To fire a missle back at Microsoft after they announce HD-DVD and its capabilities at the TGS, Sony's senior director says:
"It's unfortunate that Microsoft's external HD-DVD drive will not enhance the experience at all for the gamer. Sony realizes that to truly take gaming into the next generation requires a larger data format for both games and movies. PS3 uses the Blu-ray format for gaming, giving developers 50 GB of high-definition storage on a single disc, while Microsoft's 9 GB DVD gaming format is an obstacle for storing HD content. Furthermore, Microsoft's announced HD games patch is really just a compatibility feature -- upscaling lower-resolution content does not make it Full HD (1080p), something that PS3 can do out of the box."
He reported this comment to Kotaku late last night. His argument is simple, you can do HD-DVD for movies but not games. So, the value-add to Sony's solution is obvious: overall better quality graphics experience - games or movies.
It is hard to deny the fact that developers are given 50GB of space where Microsoft is still only housing 9GB of space. Graphic artists have more space to make higher quality detail in abundance.
But... will they? If a developer must ship on Xbox 360, Wii and PlayStation 3 are they going to build all the graphics for 9GB and then re-render all the graphics at a higher quality to fit on the additional 41GB available on the PS3? Even if the game does not release on the Wii, the obviously less graphic intensive of the next-generation consoles, is it easy to just make a better experience for gamers on the PS3?
I believe that question will be answered based on market share and demand for the PS3. If people don't find the PS3 that much more interesting, is it worth the additional time to build a higher resolution gaming experience? Probably not. Of course, Sony doesn't plan to lose the battle so, in theory, developers will want to show off the power of their game on the PS3 over other "lesser" consoles.
This does however, prove very useful for PS3 platformer games. If you have to build for a single target you will find a way to utilize most of that 50GB storage space. Maybe on in the first few game titles but over time.
