Poll: How would you feel about Blu-Ray used for PC games?

[LWS666]

so, for reasons that are unimportant, i was thinking about getting a Blu-Ray drive for my PC and i started thinking about games.

point is, how would you feel about PC games moving to blu-ray? keep in mind, to install the game it'd take alot more space.

also, i have seen a blu-ray drive for £40 which is only 1.5 PC games so not a huge loss.

personaly, i wouldn't mind it but PC games can use multiple discs without having to swap them so you'd need a big game to make it reasonable to use blu-ray.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I really don't care. If that's the medium PC games start migrating to, I'll install a BR drive in my PC. Until then, it's a non-issue to me.

 

[Lukeje]

Since most of my PC games now come via Steam, this wouldn't be much of an issue.

Edit: ...thinking about it, if games do start using BR discs, then I think I would have to upgrade my internet connection to deal with the ballooning download size. So I'm slightly opposed.

 

[Quaxar]

Well, I'd need to update my pc but all in all... more space means more content, yes?

 

[JediMB]

Maybe in another year or two they could start phasing DVDs out, in favor of Blu-Ray.

That's my take on it, and I didn't really find a satisfactory option in the poll.

 

[TheComedown]

As Rhombus said, its a non-issue. It's just a small upgrade, the HDD space is already there and by the time it does(if it does) happen the drives will be no more expensive then the current optical drives around.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

It's just a small upgrade, the HDD space is already there and by the time it does(if it does) happen the drives will be no more expensive then the current optical drives around.

Considering circumstance and economics seem to be pushing PC gaming further and further into digital distro and may skip over going to another physical media format altogether.

The only PC I'd drop a BR drive into at the moment is a HTPC. The drives are already fairly cheap (unless you're looking for a BR burner) and if you're going full on home theatre, you might as well drop one in instead of a regular DVD drive.

 

[TheComedown]

It's just a small upgrade, the HDD space is already there and by the time it does(if it does) happen the drives will be no more expensive then the current optical drives around.

Considering circumstance and economics seem to be pushing PC gaming further and further into digital distro and may skip over going to another physical media format altogether.

The only PC I'd drop a BR drive into at the moment is a HTPC. The drives are already fairly cheap (unless you're looking for a BR burner) and if you're going full on home theatre, you might as well drop one in instead of a regular DVD drive.

Yeah this is true, I realized this but didn't think to put it into my post but in a lot of places the network connections are still quite dodgy and WAY overpriced (we just upgraded from 30gb 1.5 mb connection, to a full 200 gig ADSL 2 8mb(I think) connection for pretty much the exact same price, the exchange finally got a upgraded.)

 

[Dracolhyte]

Blue-Ray is also HUGE.
We're talking 25GB of storage space on a single layer and 50GB on a dual-layer...
I don't think our games really "NEED" to be that big.

If our games start hitting like 20GB installed, excluding expansions... I can see a need for the move.
Including compression and stuff we can fit like a 35GB game, post installation at which point the load times might just be horrendous...

If anything, game devs should work on efficiency and innovation.

 

[DeaconSawyer]

Given that you can buy 2 terabyte hard drives now for a very reasonable price and that digital distribution of both games and movies is far easier on computer than anything else, I don't see why I would ever want a BR drive. But yeah, as far as space usage goes, I hardly think that PCs with terabytes of space free are running into issues installing games. So personally I'd rather buy another hdd and hook that up.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

Yeah this is true, I realized this but didn't think to put it into my post but in a lot of places the network connections are still quite dodgy and WAY overpriced (we just upgraded from 30gb 1.5 mb connection, to a full 200 gig ADSL 2 8mb(I think) connection for pretty much the exact same price, the exchange finally got a upgraded.)

It's certainly a problem but if publishers can make sufficient sales via digital distro their attitude to consumers unable to reliably connect to the net for extended periods of time will be "fuck 'em"... just ask Ubisoft. Okay, not really the same thing as Ubishit said "fuck em" after taking their money.

