Hacker News Reader

Comment by jcpham2 | Hacker News Reader

I was trying to explain to my son the other day when he was complaining about the Xbox without the drive slot. I asked him how big of a download Fortnite or call of duty were - I think he said 60 gigs and then I told him blu ray tops out at 50gb.

He understands why the Xbox doesn’t have the cd slot anymore.

View on HN

Complex games used to be delivered on multiple floppy disks, later multiple CDs. I don't see the capacity of a single Blu-ray disc being a limiting factor.

I don't recall having to swap discs on PS1/2/3/4 at all.

FFVII shipped on 3 discs. Most of it was cutscenes and you better believe they were compressed to hell.

Offhand, many final fantasy games shipped on multiple discs, as did armoured core. Gran turismo and oddworld.

The last of us part 2 and GTA 5 both needed multiple discs on PS4.

PS1 had dozens of games that shipped on multiple discs, PS2 had somewhat fewer but the ones that I remember off the top of my head are Xenosaga 2 and 3.

In addition to other examples given, Metal Gear Solid 1 memorably has a disc-swap.

Games heavy on prerendered video frequently were multi-disc: Final Fantasy 7 is three discs, 8 is four, 9 is four... Xenogears is multiple discs, as is Chrono Cross. Lots of JRPGs, though not exclusively: Riven was on 5 (!) discs, again a case of a lot of prerendered content.

It was pretty rare on PS2 with DVDs, and as far as I know totally eliminated on PS3 with Blu-ray (Metal Gear Solid 4 has/had an "install swap" where it would copy over from the disc only a chapter at a time, but all coming from one disc).

Then the concept made a comeback by the tail end of the PS4's life, with several games having "play" and "install" discs, though these aren't quite the same experience, as you just use the install/data disc once then put it away. Fittingly one of these PS4 multi-disc games is the remake of Final Fantasy 7 (one that covers only a relatively small portion of the original, to boot).

It doesn't work as well for games like fortnite. Matchmaking map playlists tied to specific discs? Sure, it could be done.

One of the big limiting factors for a game like Fortnite is that the assets change significantly over time. Textures, materials, animations, audio have all changed dramatically over the last few years. There's likely very little from the initial install that is still usable, and thats before you get to file load order and fragmentation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com