Games guru Mark Rein says that the limited amount of data that can be fitted onto a DVD is restricting the development of his latest game, Unreal Tournament III.
Rein, who works at game publisher Epic, says that Sony's Blu-ray is a much easier format to work with.
Is DVD too old for games?
Dual-layer DVD-9s can store a maximum of about 8GB of data (7.95GB to be exact), whereas a dual layer Blu-ray disc can fit up to 50GB - over six times as much.
Games publishers could just put extra content on a second DVD. But resurrecting the less-than-golden days of disc-swapping is something they are reluctant to do as it can fragment the gaming experience.
Is the DVD format starting to show its age then? Sony's championing of Blu-Ray has had its critics. But if developers start slapping meatier versions of their games onto the HD disc format, we might see a whole lot more people interested in shelling out for a PS3.
Frankly we can't see why Epic can't just slap Unreal Tournament III's beefed-up single-player onto a second disc. If more space is needed, why not be the first company to make the Xbox 360 hard drive a mandatory requirement and dump a load of extra data out onto that.
