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Sony didn’t pay for Metal Gear Solid 4 exclusivity ; Kojima did not want to make the port for Xbox 360

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PaintTinJr

Member
Again like ive said barley any multiplatform ganes or even first party studios kept stable 30fps, screen tearing was continuous, even on gta5, worst game id say for it was far cry 3, though the 360 version also suffered it badly whwn in firefoghts far cry 3 on ps3 had it whenever you moved
With the PS3 firmware and game patch of the time, yes, but the 10MB edram buffer in the 360 meant that the lower res and screen tearing would likely remain, and the 360 gamma is an issue even today, using a 360 on +£1500 OLED or £10k miniLED or QLED by Sony or Samsung.

My friend discussed this with me back at the time, and despite him agreeing that the 360 version visuals were all compromised, he'd been conditioned to them and said he still preferred the 360 gamma look instead of the PS3's accurate PC gamma (to use Valve's terminology) that he described as "washed out", and I think that is your view also. But now we all have vastly better screens I suspect his opinion has changed, and I'm surprised anyone with even a £300 4K LED wouldn't prefer the PS3's accurate rendering making best use of modern TV capabilities compared to the 360's - even if the 360 still got a 1-2fps gain and had a some extra 2D sprite alpha blended foliage.
 
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IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


0:00 Intro
03:17 The Campaign Part 1
09:22 The Gameplay
14:22 Drebin
17:28 Combat Sequences
20:13 Beauty & The Beast Unit
27:42 Akiba
30:29 The Campaign Part 2
35:38 Act 4 & Act 5
39:57 The Final Fight & Ending
43:29 Closing Remarks
 

IbizaPocholo

NeoGAFs Kent Brockman


Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a fantastic game and one that succeeded in what it set out to do. The narrative fulfills its dual purpose of being its own entity and tying up all loose ends, and the gameplay is also streamlined while retaining the same dynamic elements that fans of the franchise love so dearly.

While the roster of boss fights might not be as memorable as prior entries, it’s no slouch in that department either. Plus, it's all presented with striking attention to detail. Taking the sum of its many parts, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is a game that hasn’t aged much after all these years - but the only thing that’s holding it back from being relevant to this day is its availability on modern hardware.
 
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Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots debuted in March 2005 on PlayStation 3

So Jim Ryan got a time machine, shot Peter Moore, and had the PS3 take the Xbox 360's place in 2005 launching one year earlier. Then he took Kojima with him in the time machine to release Metal gear Solid 4, 3 years earlier ready at launch for the PS3. That son of a Ridge Racer, he did it again.


But I don't believe this, I need to hear it out of Kojimas mouth, because it wasn't jsut the 360, Kojima never ported the game to anything else outside the PS3. That doesn't soud like something that would happen if he had full control of the decision made regarding MGS4.
 
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adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
This is pretty poor from him. If it had come to 360 there would be a high chance it would be playable on series x with a locked frame rate.

This news just went from meh to being legitimately annoying to know. God damn it Kojima.

You're both right. If it had been on 360, with unlocked frame rate and all, even without any enhancements we would at least be able to play it in a solid 720p/60 FPS ala GTA IV

What could have been.
 

A.Romero

Member
So Jim Ryan got a time machine, shot Peter Moore, and had the PS3 take the Xbox 360's place in 2005 launching one year earlier. Then he took Kojima with him in the time machine to release Metal gear Solid 4, 3 years earlier ready at launch for the PS3. That son of a Ridge Racer, he did it again.


But I don't believe this, I need to hear it out of Kojimas mouth, because it wasn't jsut the 360, Kojima never ported the game to anything else outside the PS3. That doesn't soud like something that would happen if he had full control of the decision made regarding MGS4.

Kojima wanting to focus on a single platform to be able to produce the best product possible (technically speaking) is something that sounds like him, in my opinion.
 

Deerock71

Member
This might be one of those things...you know...that turned Konami into a video pachinko game making company. Let's spend 10s of millions on a project and release it to half our potential audience.
 
