GTA’s Dan Houser on Disk Storage
Dan Houser, the creative VP at Rockstar Games and senior writer and producer of almost all of the GTA games, recently did an interview with UK’s OPM. All the regular news sites are citing him as saying that the 360’s DVD format and the possible lack of a hard drive as limitations for GTA 4 when compared to the PS3’s Blu-Ray format and guaranteed hard drive.
Actually, if you read the interview (link below), his actual comments are extremely mild and I wouldn’t count them for much. Most developers try to keep things professional and avoid picking sides and making inflammatory statements.
However, the same Dan Houser was extremely clear on the subject of disc storage during an interview in 2004. Remember that that was long before the specs for the PS3 or the 360 were even announced:
One area that I’m really involved in is creating the audio assets – I think we’ll have well over 400 speaking parts, which is insanity. The amount of studio time we’re having to get through and the amount of writing that’s involved, we’re more worried about getting it on the disc. That’s our initial challenge. We’re having to go to dual layer DVD because we’ve already filled up a full DVD.
He sums it up:
The danger is currently the storage medium (DVD), and one we thing we’re all praying for in the next round of hardware is that they don’t just go, ‘It’s DVD again’.
If he made such a comment now, it would seem like an intentionally partisan comment. But from 2004, that quote actually seems like a genuine technical issue.
2004 Interview on Eurogamer
Recent Kotaku’s Article
Recent Computer And Video Games Article
Not to take the discussion to the shotbox, but come on..? Nobody likes all games, its that simple. Some like the mother, other like the daughter 
Keep your "hate-articles" coming, Gary!
May 4th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Hooray for maximizing potential. At least there their not shoehorning it onto Wii as well or it would probably look like GTA3 in high res. I am at least glad that the game looks as good as it does for the scale of it, hopefully they at least upgrade the audio quality to take advantage of the blu-ray space.
If they’re gonna keep cramming games onto DVD-ROM than I can’t wait for digital distribution to take over. Downloading a few gigs isn’t bad if you got the connection, and would probably give me a chance to play newer games more often than infrequently getting to GameStop.
May 5th, 2007 at 8:44 am
uhhh… I did it again …. I need to go clean my jeans !
May 5th, 2007 at 8:45 am
ZING!
May 5th, 2007 at 10:39 am
I’m sure the devs of GTAIV just aren’t squeezing enough of the game into one disc as much of they could be. *sarcasm*
May 5th, 2007 at 11:26 am
Wii isn’t as much of a problem since they don’t need high bit rates on audio and large textures for hi res. 360 games will just start spanning multiple disks as we’ve seen with Blue-Dragon spanning 3 DL DVDs.
MS probably regrets sticking with DVDs more then anyone since the 360 is the easiest console to crack since the Dreamcast. Hell you don’t even need to solder or buy anything and can even play on live and MS can’t do jack about it.
May 5th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
I don’t think they regret using DVD, there is no way it was ever going to come out in 2005 with any format other than that. I just wish it wasn’t acting as such a bottleneck for next gen games, but it is along, with the fact that it can’t be assumed that all 360 users will have a hard drive for caching.
If the HD was built in and upgrades were more affordable maybe devs could have a second “data” disc that installed the HD and just used one disc to play (not much different from how CD-ROM PC games work) instead of having to switch around. Oh well, maybe we’ll get “next gen” NEXT GEN.
May 5th, 2007 at 9:14 pm
I agree, but when I said they regret sticking with DVDs, I was only referring to the insanely ease of pirating on the 360 since all the protection is in the disk drive.
But I don’t see the DVDs as a bottle neck really. I think they will just span disks more and more often.