The other option is that publishers will go the multi-DVD route because installs off multiple disks might be a bit of a pain first go around but after that it's nothing.

(I went from ADSL 2+ to 30Mb Cable a few months ago. Yes, it meant having to deal with those fuckanauts at Telstra but I'm a sucker for phattening my bandwidth).

 

[Danceofmasks]

At the moment, I'll run the game I'm playing most off of a RAMdisk (for almost-zero load times).
If games start appearing on blu-ray (and I already have a blu-ray burner), I might have to suffer INFINITY times the load times.
Well, unless I build a PC with some ridiculous amount of RAM.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Were it not for the (relative) high cost of the drives and the outlandish cost of the media itself, it isn't a bad idea. That said, given the rate of growth of most modern PC games, it will likely be awhile before we are forced to swap DVDs to the point of absurdity (Like, for example, installing the original CD version of Neverwinter Nights, which required six disc changes). The question really is if digital distribution will have evolved to the point that it provides a primary avenue of game purchase and installation before the blue ray drive becomes a nearly universal fixture in PCs. The transition to CD from floppy took years and from CD to DVD was just as long.

The transition to Blue Ray in general has been less than smooth. Because there are still an absurd number of households with SD televisions, interest in Blue Ray has been lower than Sony might have hoped. Worse still, the simple fact that Blue Ray movies tend to cost significantly more than a DVD ensures relatively few Blue Ray movies have been moved. The one bright spot for the technology is the PS3 itself which seems pertinent given how much credit is given to the PS2 for giving DVDs the boost they needed to finally replace VHS. Unfortunately, the gains made possible by Blue Ray's dramatically increased capacity are rarely exploited as most of that space tends to go to the movie itself. All Blue Ray really offers is convenience in that it could reduce the number of times we need to swap discs for any purpose and at the moment that is a rare enough ordeal to not be worth spending money to resolve.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

If they started distribution on Blu-Ray I wouldn't complain. If they remained on DVD I wouldn't complain. If it switched entirely to digital distribution I still wouldn't complain.

Doesn't fuss me at all. If they start pumping out PC games on Blu-Ray, I'll just buy a Blu-Ray drive for my PC. Blu-Ray drives aren't that expensive.

 

[Wintermoot]

I would like that if games become bigger in the future I would liek that

 

[TheComedown]

Yeah this is true, I realized this but didn't think to put it into my post but in a lot of places the network connections are still quite dodgy and WAY overpriced (we just upgraded from 30gb 1.5 mb connection, to a full 200 gig ADSL 2 8mb(I think) connection for pretty much the exact same price, the exchange finally got a upgraded.)

It's certainly a problem but if publishers can make sufficient sales via digital distro their attitude to consumers unable to reliably connect to the net for extended periods of time will be "fuck 'em"... just ask Ubisoft. Okay, not really the same thing as Ubishit said "fuck em" after taking their money.

The other option is that publishers will go the multi-DVD route because installs off multiple disks might be a bit of a pain first go around but after that it's nothing.

(I went from ADSL 2+ to 30Mb Cable a few months ago. Yes, it meant having to deal with those fuckanauts at Telstra but I'm a sucker for phattening my bandwidth).

We went to telsta for the ADSL 2 as well, so far they have been more reliable the our old ISP, always online, the number of dropouts was stupid and I would just get even more pissed cause of their name. Can't get cable here yet so i'll have to settle for 700kb/s - 1mb/s speeds.

Yeah that's sadly true, I still like retail, the only times I buy on steam or something is when I have a hankering to play something that hasn't been in stores for ages or they have some really sweet sales, (see the 50 bucks and 12 new games from the steam sales just gone)

 

[New Troll]

I voted don't care. The main thing to remember is BluRay runs slower than DVD so you'd still want to install the good majority of games on your harddrive, making the bigger disk unnessesary. Is nice going from four install disks to one, but not really that big of a deal.