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Neff

Member
Multiplats on PS3 improved quite a bit in the later years of the generation. Just took devs a while to figure the cell processor out.

Only FFXIII and Lords of Shadow come to mind for me. By the time I got my 360 (very late to the party in 2012) I was surprised by how much of a dramatic improvement 360 versions of games I'd played on my PS3 were.
 

Umbasaborne

Banned
OVOdVmT.jpg

The carnival is back in town
 

Omnipunctual Godot

Gold Member
This might be one of those things...you know...that turned Konami into a video pachinko game making company. Let's spend 10s of millions on a project and release it to half our potential audience.
To be fair, Metal Gear has been a PlayStation-centric series since 1998. Even when MGSV released on Xbox and PS4, it sold 3x more copies on PS4. Same with Final Fantasy games. For whatever reason, most Japanese games tend to do significantly better on Sony consoles when they're released on both simultaneously.
 
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Kojima wanting to focus on a single platform to be able to produce the best product possible (technically speaking) is something that sounds like him, in my opinion.

Even years later before he left Konami there were many better choices than he had in 2008 compared to 2016. but he was able to get all the other MGS games including newer ones all over the place. Again, that doesn't sound like something that would happen if Kojima actually had control of MGSIV, it sounds like Sony had it via Konami.

Reminds me of Lost Odyssey.


Sony got a lot of flak for using BD but in hindsight they gauged correctly that games were ballooning in size.

Back in the 360 ps3 days BD was completely useless for gamers unless they wanted to play games and watch BD movies on the same device, but DVD was still the popular movie choice so that was a minority. Sony lost a ton of money on it pushing it too far on devices that had no use for it at the time, PS3, CD players, and PC being the best examples.

Most BD games then were bloated or unoptimized, and many required you to install which created the installing meme that ended up being used against the PS3. Most of the more complex software fit on one DVD and sizes really didn't become an issue until very late.

Final Fantasy XIII mentioned before is a good example to illustrate my point, 13-2 on the 360 was only on one disc. The 3 discs the original was on wasn't needed, Square Enix didn't optimize the game and didn't think they would need to since the game was originally in development for the PS3 only, and so knew the BD would have enough space for them to not have to bother with optimization. The decision to release on the 360 later resulted in the game being released on 3 discs because of this, but when they actually tried with the 2nd game it was only on one disc. There's nothing in the original XIII that the sequel didn't have that required 3 discs.

The biggest games that generation could fit on ONE 8GB or later 10GB DVD. For the Xbox One and PS4 they were required since there wasn't another storage medium that could hold enough storage that was cheap to produce, but for 360 and PS3 they weren't needed.
 
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A.Romero

Member
Even years later before he left Konami there were many better choices than he had in 2008 compared to 2016. but he was able to get all the other MGS games including newer ones all over the place. Again, that doesn't sound like something that would happen if Kojima actually had control of MGSIV, it sounds like Sony had it via Konami.



Back in the 360 ps3 days BD was completely useless for gamers unless they wanted to play games and watch BD movies on the same device, but DVD was still the popular movie choice so that was a minority. Sony lost a ton of money on it pushing it too far on devices that had no use for it at the time, PS3, CD players, and PC being the best examples.

Most BD games then were bloated or unoptimized, and many required you to install which created the installing meme that ended up being used against the PS3. Most of the more complex software fit on one DVD and sizes really didn't become an issue until very late.

Final Fantasy XIII mentioned before is a good example to illustrate my point, 13-2 on the 360 was only on one disc. The 3 discs the original was on wasn't needed, Square Enix didn't optimize the game and didn't think they would need to since the game was originally in development for the PS3 only, and so knew the BD would have enough space for them to not have to bother with optimization. The decision to release on the 360 later resulted in the game being released on 3 discs because of this, but when they actually tried with the 2nd game it was only on one disc. There's nothing in the original XIII that the sequel didn't have that required 3 discs.

