Mass Effect : Only One Disc! Who needs Blu-Ray

[Darksaviour69]

via IGN (http://blogs.ign.com/BioWare_Games/2007/02/23/47642/), Reader Q&A with Casey Hudson, Project Director of Mass Effect



Does “Mass Effect” fit on one disc?
Yep, but just barely. This is a monstrous game. In fact, there was a time – not too long ago – when we pretty much scoffed at the idea of fitting onto one disc. But, there’s an art to optimizing the data that goes on a disc – plus we have a few programmers that seem to pull off magic tricks right when we need them.

[briyan]

i was expecting a blue-dragonish 3-disc ordeal since judging from the videos i've seen there's so much to this game, a lot of interaction is involved. that's actually great, seeing that Sony continuously brags about how blu-ray fits so much yet reads SOOO SLOW.

[zorbas]

blue ray holds a shit load more than hd... so whats the point of basing on sony?

[HitmanRotto]

So the devs can fit Mass Effect on one disc, good for them. But what happens when Mass Effect 2 comes out? It's only plausible to assume that the next game will require even more space to put the game on. Too bad they are not going to have it. Blu ray holds so much more than a dvd9, so why bash sony? With Blue dragon on 3 discs this early on in the running, it seems like its only a sign of things to come.

[briyan]

i'm not exactly bashing on Sony here. in fact, i believe that blu-ray as far as storage trumps DVD9 but my whole point is that, on the other hand of the spectrum, the blu-ray reader/player built-in on the PS3 performs rather slow (at 2x). Leading developers, most recently, Bethesda for Oblivion to repeat data on different spaces on the disc because the fact that it reads in 2x renders the PS3 to succumb to looong loading times which has been a problem for the game on 360 but even worse on the PS3 if not for the duplicate data.

my other point here is that if a developer fits a disc on a DVD9 then they're doing themselves and Microsoft a favor by saving a ton of money in production. 3 DVD9's is still cheaper than 1 blu-ray disc so if you factor in the cost of producing the games on a DL disc compared to a blu-ray in this regard, think about how much savings coupled with profit could lead to the next big franchise for the console, or an even bigger sequel (granted 2 discs won't much of a nuisance).

[BrooksyX]

Thats good that they got it on one disc, but I really wouldn't care if it was on two. I have no problem switching a game half way through. This looks like a really good game but there are a bunch of other good games I want so I probably wont get untill there are used copies for cheap.