Blu-ray Capacity Will “Grow With The Industry” – And Ambition Of Devs

The Blu-ray Disc Association – which is made up of key executives from Sony, Samsung, Disney and Warner Bros, and others – has told CVG that the capacity of the Blu-ray disc will grow to “support the ambitions of games developers” in the future.

This news comes after Sharp announced a new 100GB, triple-layered Blu-ray disc back in July, named ‘BDXL’.

While the PlayStation 3 is currently the only games console to read Blu-ray, it is limited to the standard 50GB double-layered disc. This means that if a larger capacity disc becomes the industry standard in the future, let’s say the triple-layered 100GB disc, it would probably require a new, upgraded model of the PS3 or an entirely new console altogether.

“The ambition of [games] developers is unlimited and therefore you will see new and exciting innovations that could well require additional storage capacity,” European Blu-ray Disc Association chairman Graham Heaton told CVG.

“Blu-ray is in a position to be able to grow with the industry and ensure that disc storage capacity can support the ambitions of the developers.”

This makes us really wonder about the future, especially when considering that God of War 3 developer Sony Santa Monica claimed the giant PS3 exclusive required 35GB or more disc space – and it was only possible on PS3.

Microsoft, however, has said in the past that they aren’t interested in Blu-ray for the Xbox360.

“We have no plans to adopt [a] Blu-ray drive for the Xbox 360. In fact, the future of home entertainment started last autumn when Xbox 360 became the first and only console to offer instant-on 1080p streaming HD movies,” said director of Xbox and Entertainment at Microsoft, Stephen McGill back in March.

It’s a delicate road, because creating games on multiple discs is definitely an issue. Final Fantasy XIII on Xbox360, which released on three discs, is a notable example. Developers are already discussing this very problem – Capcom and Mercury Steam, for example, feel that the problem will only become more apparent as time goes on, which I believe is true.

Last month, Mercury Steam boss Dave Cox said, “I think it’s something Microsoft are going to experience more and more – that they need to help developers overcome the storage problem.”

“I mean, each console has its own issues [360's smaller disc capacity and PS3's slower loading times], but you have to work around them,” he added.

For more examples, the 360 version of Konami’s Castlevania: Lords Of Shadow will release on two DVD discs when it arrives in October. Going back a while in the past, Lost Planet 2 producer Jun Takeuchi revealed that Capcom had to remove content from 360 version of the game so it could fit on the DVD.

It’s definitely something to think about, as games are becoming “bigger” in scale each passing year and, as such, are requiring more disc space.