Topic: Is the Wii U limited by it's media format?

A. It isn't Sony's format, it belongs to the Blu-Ray Disc Association. Sony is a major partner, but is just that, a partner. There are dozens of companies with stakes here, including several large players that control significant portions of this industry association. Same thing with DVD and the DVD Forum, despite many a gamer 15 years ago thinking DVD equaled Sony just because of the PS2.

B. They're not getting away from paying, since they've incorporated Blu-Ray technology here and have properly licensed it directly from the applicable patent holders.

C. A Blu-Ray Disc Association license opens up the playback of Blu-Ray video disc and allows them to attach the Blu-Ray name to the system. Nothing more, nothing less. Going this route, had they anted up for a license, does mean that their per system cost goes up due to the applicable license free. But it doesn't mean that game cost would go up as you claimed. It's hardware cost that would've rose.

Blu-Ray Disc Association license or not, the cost for each game disc remains the same.

It's not a limitation and I think it's a fair assumption that dual layered disks are possible. Also the main reason you'd want more storage is to push up the texture quality, because of the much smaller amount of RAM on the Wii U there's less of a need for it. PC games are getting bigger because 2GB VRAM is the entry level amount with 4GB starting to finds its way down to the mid-range cards.

So really, unless the game has a lot of pre-rendered cut-scenes or is a collection of games I don't see much reason for games to go that far over 30GB for a while yet. Storage capacity on disks is well ahead of game size for a change. Which is a good thing.

@skywake
CoD Advanced Warfare is 45GB on Xbox One.
http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/09/this-is-how-big-call-o...

I don't think it will go over that amount for along time, but it has basically already happened, and that is under the idea that Activision actually included enough content to make that 45GB worth something. It is 6GB over Ghosts, which was 39GB.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2013-11-20-all-the-xbox-one...

So as long as companies can maintain graphic quality, improve development (improve data/memory management), and include enough content that is worth $60 within that 50GB limit, it will be fine. If they have to, they can always allow 1 disc for installation, and the other disc for actually playing the game, which is something Watch Dogs and GTA V did on Xbox 360. Companies are most likely taking the easy way out to have everything on the disc installed, for now. This is just what I figure, anyway.

No I answered the question. " Is the Wii U limited by it's media format?" No, it's limited by the hardware. The disc size means nothing. that's like saying the PSX was limited by the disc size yet we have some of the best games come out on multiple discs. The Wii U also has internal storage. The disc format isn't limiting the Wii U.

If Nintendo invented a format that could hold a terabyte of data, that doean't automatically mean the games will be stellar, the hardware would have to properly output the data written to the disc, and if it can't handle that then the bottle neck is the raw horse power of the console.

This is the drawn out answer because you didn't understand my original answer.

So to sum up, that information is simply not true. Wii U can support dual layered if it wants to. No issue.

Ya, and the OP specifically said that, then implied bluray as the media they were thinking of, which we then said was basically the same as what Nintendo is already using.

Also, if you are fine with a ton of discs for a game, then maybe you can tell people that's why GCN having mini-disc wasn't a big deal. Besides you could read 2TB of data on Wii U, if there was an external HDD with that much. Why even bother with bringing up disc? Everyone's going to have to get a new HDD anyway, even with Xbox One and PS4.

GCN having mini-disc was absolutely the right choice. (Only optical media based system that has ever worked pretty well in my experience.)

The noise level was also reasonable.

I did make a point that they can go over that limit with pre-rendered cut scenes. So what's your point?

So you're talking about the game, only? I was talking just overall file size. MC Collection is 60GB. It took like a day to download, but Halo 4 downloaded first, so I was just playing that.

I saw that, but I guess I should ask why you would bring that up. Saying, "Oh, well alot of it is prerendered cutscenes.", isn't going to do jack for the amount of data being taken up on disc. Whether it is prerendered cutscenes or not, 46GB of data is being taken from the HDD. Moving forward, under te presumption that graphics get better, there's no way they'll be able to fit that much data onto one disc. They aren't going to get rid of 10-15GB to exclude the cutscenes. I think they would just include multiple discs for installation, then possibly have one disc to actually run the game,

Let's all go back to Windows '95

One of the reasons why such games take up a lot of space is because of uncompressed audio. It's compressed on-disc, but they decompress it as it installs onto the HDD. I believe Wii U decompressed it on the fly, allowing them to keep it compressed when loaded in RAM.