The biggest games that generation could fit on ONE 8GB or later 10GB DVD. For the Xbox One and PS4 they were required since there wasn't another storage medium that could hold enough storage that was cheap to produce, but for 360 and PS3 they weren't needed.

Dude, MGS4 is so customized to the PS3's architecture that is one of the games where emulators struggle the most. The storage was unoptimized as you said but it entirely depended on using BR. Could it be done in 360? Most likely. Could it mean changes in some stuff? Definitely.

It doesn't sound too far fetched that Kojima didn't want to deal with having to change stuff.

Only MGSV was released in multiple platforms at once and they used a custom engine that was aimed at that since the beginning. When MGS4 work started, Kojima probably didn't even think 360 was a serious contender coming from how OG Xbox was and the position of Xbox in Japan. Even today MGS games ported to PC are very limited despite some of them getting ports to even 3DS!

That said, it's possible that Sony money hatted Konami to keep it exclusive but then again, why not money hat again for MGSV? I think it's just as likely that it wasn't interesting enough to deal with all the other implications... Which is a shame because we would at least be able to play it on XSX today.
 
Dude, MGS4 is so customized to the PS3's architecture that is one of the games where emulators struggle the most. The storage was unoptimized as you said but it entirely depended on using BR.

BR is storage not something that improves hardware, and remember the game had to be installed three or four times while playing the game. PC's could handle the game the 8 years after the games release, there's nothing that could have stopped Kojima from bringing the game to PC, or the 360 (with multiple discs) if he had control of doing so and I don't think he did.

The only argument you can make for MGS4 technically is it depended on the cell, but so did Uncharted 2 and 3, and many other games that pushed the hardware further and got brought to PC or PS4.

That said, it's possible that Sony money hatted Konami to keep it exclusive but then again, why not money hat again for MGSV? I think it's just as likely that it wasn't interesting enough to deal with all the other implications... Which is a shame because we would at least be able to play it on XSX today.

No, you have something here, it's very likely that Sony and Konami had a relationship, and Sony never bothered working with Konami to port the game to PS4. Likely Sony got the distribution rights to MGS4 and that would explain why they could stream the original on PSnow and no one else can port the game.

it's probably similar to Crash Bandicoot, no one can release the original 3 Crash games and Sony has exclusive control of distribution of those games. Activision got around that by making remakes using the geometry of the originals.

So the only way we will se MGS4 outside the PS3 will be a remake, assuming this is the case.
 

Drew1440

Member
To be fair, Metal Gear has been a PlayStation-centric series since 1998. Even when MGSV released on Xbox and PS4, it sold 3x more copies on PS4. Same with Final Fantasy games. For whatever reason, most Japanese games tend to do significantly better on Sony consoles when they're released on both simultaneously.
The first two Metal Gear Solid titles were ported to Microsoft platforms, Windows 98 and the Xbox. Only since MGS3 was it fully exclusive to Sony consoles
If only digital game downloads existed back then.

Oh wait…
Would still be an issue, the first 360 consoles only had 13GB of user storage, and the game uses a dual-layer Blu-ray. And then you have the core and arcade consoles that had no HDD.
 

Omnipunctual Godot

Gold Member
The first two Metal Gear Solid titles were ported to Microsoft platforms, Windows 98 and the Xbox. Only since MGS3 was it fully exclusive to Sony consoles
I didn't say Metal Gear never appeared on other platforms. It's been on Nintendo consoles and handhelds as well. I said it has been a PlayStation-centric series since 2008, and that's where the overwhelming majority of sales came from even when it released simultaneously on other platforms.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
The person you quoted from months ago will never see your response. This was a necro bump.
They're right though, it was never released digitally because it was too big.
The game had 7.1 uncompressed audio too.
Lots of video to hide the loading although there was only one cut-scene that wasn't running in real-time.
I noticed someone mentioned you had to install multiple times which is true but you could also install the whole game with a lengthy install.
And the game was littered with Playstation references through out the game.
It would have been too much effort to port it to 360 and Kojima never until MGSV worked on multiple platforms or ported games.
And Konami probably was responsible for the push to multi platform.
Even MGS2 Subsistence wasn't even ported by Kojima.
Same with Kojima wasn't involved in MGS TS or Snakes Revenge.
People keep saying oh but MGS release on this platform etc, but Kojima is never involved.
That's why I know if Kojima did make a game on Xbox it would stay on Xbox until other team ported it because Kojima don't do ports
But MGS4 as well as all the others in the series needs porting to current gen consoles.
Regardless if it's multi platform or not.
 
