Gamecube and its 1.5gig capacity disk. How much does it hold back that games?

[eno]

I was wondering about the Gamecube and its small in comparison storage size disks. First of all do games on the PS2 and Xbox really use the full ammount of space available? If they do then doesn't that really put a huge limit on Gamecube games? I know most of my computer games don't even use a full gig of space once installed onto my Hard drive but is it needed on a console system to have more storage space?

Please don't put your comments on what system you believe to be the best. Just the facts please.

Also does the Xbox have games available that support 1080i(HDTV)? I know it supports 480 progressive. I have the GC running in 480p and I love it. I know Xbox would look better especially in 1080i mode.

 

[eno]

Any ideas?

 

[Lint21]

I don't believe the 1.5 gig capacity of the GC discs will hold back games. I'm pretty sure most games don't use near that much right now (with the possible exception of Dolby Digital encoded XBOX games). Plus, if a developer really needed 3 gigs of space, they could just make a multi-disc game... there were plenty of those for PS1 and DC.

I'm not sure about whether XBOX supports 1080. I think I heard something somewhere about 740 being the max? I have also read that some users with HDTV's are somewhat dissapointed when using their TV's for video games, since the increased resolution shows that the games were designed for lower resolution. This is supposed to be especially apparant with the PS2, since it doesn't have any sort of hardware anti-aliasing built in.

 

[eno]

Yeah I had a PS2 and sold it. It looked like garbage on my 47" HDTV Widescreen. It is funny how Monster Cable made component cables for the system but the system wouldn't even produce the 480p or HD that those cables were really needed for. I bought a Gamecube because of the game I have been waiting for , for like 10 years now. Metroid, and of course Zelda. That Xbox would be perfect for my setup with the Dolby Digital and all. I am a big Home Theater person with a respectable HT setup and would love to hear Dobly Digital in games on it. I will most likely end up finding one used and check it out to see how cool it is. Well I got way off topic. Thanks for your opinion.

 

[Gaunt]

The XBox supports 1080i with the advanced AV pack, but I'm not sure whether any games currently available support it. I don't think the xbox is capable of scaling up the output on the game if it wasn't designed to run at that resolution, but I could be wrong. Not having an HD TV, I haven't been able to test it... infact, I'm still stuck at 480i, something I wish I could do something about.

Are there any TV Tuner cards for PC that support 480p? I could almost justify that....

 

[Woodchuck2000]

There are already two-disc sets in development for the gamecube. (I can't remember which, I'll post when i find out)
For this to happen so early in a console's life means that there is a shortage of storage space. I believe that Nintendo's biggest mistake with the gamecube is the disc format. It's the philosophical equivalent of sticking with cartridges (proprietary, space-limited, write-only albeit hard to pirate.) It would have been so easy to use DVDs and a) Allow the system to play DVD-Videos (adding a large amount to the console's value) and b) give 3-6x the capacity.

 

[neomits]

Originally posted by: Woodchuck2000
There are already two-disc sets in development for the gamecube. (I can't remember which, I'll post when i find out)
For this to happen so early in a console's life means that there is a shortage of storage space. I believe that Nintendo's biggest mistake with the gamecube is the disc format. It's the philosophical equivalent of sticking with cartridges (proprietary, space-limited, write-only albeit hard to pirate.) It would have been so easy to use DVDs and a) Allow the system to play DVD-Videos (adding a large amount to the console's value) and b) give 3-6x the capacity.

so early???

its been out for almost a year now and the peak of a gaming system's life will last 3 years MAX.

I don't think they made a mistake at all. I'll bet that the game is probably something like Final Fantasy which ALWAYS takes up tons of space. And like someone else said, Xbox is using up a lot of space for Dolby audio and such which is nice and all, but really makes for some bad load times.

Nintendo has always been about low load times (why they stuck with cartrages for the 64) its part of what seperates them from the rest.

 

[Supahfreak]

I think RE uses 2 disks, pretty sure

FreAk

 

[Mavrick007]

The XBox supports 1080i with the advanced AV pack, but I'm not sure whether any games currently available support it.

The High Definition AV Pack supports 480p/1080i, the best the Advanced AV pack has is S-video which will only do 480p I believe(I have this pack). I have heard that there are some games out that support 1080i although I do not know of any but it supposedly will NOT do progressive scan dvd movies, so what sense is there to the HD AV Pack. I asked this question in a previous post not long ago.

I have the GC running in 480p and I love it.

How did you get your GC to run in 480p? With the S-vid cable? I have a s-vid cable for my GC too but no HDTV so I can't test it. I think the best cable you can get for the GC is the S-vid cable with standard RCA. I wish they had used Optical or Coaxial for sound.

There are already two-disc sets in development for the gamecube.

Yes, there are some available. I have Resident Evil for the GC and it's on 2 discs.

I believe that Nintendo's biggest mistake with the gamecube is the disc format. It's the philosophical equivalent of sticking with cartridges (proprietary, space-limited, write-only albeit hard to pirate.) It would have been so easy to use DVDs and a) Allow the system to play DVD-Videos (adding a large amount to the console's value) and b) give 3-6x the capacity.

If you take into account how much the old formats would accomodate (the cartridge would only do like 64megs total I believe), then you would find that this new format is excellent. It's smaller than the DC's GD-rom and holds more. It has dolby Pro Logic II so it doesn't need the space that Xbox will need with its DD games (although I would like more than PL II) so 1.5Gigs is plenty, plus it can use multiple discs which do not take up much space at all.. and it's proprietary to them so that pirating is very hard since you can't find the media available right now. Actually the discs are dvds, just mini dvds in their own style. There is supposedly a Japan version which is coming out that will actually play dvd movies too (it's a redesigned larger case that plays movies or the GC games). They kept it small to keep costs down and allow someone to buy it for games only, unlike the Xbox which is supposedly losing lots of money on each of the units sold.

 

[BennyD]

Let me address many issues at once:

The resolution the console supports has almost no effect on the size of the files stored of the disks.
the only way it could is if the developers added hi res textures for using when in higher resolutions...which doesn't really happen.

If you look at most x-box games, the disks are only like halfway from the middle (which is about 1/4 of the storage) which is about 1.2 gig

I believe that Nintendo's biggest mistake with the gamecube is the disc format.

not true, the smaller disks are indeed very hard to pirate, also because they are smaller they can spin at a much higher speed meaning much better load times (i have never experienced load times greater than 2-4 seconds).
if you compare this with the load times for halo.....

It would have been so easy to use DVDs

yes it would but:-

a) that would have made the console alot bigger, maybe not as big as the X-Bulk but still alot bigger

b) playing dvd's would have increased the consoles value but also the price as they would have to pay a licence to the owner of the DVD patent to use the technology.
this is something that microsoft figured, if x-box was out of the box dvd ready they would have to pay huge royalties, thus you have to buy the dvd addon.

Xbox is using up a lot of space for Dolby audio and such which is nice and all, but really makes for some bad load times.

the x-box dvd's don't contain and DD (dolby digital) sound except for in cutscenes.
the DD signal is encoded in realtime by the console (giving far inferior quality to studio encoded dvd's)

also, DD was created to fit 6 channels of sound onto a film strip, it is a compression method and takes up very little space (not much more than 2 channel stereo)

There is supposedly a Japan version which is coming out that will actually play dvd movies too (it's a redesigned larger case that plays movies or the GC games).

this special edition gamecube is made by panasonic and can be imported for about £500 ($700 USD) which is pricey but it is a badass gamecube


i think overall nintendo have made a very good decision about their disks and it is reflected in the sales figures (Nintendo is beating x-box sales by 50% over here)

[/$0.02]