This irritated me back before the launch of current gen consoles and Irritates me even more now. I've seen a lot of comments on gamespot lately still claiming that the capacity of blue ray is necessary for current gen consoles to flourish. That developers are having problems fitting titles on one dvd-9 specifically Assassins Creed. Oh no it won't fit on one disc what are we to do. Its the end of the world! MS should have pushed back their launch 6-8 months and included HD-DVD that would put them on more even footing with PS3.(like anyone would want to be there)

Wait what if we press the game on 2 discs? Won't that work? Not according to many self styled Blueray/HD pundits. Nevermind that its been done for years. I remember back in the ps one days I was disappointed if a game fit on one disc because I knew it would not have loads of content. I wanted my prerendered CGI fest to go along with the game and multiple discs were the answer. It never bothered me to have to swap discs back than and it won't bother me to have to swap discs now. Not to mention my desire for CGI has significantly waned as game engines have gotten more lifelike.

Lets think about it. So Dev's are getting close to requiring more than 9 gigs of content for one title. That means thatin this generation of consoles some games will require at most 2 dvd-9's to include all that content. Thats it. Thats all. Oh no how will I be able to swap discs? Come on you got the first disc in there I'm sure you can figure it out. If not call customer service:P Now the blue ray fan boy pipes up Wait! blue ray cap is way more that 2 dvd-9's Dev's are gonna use that space and fill it up with lots of great content. Oh really? What makes you think that just because the space is there Dev's are going to utilize it?

The fact of the matter is it takes a lot of time and money to come up with all of this magical extra content your hoping for. There is a little thing called the law of diminishing returns that your not taking into account. Dev's are in the business to make money and your wanting them to add an extra couple of years or so development time to make content to fill up your blue ray disc. That cuts into their profits not to mention the fact that most publishers will not be understanding of a Dev that takes extra time to get a title out. That causes some very bad results for Dev's that are now owned by Megapulishers such as restructuring, firing of talent, and restaffing from the parent company. Thats bad for them and bad for gamers.

There is also a little thing called compression.Lets take a look at The Orange Box from Valve as an example. It contains Half life 2 and both of its expansions(which amounts to 11.7 gigs on my PC hard drive) plus Portal and Team Fortress (I don't have either of those so I cant give you a total size). Thats a lot of content yet they manage to fit all on 1 dvd-9 and from what I hear its running along at a nice solid framerate despite compression.

But wait its gonna cost devs more to press 2 discs instead of 1.Sorry not true 2 dvd-9 media cost less than 1 blue ray disc to press.

Now come the closer to valid arguments.(all 1 of them)What about the big free roaming, Sandbox, GTA like games that are not linear? what if they require more than 1 disc? How are they gonna fit all that on 2 discs in a manner that I don't have to swap discs all the time? First there is still some linearity to the mission structure in thoes games that helps. Second you divide content between the discs by Geography. Third still use compression to fit as much content on one disc as you can. Fourth there will still be a lot of space on that second disc for quite some time use it to mirror content from the other disc to reduce the need to swap if you go back to an earlier area of the game.Inconvienent some Dev's may say? I say buck up you have to go where the install base with the highest attach rate is if ya wanna make the big bucks.

So lets face facts. The whole HD media is needed for GAMING on current gen consoles is just a fanboyism. If you bought your PS3 to watch HD movies more power to ya. Enjoy! I buy GAME consoles to play GAMES.

One other thing to point out.We are talking about a vast minority of titles that will require 2 discs this gen. Blue ray capacity is a red herring.