Final Fantasy XIII - Dual-Layered Blu-Ray?

Posted on Thursday 2nd April 2009 at 18:50 by footbigmike

There had been speculation that putting Final Fantasy XIII onto the Xbox might cause some trouble if they wanted it on one disc. Now there's speculation as to whether the PS3 version will be a standard or dual-layered Blu-Ray disc. The dual-layered discs can potentially store up to 50GB of data, which means that there will be two scenarios for the 360 version. One, quality is severely reduced. Two, quantity is severely reduced. Of course, there's always the chance that both scenarios will occur, in which case I feel sorry for all 360 owners right about now. Although, you never had the game to begin with, so no loss there... I guess. In addition, the demo that players were given only used half of the PS3's power. According to Square-Enix, the final version will use all of it. It should be noted, though, that the developers admitted that they had trouble working with the limited 512MB of RAM.

Of course, this is just one of many things discovered upon the trial of the Playstation 3 demo of Final Fantasy XIII. Highlights include a significant increase in the quality of the graphics, spells creating after-effects during battle, and cutscenes being rendered in realtime, rather than in CG. Fun times? Not if you're with Microsoft.

Source: The Magic Box

Posted in: Square-Enix News

Written by	footbigmike
	Former Staff Writer
	Member Since: 2005-05-29
	News articles posted: 31
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Comments

