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It is common knowledge that every Game company wants to make as much money as they can! and hold onto an idea that continues to gain money. Nintendo however are not inexperienced in this field, as we all well know, they launched Games on cartridges since their conception at making games- debuting with the NES. Because of this, third party developers seeing the success of the NES growing, wanted to develop for the NES, but of course to do so, you had to pay Handsome royalties to Nintendo, who gained most of the time. Namco was one of the first developers that was subject to these high costs. It wasn't surprising that in 1995 Namco abandoned the New N64 in favour of a much cheaper format- Compact Discs. Then moving their loyalty to Sony with Nintendo allies Square following suit.
However now we know that Nintendo has been forced to abandon this hardline approach of Cartridges for the Gamecube, it was the start of a new era, seeing Mini-DVD Discs, in favour of the much more expensive carts. With a whopping storage capacity of just over 1.5 GB.
Of course this is a good thing, for everyone in fact. For Nintendo-A Mini DVD has the enormous advantage of not being able to be pirated. Plus the huge gains for them as developers who abandoned them in the past come flocking back, looking for a piece of the action. And of course Because it is not called a DVD in such, Nintendo doesn't have to pay royalties to Sony and Philips who are joint creators and owner's of the DVD format and the use of the name.
For us gamers, we can look forward to the prospect of wonderful game's with no excuses of storage capacities that N64 owners became used to. But we have not just Nintendo to thank but Matsushita as well, who will manufacture the discs.
Many Developers are coming back to Nintendo because of the discs. We have Namco of course on track in releasing Soul Calibre 2, Ridge Racer 6, Klonoa 2. Then we have Capcom who where in most absent with the N64, releasing the Resident Evil Saga exclusive to the console. And of course all the talk is at the moment, with the BIG-ONE 'Squaresoft', with reports that Nintendo and Square will have a joint conference next week, citing rumours that Final Fantasy 10 will be unveiled for the system.
Now that's what the advantages of this Disc format would be!.
Companies who where thought to have abandoned Nintendo all together coming back into the fold, along with Nintendo's expertise in Gaming, creating a Console that is a must to own; and a console of all consoles. Yes I'm speaking of Gamecube.
And as for the advantages of this disc format?? the Mini DVD has an unquestionable advantage on the standard DVD. The disc is small, giving a laser less time to spread over the surface of the disc, data could be transmitted to the Console quicker, if not equal to the Cartridges before it.
And in terms of the amount of Data being stored to the regular DVD disc, that argument doesn't come into it. In fact, very little developer's Today actually fill the whole Disc area, the PS2 Is a DVD/CD console and the good majority (If not all of the games for it) are 700 Mb in total or a little under in most cases, thus some haven't took on board the DVD format yet, since there is no need, so they stuck with CD.
I think Nintendo is on to a winner. And watch too as more Developer's join with the Cube as the Square/Nintendo conference gets underway.
The Mini DVD Format could be Nintendo's saviour. Imagine if they had stuck with carts? It would have been the end of a gaming Giant.
Thank god sense prevailed.
However now we know that Nintendo has been forced to abandon this hardline approach of Cartridges for the Gamecube, it was the start of a new era, seeing Mini-DVD Discs, in favour of the much more expensive carts. With a whopping storage capacity of just over 1.5 GB.
Of course this is a good thing, for everyone in fact. For Nintendo-A Mini DVD has the enormous advantage of not being able to be pirated. Plus the huge gains for them as developers who abandoned them in the past come flocking back, looking for a piece of the action. And of course Because it is not called a DVD in such, Nintendo doesn't have to pay royalties to Sony and Philips who are joint creators and owner's of the DVD format and the use of the name.
For us gamers, we can look forward to the prospect of wonderful game's with no excuses of storage capacities that N64 owners became used to. But we have not just Nintendo to thank but Matsushita as well, who will manufacture the discs.
