My eyes have just recently been shown this new DVDRAM disc medium that hold up to 5.3gb per disc and as far as I know they are rewritable as convientienally as a floppy disc. In 3 years when these drives become standard on market computers, and i''m confident that they will, do you see games being released on these discs rather than cd roms? At 5.3gb per cassette i''m guessing they will storm the market. Can anyone who knows anything in depth about this new data medium please elaborate on its pro''s an con''s? From what I imagine they employ the same cassette style mounting techniques that md''s use for speedy read/writing of an optical medium.

DVD-RAM have 4.7, 5.2 and 9.4GB disks, in a protected cartridge that let them be rewritten 100 000 times, with packet writting (floppy disk like).

It''s a magneto-optical device, the first generation released at the time of the CD was 650MB and it was called PD-CD.

Read/Write is fast, not sure it''s as fast as DVD±R/RW, but it''s similar AFAIK.

Problem is it''s not widely compatible with home DVD players (neither is one of the other kind [+ or -]).


-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Major supporter of DVD RAM is Panasonic for the home market.

DVD RAM is technically superior to the other DVD-RW/DVD+RW format. DVD-RW/DVD+RW support upto 1000 times rewrite.

DVD-RAM provides 100 000 rewrites. This means that even if you were to rewrite the disc everyday, it would last you 273 years or almost 3 lifetimes. This means that DVD-RAM is well suited to replace the floppy disc and CDRW.

On the downside, because of it''s different format, it is the least compatible among most DVD players. However, there are newer DVD players which support DVD-RAM playback.

From what i think, DVD-RAM is more well suited for the PC/Digital Video Recording/Data Storage. Hitachi has released Digital Video Cams which directly record footage directly on to a DVD-RAM disc.

Because of DVD-RAM''s design, it is possible to record and play a movie at the same time which Panasonic has named the time-slip function.
For example you are recording a movie while you are away. You happen to be home before the movie is over and you wish to watch the movie but also dont want to interrupt the recording. DVD-RAM will allow you to watch the movie from the start while it records the movie at the same time.

What good would it make to have a game in DVD-RAM? Have the user be able to erase the whole game when the bore of it?

PC games in DVD are already a bit rare, what publisher would go nuts and put the game in a far more specific format, when there are no major gains in it (same capacity as a normal pressed DVD)?

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Original post by M3d10n
What good would it make to have a game in DVD-RAM? Have the user be able to erase the whole game when the bore of it?

PC games in DVD are already a bit rare, what publisher would go nuts and put the game in a far more specific format, when there are no major gains in it (same capacity as a normal pressed DVD)?

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One advantage would be running the game from the CD and allowing the config files, save games, etc to be on disc, so bringing the disc to another machine will include your status and everything, which saves you the time of copying things and carrying around multiple discs. Yes, they are rare at the moment, and the advantage is VERY slim considering the tiny market with DVD RAM drives, but if/when they become more common place, I don''t think releasing a game on one would be a bad thing.

given that DVD-ROM drives have been around for the last 4 years and games are still being released on CD-ROMs i dont htink we''ll see DVD-RAM disks appearing for some while, the next switch will be to standard DVD-ROMs, and so far i only know of 2 games which have come on DVDs, Freespace was one and the other i happened to notice in a shop the other day (but i''ve forgotten the name).

if there are enough big name manufacturers leading a parade of market flooding then the dvdrams could effectively bypass the era of dvdroms. Do any of you remember the battle between VHS an Beta? some people argue beta is better, yet VHS is what appealed to the manufacturers more. DVDRAMS have a quite a more versitile set of features then DVDROMS an i''m sure there are security features which gaurd against piracy slightly better than a DVDROM as well.
And as for erasing the whole game, thats what a write protect switch was for on floppy discs, back when games used to appear on those. I don''t see why a DVDRAM disc would be any different and not have one.

Another reason that DVDRAMS might be pushed as the market standard for a data medium on the PC is that it''s different from the home movie industries medium. DVDROM drives being herded out of the market will be a huge blow to home movie piracy. Yet another big reason for big companies to back the flood of these mediums into the quota. I wouldn''t be surprised if we started seeing big companies from all fields of media offering subsideries for the drives, making them far more cheaper than a DVDROM burner.

I''m still waiting for the day when CD-RW drives are standard so I don''t have to carry a floppy around at school. Its interesting to note that about half the computers have ZIP drives now.

I don''t see games being distributed via any kind of rewritable media until they have higher capacity than read-only media or are much, much cheaper.

I can think of one major example of games being distributed on a (partially) rewritable medium - the obscure little corner of the market known as the Game-Boy (Advance). Going back a couple of years, there was also that little known console: the Nintendo 64, a large proportion of the games for which included save-space on the cartridge. The gamecube may use un-writable distribution media, but their standard memory card usage model is to claim a chunk of the card for the game and pretend it''s an on-cartridge save for the game...

I believe the major constraints on DVD game releases are: DVD drives are still relatively recent, so there''s a significant market share which doesn''t have them - once the standard min spec game machine catches up to the first generation of machines that have DVD drives as standard they''ll probably become standard media for those games and DVDs are (were?) more expensive to produce than CDs, so games that fit on a single CD have no incentive to switch media (I remember the days when games would come on half a dozen floppies).

The PlayStation 2 has 100% of users with DVD readers, and uses DVDs as standard game media. I suspect it''s not long until DVDs become standard for PC games as well.

As for (+|-)R(W) drives, without a single standard, having the hardware as standard is less likely - though recent PCs seem to come with omni-format drives as standard.

Console memory cards == More money for console manufacturers.

Putting games on rewriteable media would eliminate the need (and profit) of selling consumers extra memory cards for more saved games, or cards they lose.

I''m sure the next generation of consoles that are being developed and tested are looking at DVD-RAM and other media to distrubute their games, but it''ll come down to profit, which is not always what is "easier" for the consumer.