I'm not a fanboy. I've owned, both an XBOX and a PS2, and have sold both of them. I can go into numerous reasons why, the XBOX is nice if you like to play shooter games, and don't really care to buy a PC. PS2 is great if you like RPG's. I know these statements are a bit generalistic, but take them for what they are, being an overly broad look at what you see if you go to Blockbuster. I'm not much of a gamer, but what I am is someone who reads a lot about technology, and I have a very firm grasp of things that will lead to problems, and things that are beneficial. The XBOX 360 has a couple of things going for it. The launch of it will probably be one of the most successful launches in video game history. I know they will be bragging about it, but I say this based off of a few things. First, they actually have launch titles worth playing. The XBOX arguably had a good launch, but Halo 1 sucked, Dead or Alive 3 played like a rehash of Dead or Alive 2, the whole Oddworld thing never really appealed to me. The Perfect Dark game is going to be a big seller when it comes out, it will be the killer title when it comes out, along with Dead or Alive 4, which actually looks like an updated game, especially when compared to the other stuff. The new Need for Speed game looks awesome as well. These are advantages that are here because Microsoft got the development kits out into developers hands very very early on, and now they are reaping the benefits for it. I do have my concerns though, and my concerns are enough for me to not buy an XBOX 360 at all, for the first year, if at all. You see, the XBOX 360 is going to hit first, and it WILL hit at $299 price point. That much is certain, but the models sold this year, are probably going to be obsolete pretty fast. Why? Because they use DVD9. There is nothing wrong with DVD9, but you have to realize something. The movie industry is moving to HD-DVD and Blu-ray DVD because DVD9 couldn't hold the content. The guy in charge of Dead or Alive 4 said he was disappointed that the disk format is DVD9, and that from the look of it, his game will BARELY FIT on a DVD9 disk. Now, this speaks volumes. You see, we are use to video games with heavy cinematics, and etc, which is great, because on standard def video, disk space is cheap. But High Def video is a totally different beast, taking up tons of space. Now, if Techmo is having a hard time fitting a Launch title, on the disk that comes standard on the machines, then developers who come out with games that do more then have scantly clad asian women kick high, will have a run for their money. Steve Ballmar all ready said in an interview that they will address the optical media concerns later, once an optical media becomes standard in the DVD space for High Def content. And this approach is fine, but you have to remember something though. The developers aren't happy with DVD, and if you buy an XBOX 360 that has a DVD drive, when the XBOX 360 Blu-Ray, or HD-DVD comes out, any games made for those disks will just flat out not work on your XBOX, period. Now, I'm not going to go look for links for the stuff I've mentioned. I know that the Techmo thing came from a magazine, Game Informer I think, and the Ballmar interview was with either Engadget or Joystiq, so you can do your own research. I will probably buy a PS3. Why? Because it will play Blu-Ray DVD movies, and if you don't think Blu-Ray is going to be the new standard, then you need to wake up, because if game developers are going to be making games for the PS3, then within a short amount of time, the cost of making these disks will drop like crazy, making it feasible, and that with the market penetration that the PS3 will give blu-ray will be enough for it to hit critical mass.

From Software producer Masanori Takeuchi, who's been working on Enchant Arm, a role-playing game slated to be an Xbox 360 launch title, said developers will also be running into issues of storage space in the next generation. While the Xbox 360 is a next-generation console, Microsoft decided to equip it with a normal DVD reader rather than give it HD-DVD or Blu-ray reading capabilities.

There is an interesting article over at Joystiq that discusses the problems that Xbox 360 games will face in the future due to Microsoft's decision to go for the current DVD format instead of a next generation format. So far, 360 games have yet to come on multiple discs, but an issue of Game Informer indicates that multi-disc games will be coming soon. GI said that nearly every developer it spoke to at X05 complained about the storage issues developing Xbox 360 games.

Apparently, one "highly anticipated" title coming for the Xbox 360 has already used up four full dual-layer 9GB DVD discs. So to play this unnamed game will take 4 disc swaps from start to finish. Japanese RPGs that Microsoft has also been touting are likely candidates. While a game being multi-disc doesn't really effect the quality of the game itself at all, the question has to be asked whether gamers in this day will be OK with having to swap discs mid-play.

Games that would be likely affected by the DVD storage problems in future would be new Grand Theft Auto games for example. Would moving from one part of a city to another require swapping a disc? hopefully not for GTA fans. J Allard has downplayed the storage problems and said improved compression rates in the future will allow more data to be stored on single discs.

Team Ninja chief concerned by Xbox 360 DVD media capacity

"Team Ninja chief Tomonobu Itagaki has expressed concerns over the lack of storage space on the Xbox 360's DVD media.

Speaking to Japanese magazine, Famitsu, Itagaki has expressed concerns over the limited capacity DVD offers in the era of High Definition. He feels developers will struggle to fit High Definition pre-rendered sequences onto the 9GB format, being particularly problematic for Japanese developers who prefer to use pre-rendered over real time cut scenes.

"The screen resolution for Xbox 360 games will be in high definition, so the pre-rendered movies are going to be pretty large," said Itagaki. "If we encoded the Dead or Alive 4 trailer from E3 in high definition in a quality acceptable to us, it will easily be about 2GB." This would leave around 7BG for game data, but for games relying on pre-rendered scenes to tell and develop the story, multiple DVDs may be required. Itagaki added how shocked he and his team were when they were told the Xbox 360 would use DVDs.

"With DOA4, we'll be using the disc's capacity to its full extent. We started development on DOA4 pretty early, and we didn't know what disc format the Xbox 360 was going to adopt. So when we learned about it, we were really knocked out."

This is a realistic concern to have as HD video requires large amounts of disc space that the DVD format does not have. Sony, on the other hand, are to use the much larger capacity Blu-Ray discs, so PlayStation 3 developers should not face such problems."