Many Developers are coming back to Nintendo because of the discs. We have Namco of course on track in releasing Soul Calibre 2, Ridge Racer 6, Klonoa 2. Then we have Capcom who where in most absent with the N64, releasing the Resident Evil Saga exclusive to the console. And of course all the talk is at the moment, with the BIG-ONE 'Squaresoft', with reports that Nintendo and Square will have a joint conference next week, citing rumours that Final Fantasy 10 will be unveiled for the system.
Now that's what the advantages of this Disc format would be!.
Companies who where thought to have abandoned Nintendo all together coming back into the fold, along with Nintendo's expertise in Gaming, creating a Console that is a must to own; and a console of all consoles. Yes I'm speaking of Gamecube.
And as for the advantages of this disc format?? the Mini DVD has an unquestionable advantage on the standard DVD. The disc is small, giving a laser less time to spread over the surface of the disc, data could be transmitted to the Console quicker, if not equal to the Cartridges before it.
And in terms of the amount of Data being stored to the regular DVD disc, that argument doesn't come into it. In fact, very little developer's Today actually fill the whole Disc area, the PS2 Is a DVD/CD console and the good majority (If not all of the games for it) are 700 Mb in total or a little under in most cases, thus some haven't took on board the DVD format yet, since there is no need, so they stuck with CD.
I think Nintendo is on to a winner. And watch too as more Developer's join with the Cube as the Square/Nintendo conference gets underway.
The Mini DVD Format could be Nintendo's saviour. Imagine if they had stuck with carts? It would have been the end of a gaming Giant.
Thank god sense prevailed.
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Slaveunit wrote:
Note that because of the smaller space,
> games that would easily fit on a PS2 disc could take up to 3 GC discs, forcing
> the price to the customer higher and higher.
Slight exaduration there.
The PS2 DVD'x are something like 3.5 Gb while mini CD's are about 1.6
Combine the GC's slightly more advanced compression abilities and I think you'll find that it would only take 2 mini dvds to store a game that would fill a DVD.
Anyway, if Nintendo managed to squeeze Zelda onto a 32Mb cart, imagine what they can put in a 1500Mb disk!
Note that because of the smaller space,
> games that would easily fit on a PS2 disc could take up to 3 GC discs, forcing
> the price to the customer higher and higher.
Slight exaduration there.
The PS2 DVD'x are something like 3.5 Gb while mini CD's are about 1.6
Combine the GC's slightly more advanced compression abilities and I think you'll find that it would only take 2 mini dvds to store a game that would fill a DVD.
Anyway, if Nintendo managed to squeeze Zelda onto a 32Mb cart, imagine what they can put in a 1500Mb disk!
Indeed it is! :-)
Morning'!
Morning'!
Morning wookie....
Slaveunit wrote:
> Apart from the piracy issues, which will be cracked
> eventually
Indeed - something which I said some time ago.
If you go to http://www.google.com and do a search for "mini DVD" you will see plenty of sites detailing how to 'pirate' real DVD's onto mini DVD's.
While this doesn't cover Gamecube games, it does prove that the ability to write them is already available, and therefore it's only a matter of time before pirate 'cube games are available.
> Apart from the piracy issues, which will be cracked
> eventually
Indeed - something which I said some time ago.
If you go to http://www.google.com and do a search for "mini DVD" you will see plenty of sites detailing how to 'pirate' real DVD's onto mini DVD's.
While this doesn't cover Gamecube games, it does prove that the ability to write them is already available, and therefore it's only a matter of time before pirate 'cube games are available.
The "whopping" storage size is far less than the PS2 discs, which hold over 4 gig. the GC discs are small in comparison.
The discs, though good at piracy, will be costly. For a publisher to sell copies of an N64 cart, they had to buy blank carts direct from Nintendo, at £7 a time. This forced the price of the games up, and the same will happen to the GC, seeing as its only Nintendo they can get the discs from. Note that because of the smaller space, games that would easily fit on a PS2 disc could take up to 3 GC discs, forcing the price to the customer higher and higher.
Load times are hardly vast on any machine, if you ever owned a machine that ran off a tape deck youll appreciate it a lot more. A split second will hardly be noticeable.