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Very likely after MGS2 which Kojima intended to be the last game, it's likely Konami partnered with Sony for later releases and that's why there weren't any ports until after MGS4 and it was out of Kojimas hands, even his own plot hole series wasn't fully in his control after MGS2. Konami got more involved.

I believe Sony has like with the first 3 Crash games, exclusive rights to MGSIV, and only a remake can get around that.

I noticed someone mentioned you had to install multiple times which is true but you could also install the whole game with a lengthy install.

No you couldn't, at least not until 4 years after release with the greatest hit release, until then you had to install each chapter individually as you played.

https://www.destructoid.com/budget-version-and-mgs4-patch-will-allow-a-full-install/
 

The Stig

Member
im a little surprised by this news considering MGS2 was on PC and MGSV being on... everything.

anyway, i agree with the ozzie youtuber. MGS4 is a beautiful mess. so many gadgets, weapons, (not in all the acts) and good gosh is it flawed. i still cherish my collectors edition and it sits next to my OG 60gb ps3 along with my MGS HD collection. I'd be very very sad if I lost any of those things.
 

TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
No you couldn't, at least not until 4 years after release with the greatest hit release, until then you had to install each chapter individually as you played.

https://www.destructoid.com/budget-version-and-mgs4-patch-will-allow-a-full-install/
Yeah it was released with the Trophy Patch.
I mean sure ya right it did take 4 years for them to implement it but saying you couldn't do it is like me saying the 360 never had HDMI port or PS3 is fully backwards compatible.
both are false and correct depending on the time it was said.
And as we're talking about something from a decade ago....then I am correct when I say you can install it fully on your harddrive or do it per episode.👍
 
Yeah it was released with the Trophy Patch.
I mean sure ya right it did take 4 years for them to implement it but saying you couldn't do it is like me saying the 360 never had HDMI port or PS3 is fully backwards compatible.
both are false and correct depending on the time it was said.
And as we're talking about something from a decade ago....then I am correct when I say you can install it fully on your harddrive or do it per episode.👍

PS3 is discontinued these days, you can't patch anything now lol.

But either way you had to install the game, that was a major inconvenience back in the 360 ps3 years. People don't mind now but back then that was turn off and was mocked online frequently. That wasn't just for MGS4, that was any game that required installation.
 
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TGO

Hype Train conductor. Works harder than it steams.
PS3 is discontinued these days, you can't patch anything now lol.

But either way you had to install the game, that was a major inconvenience back in the 360 ps3 years. People don't mind now but back then that was turn off and was mocked online frequently. That wasn't just for MGS4, that was any game that required installation.
I know, I was there/here 😂
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
Final Fantasy XIII mentioned before is a good example to illustrate my point, 13-2 on the 360 was only on one disc. The 3 discs the original was on wasn't needed, Square Enix didn't optimize the game and didn't think they would need to since the game was originally in development for the PS3 only, and so knew the BD would have enough space for them to not have to bother with optimization. The decision to release on the 360 later resulted in the game being released on 3 discs because of this, but when they actually tried with the 2nd game it was only on one disc. There's nothing in the original XIII that the sequel didn't have that required 3 discs.

I think you're wrong on this one, man. A huge part of this is that in Final Fantasy XIII-2 the cut scenes were generated using the game's engine. Final Fantasy XIII had pre-generated cut scenes which took up a lot more space. Also, Final Fantasy XIII had more content and took longer to beat than Final Fantasy XIII-2.