sweetdude	Comment 1: 2009-04-02 19:06
	Quote (footbigmike @ 2nd April 2009 18:50) The dual-layered discs can potentially store up to 50GB of data, which means that there will be two scenarios for the 360 version. One, quality is severely reduced. Two, quantity is severely reduced. Of course, there's always the chance that both scenarios will occur, in which case I feel sorry for all 360 owners right about now. Can they not just put the game on more than one disc, like Lost Odyssey, with no concessions at all? Aesthetic improvements are always welcome but I'm still not hugely impressed by the game. I'm glad that a 'childish quality' in one adult character has been changed, and seamless battle loading is a must if they're not rolling out an FFXII style of game.
Rangers51	Comment 2: 2009-04-02 19:22
	A dual-layered Blu-Ray disc can hold up to 50GB, Sweets. A dual-layered HD-DVD, which would have to be the option for a game like this, I would guess, can only hold 30. Bottom line is yes, they could do it but I would guess that they would have to eat a lot of money on the 360 version to get an identical price point, I think, as well as taking more time to sort the logic for the 360 port in able to set up the disc switching. I haven't been a this-gen gamer for very long; is it just me or would this be actually a return to disc swapping that was all but dead in the last gen?
sweetdude	Comment 3: 2009-04-02 19:52
	Lost Odyssey was four discs, wasn't it? Star Ocean had two discs on PS2. I think the age of disc-swapping isn't quite over yet. Having said that, the people who work in my local game shop tell me that they dump their Xbox games directly onto the console, which, although being a pain space-wise, they claim improves the loading time and quality. MGS4 had about 4GB IIRC to be installed to begin with. Maybe FFXIII will have a similar initialisation. Basically, there are ways round this. After Oblivion, DMC, BioShock and GTAIV, I'm not convinced that any game is going to be significantly worse on the Xbox. I'm hoping that I'm wrong, however; I am a Sony fanboy at heart!
Tiddles	Comment 4: 2009-04-02 20:26
	Quote (sweetdude) Can they not just put the game on more than one disc, like Lost Odyssey, with no concessions at all? At the risk of sounding far too hip and trendy for my years, "^ this". The issue, I suppose, is the number of DVDs you'd need to make up 50GB, but now the 360 supports hard disk installation, it may just be that the content ends up supercompressed for that version with a necessary installation process - though that excludes Arcade owners. Installation, so I hear, would not otherwise be a particular disadvantage since pretty much all PS3 games do this, so I'm told. Feel free to correct me. Moving it onto dual layer doesn't mean it would take 50GB of course, just more than 25 - anything up to 32GB could be handled by four DVDs, which would be a pain, but no worse than FF8 or FF9. Quote (Rangers51) A dual-layered Blu-Ray disc can hold up to 50GB, Sweets. A dual-layered HD-DVD, which would have to be the option for a game like this, I would guess, can only hold 30. It's not even an option because the Eggbox HD-DVD drive is discontinued. Rumours do still bubble around that a stand-alone BluRay drive might be on the cards, but it'd be a blow for Microsoft if you needed a Sony addon to play the game they stole away (though making such a thing in the first place would mean Sony would have suffered much worse - it still seems an unlikely proposition to me.)
Rangers51	Comment 5: 2009-04-07 13:00
	Quote (Tiddles @ 2nd April 2009 16:26) Rumours do still bubble around that a stand-alone BluRay drive might be on the cards, but it'd be a blow for Microsoft if you needed a Sony addon to play the game they stole away (though making such a thing in the first place would mean Sony would have suffered much worse - it still seems an unlikely proposition to me.) If there was ever a rumor I didn't believe, by the way, this one would be it. I would be ecstatic were it to become true, because I don't really want to buy a PS3 but might at some point for the BluRay capability, and therefore having a less-expensive addon for a system I already have would be ideal; however, I think the hubris on both sides is significant enough to permanently prevent it.
Tiddles	Comment 6: 2009-04-07 17:25
	I completely agree, but then would you have ever dreamed of seeing Nintendo publishing Sega games? I can only imagine it happening if Sony take a massive financial hit while we're still recession. Well, significantly more massive than it already is doing.
Phunbaba	Comment 7: 2009-04-14 22:27
	Plenty of high profile large games have had no problem working on both systems just fine. GTA 4? HUGE environment and it works seemlessly on the 360. The specs of the PS3 are really not that superior. I would be very impressed if they somehow managed to use up 50 GB on one game. That sounds like fanboy overkill hype to me. It may be comforting to those who spent so much money on a PS3 that they may possibly get the superior version, but I think the odds of that are very miniscule. Square-Enix knows what they are doing this is their chance to break back into the American market in a huge way. They won't mess it up.
laszlow	Comment 8: 2009-04-15 00:11
	Japan's getting FF XIII in winter of this year: http://kotaku.com/5212167/final-fantasy-xi...r-2009-in-japan Not much else to say. Also, screens from the demo: http://kotaku.com/5212934/final-fantasy-xiii-demo-screens
BlitzSage	Comment 9: 2009-04-16 21:54
	Quote (laszlow @ 15th April 2009 00:11) Japan's getting FF XIII in winter of this year: http://kotaku.com/5212167/final-fantasy-xi...r-2009-in-japan Not much else to say. Also, screens from the demo: http://kotaku.com/5212934/final-fantasy-xiii-demo-screens G4 has a video of the demo here. It looks really cool, I think there's spoilers in them though.
sweetdude	Comment 10: 2009-04-17 01:36
	My first impressions of the video were bad but that's to be expected. XII got so much right, but that doesn't matter; out with progress and wheel in the anime! One thing struck me by the 15th minute of continuous Zanarkand road and boxes walking: why on Earth do they need 50GB of space to just repeat the same piece of scenery over and over again? Surely they could save space on the disc, and valuable attention, by cutting it by, say, 14 minutes worth? At least with MGS4 you felt that every byte was necessary. Forget dual-layered Blu-Ray and instead wipe out linear road-walking until it fits.
BlitzSage	Comment 11: 2009-04-17 03:20
	Quote (sweetdude @ 17th April 2009 01:36) My first impressions of the video were bad but that's to be expected. XII got so much right, but that doesn't matter; out with progress and wheel in the anime! One thing struck me by the 15th minute of continuous Zanarkand road and boxes walking: why on Earth do they need 50GB of space to just repeat the same piece of scenery over and over again? Surely they could save space on the disc, and valuable attention, by cutting it by, say, 14 minutes worth? At least with MGS4 you felt that every byte was necessary. Forget dual-layered Blu-Ray and instead wipe out linear road-walking until it fits. Hmm, well, I'm glad they're bringing back the old fighting system, or at least it seems that way. I like the baby chocobo too!
dont chocobos rule?	Comment 12: 2009-04-17 03:21
	im assuming that the demo is japan only?
BlitzSage	Comment 13: 2009-04-18 02:47
	Quote (dont chocobos rule? @ 17th April 2009 03:21) im assuming that the demo is japan only? Yes, it's only in Japanese. My cousin thought it looked pirated, like it wasn't supposed to be released. IDK.
Bum Rush Blitzer	Comment 14: 2009-04-19 04:24
	Didn't look at your video of the demo, but I found some more on IGN. http://ps3.ign.com/dor/objects/826843/fina...deos/ff132.html This is a video of Sazh and Lightning fighting a large robot-scorpion. There's also more videos if you scroll down on the right a little bit. Video of Snow and a couple other characters fighting also.
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