Lord Semajal wrote:
> I like the idea of smaller disks cos they will look different and will be easyer to handle.
The discs being easier to handle? I personally dont have any trouble handling cds. Do you? :)
> Also you won't ever confuse other games or cds or dvds with GC games.
How about reading the front of the disc? Too tricky? The PS2 supports CD, DVD and PS2, so even if you put the wrong one in it will play it.
Apart from the piracy issues, which will be cracked eventually, the discs look like nothing more than a pain in the bum to me....
The discs, though good at piracy, will be costly. For a publisher to sell copies of an N64 cart, they had to buy blank carts direct from Nintendo, at £7 a time. This forced the price of the games up, and the same will happen to the GC, seeing as its only Nintendo they can get the discs from. Note that because of the smaller space, games that would easily fit on a PS2 disc could take up to 3 GC discs, forcing the price to the customer higher and higher.
Load times are hardly vast on any machine, if you ever owned a machine that ran off a tape deck youll appreciate it a lot more. A split second will hardly be noticeable.
Lord Semajal wrote:
> I like the idea of smaller disks cos they will look different and will be easyer to handle.
The discs being easier to handle? I personally dont have any trouble handling cds. Do you? :)
> Also you won't ever confuse other games or cds or dvds with GC games.
How about reading the front of the disc? Too tricky? The PS2 supports CD, DVD and PS2, so even if you put the wrong one in it will play it.
Apart from the piracy issues, which will be cracked eventually, the discs look like nothing more than a pain in the bum to me....
I like the idea of smaller disks cos they will look different and will be easyer to handle.
Also you won't ever confuse other games or cds or dvds with GC games.
Also you won't ever confuse other games or cds or dvds with GC games.
AfroJoe wrote:
> Strafex wrote:
> It never occurred to me that the smaller radius of the disk
> would decrease
> loading times.
No matter how fast the disk spins, if it
> takes a long time to
> scan across the disk then it's going to still take a
> while to load.
Seems
> pretty obvious now.
actually the disk takes
> almost no time to load on nitendo GC. developers had to put special gaps in
> between coz the load times are so fast. well that is what i have heard.
You didn't understand what I said, did you?
I meant that because the disk is so small, the reader finds it easier to move across the disk to different clusters, making it faster.
Hence the virtually no loading times.
I expect the four seconds for loading a Wave Race will slowly disappear with new games which are programmed in a more efficient way and with better optimisation of clusters.
> Strafex wrote:
> It never occurred to me that the smaller radius of the disk
> would decrease
> loading times.
No matter how fast the disk spins, if it
> takes a long time to
> scan across the disk then it's going to still take a
> while to load.
Seems
> pretty obvious now.
actually the disk takes
> almost no time to load on nitendo GC. developers had to put special gaps in
> between coz the load times are so fast. well that is what i have heard.
You didn't understand what I said, did you?
I meant that because the disk is so small, the reader finds it easier to move across the disk to different clusters, making it faster.
Hence the virtually no loading times.
I expect the four seconds for loading a Wave Race will slowly disappear with new games which are programmed in a more efficient way and with better optimisation of clusters.
What's the speed of the dvd drive?
Strafex wrote:
> It never occurred to me that the smaller radius of the disk would decrease
> loading times.
No matter how fast the disk spins, if it takes a long time to
> scan across the disk then it's going to still take a while to load.
Seems
> pretty obvious now.
actually the disk takes almost no time to load on nitendo GC. developers had to put special gaps in between coz the load times are so fast. well that is what i have heard.
> It never occurred to me that the smaller radius of the disk would decrease
> loading times.
No matter how fast the disk spins, if it takes a long time to
> scan across the disk then it's going to still take a while to load.
Seems
> pretty obvious now.
actually the disk takes almost no time to load on nitendo GC. developers had to put special gaps in between coz the load times are so fast. well that is what i have heard.
If final fantasy 10 does port to the gamecube, (no doubt FF11 will be out by then) Square are gona struggle to fit it onto the "whopping" 1.5gb.
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