Final Fantasy XIII

Final Fantasy XIII-2

I don't think with this information you can say that the sole reason, or even the main reason, for Final Fantasy XIII-2 being on a single disc was due to better optimization.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
I don't think with this information you can say that the sole reason, or even the main reason, for Final Fantasy XIII-2 being on a single disc was due to better optimization.

I think the biggest reason 13-2 and LR were single disc is because producing real time content is a lot cheaper than outsourcing lavish CG, that and FFXIII also had almost all 'regular looking' cut-scenes as video files as well. Not sure if it was done to counter PS3's slow blu ray speed or what, but with XIII-2 and LR, you only had opening and ending CGI, everything else was rendered in real time.

Hence them being comfortably sized for a single dvd.
 
I know, I was there/here 😂

2007, looks like we got veteran here lol.

I think you're wrong on this one, man. A huge part of this is that in Final Fantasy XIII-2 the cut scenes were generated using the game's engine. Final Fantasy XIII had pre-generated cut scenes which took up a lot more space. Also, Final Fantasy XIII had more content and took longer to beat than Final Fantasy XIII-2.

XIII does not take longer to beat and doesn't have more content than XIII-2. I'm assuming that the site you're using is talking about going for the bad ending straight away which isn't the real ending, even ignore fluff, unlocking all the time gates in the grid and getting the real ending takes maybe double the time of XIII.

As for cut scenes, that's exactly what i was talking about when bringing up unoptimized development. There were PS3 games that took less space that had better quality cutscenes, the massive amount of space for them weren't needed, but as i said, Square didn't care because the game was originally made for the PS3 and they knew BR had enough space. The actual game itself is only 6GB compared to 14Gb for the sequel which is open and HD a lot more to do with more content.

The 360 version on 3 discs was 18GB and it still wasn't optimized just split across 3 DVD's, and optimized FFXIII could have been on the 360 with one disc. Yes, it wouldn't have been as pretty as the PS3 cutscenes but it would have still looked great. On the PS3, the cutscenes had no reason to be that big, they just could afford to do it. FFXIII has an unnecessary 39.5GB file size that could be reduced to 20-22GB without any changes.

But this is slightly off-topic from my main point, and that was that bigger more complex games could all fit on 8GB and 10GB DVD's. The actual game was 6GB, and that was also unoptimized. If Square Enix did a better job they could have put all of FFXIII on ONE 360 disc. Some of the best looking games that gen were on DVD.

I think the biggest reason 13-2 and LR were single disc is because producing real time content is a lot cheaper than outsourcing lavish CG, that and FFXIII also had almost all 'regular looking' cut-scenes as video files as well. Not sure if it was done to counter PS3's slow blu ray speed or what, but with XIII-2 and LR, you only had opening and ending CGI, everything else was rendered in real time.

Hence them being comfortably sized for a single dvd.

The only thing preventing FFXIII from being on a single DVD for the 360- was poor Square optimization for the game itself, and the media. Even if we ignore the 360 and focus just on the PS3, and compare FFXIII game files and media files to other PS3 games, it's clear it's bloated to the extreme for the results you get.

The point is that during that generation BD wasn't needed and was an inconvenience to gamers, especially with many PS3 games requiring installation and the PS3 internal storage not having enough space if you started to buy a few games. Also gamers didn't like to wait, and that was one of the biggest issues players had with it.

Xbox One and PS4 needed BR as a necessity because the game development tools, codecs, graphics, and engines became much bigger as things improved and there wasn't another storage medium that could do the job. So after a whole gen of BD (unless you had a Wii U) gamers are used to installing now. Especially to SSD's, but back then it was not seen as beneficial.

Data caps and throttles will make BD the choice for years to come, ironic when you look back and all the gaming press trashing the PS3 for installs. lol.
 
