Just because the game looks good and is smooth, doesn't mean it will always put a lot of stress on the console. It's all about code efficiency. I'm not a programmer but I think of code efficiency is how well it is organized. Think of a computer as a person trying to read his notes. If they are neat, bulleted and categorized, then the person should have no problem recalling anything written down quite quickly. Where as if the notes were sloppy and written on different pages, sideways then the person would find it quite frustrating to go through all the mess. Both have same information but one is more effective than the other.
Next topic: Insomniac is claiming that Resistance is currently taking up at least 20 GB of space. This is what I think:
1. They are lying to pretend they worked hard and nonstop to get a quality game out to the PS3 users. Just think about it - 20GB!!! Now realize how much bandwidth that would require to run a game like this. Big bulky games aren't always good because of all huge pre-rendered textures which could clog the system's arteries.
2. It's in Sony's nature to advertise BluRay and if they were to say that the game is 5 GB, then people would go "Ugh.....Why should I get an expensive Ps3 with a meaningless BluRay drive in it" or "Doesn't it defeat the purpose of BluRay". It just wouldn't make sense would it. I'll say it again: It is marketing and they want people to think that BluRay is mandatory. Blah Blah
3. Something relevant to this topic: Inefficient coding. Don't judge games by their size. What exactly do I mean by inefficient coding. Have you guys ever heard of .kkrieger? It's basically a game that has moderate graphics. You might say "Yea.....so....where are you going with this?". Well the catch is that the whole game is just one file taking up just 96KB of space. Procedural Synthesis is what its called. If people can code right, a lot more can be done with less space and resources. In Resistance's case, I'm guessing programmers were kinda sloppy and decided to keep files uncompressed to "take advantage of BluRay." I just hope that all this junk on BluRay won't backfire back at them.
Here is the
link to .kkrieger
While I can agree that good coding can help alot of the problems in most of these games, you also have to take into account the difference between non-optimized code and just a poorly made system. The perfect game to support both of your points is Quake 4. That game played like shit for the 360 simply because they just ported the code and did not optimized it (Slowdown up the butt). But on times where the games just straight up freeze. I don't think that has anything to do with the game's programming but rather the 360's design. Since this is pretty much still a first-gen game, only time will tell if things will get better programming wise but I doubt it. The 360 is not a full year old yet but games like EA's Live 07 or Madden 07 are reasons I do not buy games without testing them first. Most of EA's game play poorly when you compared them to the xbox or ps2 version. The 360 versions of these games play kinda choppy and suffer slowdown at certain parts. I thought slowdown was something we would never see on a NEXT-GEN system