisper about the fact that the use of DVD storage on the Xbox 360 is finally leading to capacity issues. A dual-layer DVD is capped at about 9GB of available storage per disc, and with the PlayStation 3 sporting a Blu-ray drive that is able to handle discs with a capacity of 25GB to 50GB; it is easy to see how developers can start to feel cramped with the max of 9GB on a standard DVD.
Since the Xbox 360’s DVD drive offers the least amount of storage space — compared to the Blu-ray drive on the PlayStation 3 — it’s easiest to assume that disc space was the cause of the cut content, and not an additional issue. However, in a note to Joystiq, Capcom described the process as standard practice.