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YeulEmeralda

Linux User
Even years later before he left Konami there were many better choices than he had in 2008 compared to 2016. but he was able to get all the other MGS games including newer ones all over the place. Again, that doesn't sound like something that would happen if Kojima actually had control of MGSIV, it sounds like Sony had it via Konami.



Back in the 360 ps3 days BD was completely useless for gamers unless they wanted to play games and watch BD movies on the same device, but DVD was still the popular movie choice so that was a minority. Sony lost a ton of money on it pushing it too far on devices that had no use for it at the time, PS3, CD players, and PC being the best examples.

Most BD games then were bloated or unoptimized, and many required you to install which created the installing meme that ended up being used against the PS3. Most of the more complex software fit on one DVD and sizes really didn't become an issue until very late.

Final Fantasy XIII mentioned before is a good example to illustrate my point, 13-2 on the 360 was only on one disc. The 3 discs the original was on wasn't needed, Square Enix didn't optimize the game and didn't think they would need to since the game was originally in development for the PS3 only, and so knew the BD would have enough space for them to not have to bother with optimization. The decision to release on the 360 later resulted in the game being released on 3 discs because of this, but when they actually tried with the 2nd game it was only on one disc. There's nothing in the original XIII that the sequel didn't have that required 3 discs.

The biggest games that generation could fit on ONE 8GB or later 10GB DVD. For the Xbox One and PS4 they were required since there wasn't another storage medium that could hold enough storage that was cheap to produce, but for 360 and PS3 they weren't needed.
FF13 had a lot of cutscenes which take up space at 1080p.
 

intbal

Member
X360 had no hdd by default. It was mandated that on 360 games run off of the disc without a need for a HDD.

Microsoft left this up to the publishers.
Alan Wake, Wolfenstein:The New Order, and Assassin's Creed Rogue all required installation to the hard drive to play.
I don't know the total number of games that required the hard drive. It was small. Most publishers didn't bother.
 

adamsapple

Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
The only thing preventing FFXIII from being on a single DVD for the 360- was poor Square optimization for the game itself, and the media. Even if we ignore the 360 and focus just on the PS3, and compare FFXIII game files and media files to other PS3 games, it's clear it's bloated to the extreme for the results you get.

I mean yeah, its bloated because Square had a lot of 1080p CGI and 720p video files masquerading as game cut-scenes. We can call it optimization issue sure but the game as it was, was never going to fit into a single disc at all without major changes in development.
 
I mean yeah, its bloated because Square had a lot of 1080p CGI and 720p video files masquerading as game cut-scenes. We can call it optimization issue sure but the game as it was, was never going to fit into a single disc at all without major changes in development.

The thing about this is the 360 versions 3 disc all had unused space, but were all similarly sized, yet not all the discs used similar amounts of uncompressed cutscenes and audio. I agree that Square would have had to put more effort into porting the 360 version and releasing the PS3 versions to get the file sizes down, but it's clear that the file sizes for both consoles were only big because Square didn't bother trying to optimize.

On one hand it makes sense since they weren't originally intending to release on 360 and you were going to install the game on PS3 anyway. But it also shows how Square wasn't ready for next gen yet. This was something of a theme for japanese devs in general, some people blame the 360 for rushing gaming hardware to far ahead. I don't agree with that, but it's clear that Square was having some trouble moving on to next gen back in 2009.
 

IFireflyl

Gold Member
XIII does not take longer to beat and doesn't have more content than XIII-2. I'm assuming that the site you're using is talking about going for the bad ending straight away which isn't the real ending, even ignore fluff, unlocking all the time gates in the grid and getting the real ending takes maybe double the time of XIII.

Tell me you didn't even click the link without telling me you didn't even click the link. If you had clicked the link you would have seen the different breakdowns, including the completionist section. The pages I linked have a ton of data you could look at, and none of it is difficult to interpret. Also, the fastest speedrun for both games is just under 20 hours for Final Fantasy XIII and just under 4 hours for Final Fantasy XIII-2. Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a shorter game, and I can find plenty of corroborating claims.