@DiscoStew
That seems right. For Mass Effect 3 on Wii U, the audio was compressed on disc, anyway. So the Wii U can support Dolby Pro Logic, but the content on the disc has to be that codec to begin with. That's why Netflix not sending 5.1 is an issue on their part. They could send the 5.1 Dolby straight to the console for surround streaming, but they assume the machine itself should already have Dolby codecs.

It depends on what the game is. Some games push the pre-rendered cutscenes and for those games fitting within that size limit is an issue that can only be resolved by more compression on the video. But for the vast majority of games that's not a thing because they don't push the pre-rendered cutscenes as much. They can get away with not having pre-rendered cutscenes even more now because GPUs are capable enough to do some pretty decent looking stuff in real time. So yeah, on the Wii U with it's lower VRAM amounts and therefore less need for higher res textures? There's much less of a need for games to be going much above 30GB. I don't think it's that huge an issue for a platform like the Wii U.

@skywake
It's better that way, too. It's pretty dumb to watch a cutscene that looks alot better than the actual game. I'm glad that isn't as much of a thing anymore. Xbox One and PS4 are already pushing up there, though, so it's hard to tell whether the code(memory) itself needs more optimization, or if they need to push the hardware harder, because if it's the latter. 1 dual layered disc isn't going to really do much for very long.

I know very little about the technological stuff, though I am taking an introductory computer class that helps a bit, but I am sure the Wii U optical disks can be layered. I just want to see some third-party support incoming for 2015 and beyond. I don't expect the EA's, Rockstar's, and Ubisoft's to be back, but I do want to see the SE's, Capcom's, Sega's, TK's, and BN's to give more than just collaboratons and half-hearted exclusive releases.

If the 360, who "only" had a regular DVD drive could get the same games the PS3 had, which had a BluRay drive capable of reading double layer discs, its quite easy to see that the disc medium is not a problem it all.
If im correct, there were only 4 or 5 games in total, that ever came close to filling out a BluRay on the PS3, so it was not that common for games in general to go past DVD capacity in that gen.
I highly doubt that games in this gen will fill out a dl BD anytime soon. That would also mean that devs had to work on their games for a change. Not happening.

And if everything fails, like many already stated: Either split the game on multiple discs, or ship a seperate installation disc with it. Or version C: Compress assets on the disc that get decompressed and installed on first boot.
Heck, if you want to go wild, devs could ship their games on small, dedicated HDDs, since the WiiU is the only console that supports games to be read from those.
The WiiU is far more flexible when it comes to storage space with its ability to use pretty much any HDD connected to it.
So even games with mandatory installations would only mean a one time purchase of a HDD, which arent even that expansive anymore (50€ for 2TB around here)

The only limitation here is the willingnes and craftyness of developers.

That would be awesome. Like cartridges for the modern times. If that were to happen, I would jump on it. It really beats an all digital download world. I would love to buy my games pre-loaded (my internet is too slow, it took 1.5 hours for the MK8 DLC... a whole day to download Hyrule Warriors...). Hopefully you could transfer the data from that HDD to your own if you so desire, through the console, of course. I'm giddy just thinking of the possibilities. XD

The Wii U can technically install, but it would require an ext. HDD. It's no different than what people are already doing with Homebrew on Wii. The matter is how Nintendo handles that from a business point of view. If they can't guarantee that everyone has an internet connection or an ext. HDD, then they might need to figure out another way to get people games. I don't think it will be a problem, like @skywake says, though. The Xbox 360 and PS3 have already gone through all this, pretty much.

There is also a such thing as 100GB bluray, and that's 4K territory. Any game that size would be like twice as big and twice as graphical as GTA V.

If Cartridges returns to gaming, I'll be the happiest man alive. The whole reason why I love my 3DS so much is because it still has a cartridge. A media Disc just feels souless.