Gamecube Discs

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Concept

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Has anybody seen how small these discs are? I think its pretty unique. i think the carrying strap on the back is pretty gay though.
 
Originally posted by vat_man
So not only can you not play DVD disks, you can't play CD's either. Why not just make it cartridges?

Actually I think it does play regular CDs and DVDs, but the standard form factor for game disks is going to be "Mini DVD". That seems to be mostly a cuteness factor, because it really doesn't have any other benifit.

As far as compacity goes ... most games don't fill a standard CD (650mb), so there really isn't any need for DVD, as of yet. The biggest reason Sony used DVD for the PS2 is so it could play movies. Both cinema movies and have enough space on game disks for game movie clips. Games don't really take that much space, it's all vector graphics that are generated during game play on the fly.

As for cartridges ... there's a longer and more expensive manufacturing process for making cartridges rather than any kind of optical disk. I think Nintendo realized this when the N64 was fighting the PS1. PS1 disks were in high availability at the drop of a hat, but some of my friends said they were having trouble finding some of the games they wanted for N64.

~LoudMusic
 
Originally posted by vat_man
So not only can you not play DVD disks, you can't play CD's either. Why not just make it cartridges?

Oh yea, one more thing. On the possitive side for cartridges, they could be much faster for load times and such. It could basically be a DDR memory socket, with non-volitile memory. That would give the console nearly 500mb/s transfers, and re-writable games (online updates anyone?). When you put that against CD/DVD which gets in the range of 8 to 15mb/s and can't be fixed when someone finds bugs, it looks pretty nice.

What some manufacturer needs to do is find a way to copy the game to internal storage in the console. The way things are going, it could have 50GB or more of DDR memory really cheap. That would be enough room to store debugged and updated game code, and leave the movies and game data on the disks. But the actual console BIOS would have to be pretty smart to know how to use the updated game code and get its data from the disk. It can be done easily, but doing it RIGHT so that it can work for any game vendor would be difficult.

This doesn't really matter though, because eventually everything is going to be online, including the game code, so we won't be purchasing anything physical, it will all be through the wire and our 'personal ID code' will just be dinged for $15 a month for each game we play ... yippie, don't you love the future?

~LoudMusic
 
Originally posted by LoudMusic


Actually I think it does play regular CDs and DVDs, but the standard form factor for game disks is going to be "Mini DVD". That seems to be mostly a cuteness factor, because it really doesn't have any other benifit.
Not from what I've heard and read. Apparently CDs and DVDs won't even fit into the actual console. Hence, making it impossible for it to play them.
 
The panasonic GC will play DVD's. Otherwise you are out of luck.
BTW, the main reason Nintendo used the smaller discs is because of software piracy. Can't fit a full sized Pirated copy in, can't play it. It's as simple as that.
It won't affect game size. The discs hold plenty, and they can make multi disc games 'till the cows come home. (so don't worry about shorter games)
 
I finally got the chance to play one today and I know for a fact that it couldn't play regular cds. The size of the freakin console is almost the size of a cd. Alittle bit bigger but not that much bigger.
 
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