The main story is much shorter than FFXIII. It can be beaten in 20-25 hours pretty easily if you ignore side stuff and just go straight from one story objective to the next, although it'll probably take you longer if you do any exploration. Instead of a longer story, XIII-2 has a lot more and better optional content than XIII.

XIII-2 has whole zones that are optional, with their own side stories, and also has things like alternate endings for you to unlock. XIII has a much longer main story, but doesn't really have any optional content except for a bunch of "go here and kill this" missions.
Lord pretty much summed up FFXIII-2 well.

If you haven't beaten FFXIII expect to log about 50 - 55 hours to complete the main story. If you want to go for 100% completion in 13 it will take you about 100 - 110 hours (it took me 105). FFXIII-2 like he said will take about 25 hours for the main story. If you go for 100% completion for fragments and such it will take probably anywhere from 50 - 70 hours total.

So the story is shorter but FFXIII-2 definitely has its own feel to it (towns, side quests, tweaked battle system, tweaked leveling system, monsters, etc). I thought FFXIII had a more compelling story but I love both games. Still, the ending to FFXIII-2 has much to be desired.
I finished at 44 hours. Granted I've only got 110 artefacts, and I burnt a few hours at the card tables in Sazh's DLC. As well as what seems like hours trying to get the stupid artefact from the stupid slot machines >.<
I kinda consider FFXIII-2 the "Majora's Mask" of Final Fantasy. A very short main story but massive, massive ammount of optional and side stuff to do


Final Fantasy XIII is a long game. Like, longer than the average JRPG, especially by today’s standards when most adventure’s are clocking in at (or even less than) 20 or 30 hours. Thus, its beefy story that spans a solid 50 is tout-worthy. But even outside of the story, there’s a good 50-60 extra hours for the completionists of the world. That’s, for lack of a better phrase, pretty damn enormous.

XIII-2 and Lightning Returns are a bit shorter, though, which is sure to disappoint those who just can’t get enough of Lightning and the gang. XIII-2 will run folks about 30 hours for the story, and another 30 to do everything. Of course, the monster taming mechanic is sure to entice folks to stay with the game a bit longer, as there are over 150 tamable creatures.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is the better game, but it is 100% a shorter game. Provide me some source that disproves me if you'd like, but I can find a lot of corroborating claims and statistics to support the claims that Final Fantasy XIII is the longer game. This goes for speed runs and completionists.

As for cut scenes, that's exactly what i was talking about when bringing up unoptimized development. There were PS3 games that took less space that had better quality cutscenes, the massive amount of space for them weren't needed, but as i said, Square didn't care because the game was originally made for the PS3 and they knew BR had enough space. The actual game itself is only 6GB compared to 14Gb for the sequel which is open and HD a lot more to do with more content.

The 360 version on 3 discs was 18GB and it still wasn't optimized just split across 3 DVD's, and optimized FFXIII could have been on the 360 with one disc. Yes, it wouldn't have been as pretty as the PS3 cutscenes but it would have still looked great. On the PS3, the cutscenes had no reason to be that big, they just could afford to do it. FFXIII has an unnecessary 39.5GB file size that could be reduced to 20-22GB without any changes.

But this is slightly off-topic from my main point, and that was that bigger more complex games could all fit on 8GB and 10GB DVD's. The actual game was 6GB, and that was also unoptimized. If Square Enix did a better job they could have put all of FFXIII on ONE 360 disc. Some of the best looking games that gen were on DVD.

The only thing preventing FFXIII from being on a single DVD for the 360- was poor Square optimization for the game itself, and the media. Even if we ignore the 360 and focus just on the PS3, and compare FFXIII game files and media files to other PS3 games, it's clear it's bloated to the extreme for the results you get.

The point is that during that generation BD wasn't needed and was an inconvenience to gamers, especially with many PS3 games requiring installation and the PS3 internal storage not having enough space if you started to buy a few games. Also gamers didn't like to wait, and that was one of the biggest issues players had with it.

Xbox One and PS4 needed BR as a necessity because the game development tools, codecs, graphics, and engines became much bigger as things improved and there wasn't another storage medium that could do the job. So after a whole gen of BD (unless you had a Wii U) gamers are used to installing now. Especially to SSD's, but back then it was not seen as beneficial.

Data caps and throttles will make BD the choice for years to come, ironic when you look back and all the gaming press trashing the PS3 for installs. lol.

How they implement cut scenes (pre-rendered vs. in-egine) isn't optimization. It's a design choice. The initial game was made for the PS3 and then ported to the Xbox 360. The travesty here wasn't how large the PS3 version was. It was that Microsoft didn't want to go with a blu-ray drive and pay Sony royalties on the drives and discs for their games. If the Xbox 360 had used blu-ray discs Final Fantasy XIII would have flawlessly worked on the Xbox 360. Instead, Sony was forced to whittle down their pristine PS3 version to something that would fit on multiple discs that were each around a tenth of the size of the PS3 blu-ray disc. The end result was a game that played in a worse resolution and with more artifacts than its blu-ray counterpart.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 was a smaller game (again, the facts are all there), and moving to in-engine cut scenes drastically reduced the file size. These two factors, combined with a more agressive compression method, are the reason Final Fantasy XIII-2 fit on a single disc, and even then it just barely fit. In 2011 the XGD3 format was introduced that increased the usable space on the DVD disc to 8.3 GB, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 was a total of 7.8 GB. Had this game came out in 2009 (like Final Fantasy XIII) it would have needed two discs still.
 

AREYOUOKAY?

Member
The fool. If there was nothing preventing him from porting it to other places then he forgot about the greatest loophole ever to make it "Xbox" related.

Games for Windows Live on PC
I still have nightmares of games using that to this day.
 
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I loved MGS4, but even back during the ps3 era I remember thinking one day it’ll run better and be on one disc (didn’t even think about download)

Nice to know there’s nothing stopping a future port to Xbox/PC

Here’s hoping 🤞
 

Neo_GAF

Banned
i read a korean interview, where someone from kojima stated, that the beginning of mgs4(with the tv switching thing) alone took almost 10gb of space. another point was made, that most of the shit was uncompressed on the disc. everything would had been available with compression and proper coding onto one disc. and of course there was no offer from ms, which everyone at konami expected to fly in. since sony is close with japanese devs, konami did not do the extra mile like back in the day square enix with ff13(which was a bad port+ms even paid moneyhatted this piece of shit)

all in all, there was so much misinformation and fanboyism going on. consolewars was a thing and still does.

iam glad, that kojima got out of the MGS loop, because after mgs1-4 the games simply got bad.
i would have loved more snatcher/policenauts/otherness games.
 

SmokedMeat

Gamer™
Would still be an issue, the first 360 consoles only had 13GB of user storage, and the game uses a dual-layer Blu-ray. And then you have the core and arcade consoles that had no HDD.

The 120GB HDD was available, a year before Metal Gear Solid 4 released. A port would’ve been possible.
 

Esppiral

Member
This is very well known..... The sole reason it is exclusive is because of him. I don't understand why this info is "news"

And the excuse to not release it on Xbox 360 is a joke, the game install every act on PS3 it would be even quicker to change discs every act on Xbox that waiting 15 min installing each chapter, so yeah he is a fanboy.
 

Panajev2001a

GAF's Pleasant Genius
This is very well known..... The sole reason it is exclusive is because of him. I don't understand why this info is "news"

And the excuse to not release it on Xbox 360 is a joke, the game install every act on PS3 it would be even quicker to change discs every act on Xbox that waiting 15 min installing each chapter, so yeah he is a fanboy.
Because people wanted to believe it was Sony moneyhatting it and depriving gamers of this exclusive or because they assumed Sony moneyhatted them for less nefarious reasons 🤷‍♂️.
 
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