PS3 to get new versions of classic arcade games


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PS3 to get new versions of classic arcade games

Ellie Gibson 12:37 28/11/2006

Developers won't be confined to 50MB limit

John Hight, director of external development at Sony's Santa Monica studio, has confirmed that PlayStation 3 owners will be able to download remakes of classic titles - just as Xbox 360 owners can currently do with Xbox Live Arcade.

Speaking to Firing Squad about the new service, dubbed "e-Distribution Initiative", Hight said, "Sony's third party publishers will undoubtedly provide updated versions of classic arcade games."

He also said that - unlike with Live Arcade - Sony won't confine developers to producing games that don't take up more than 50MB of storage space.

"We've arbitrarily set a limit of 500MB to keep download times reasonable," he admitted. "[but] Since we've got plenty of HD space we can accommodate even bigger games and a lot of them."

The PS3 Store already offers games which exceed the Live Arcade-standard 50MB limit, such as Blast Factor and Cash Guns Chaos.

But while Sony's console may have hard disk depth on its side, its interface could be lacking. Live Arcade can sort downloaded items into categories, launch games automatically, and allow for background and automatic downloading - while the PS3 simply presents the user with a long list of downloaded games and demos in the Cross Media bar.

With several firmware updates likely before PS3 launches in Europe next March, it'll be interesting to see what shape the respective services are in when the first PAL units hit the shops.

Source: GamesIndustry.biz

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The whole point of live arcade games is the pick up and go qualities, quick fun 10 minute blasts at games. Why you would need 500mb for such games ill never know, <sarcasm>must be the Blu-Ray effect eh </sarcasm>

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Hmm...didn't know about that 50MB limit!

that's a requirement for each XBLA arcade game, this way people with the Core Edition can store a full game on a 64mb mem card... :happy: :yes:

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Castle Crashers will still be better than any PS3 arcade game. And honestly, re-made oldschool games are pointless to me. I play them solely for the nostalgic qualities of the sprite graphics and synthetic sound effects.

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that's a requirement for each XBLA arcade game, this way people with the Core Edition can store a full game on a 64mb mem card... :happy: :yes:

Does that mean we won't get an arcade-perfect version of Killer Instinct on XBLA? :cry:

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The whole point of live arcade games is the pick up and go qualities, quick fun 10 minute blasts at games. Why you would need 500mb for such games ill never know, <sarcasm>must be the Blu-Ray effect eh </sarcasm>

Yeah, the thing is - 50mb on LIVE feels like 500mb for me.

Its kinda....slow

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Does that mean we won't get an arcade-perfect version of Killer Instinct on XBLA? :cry:

How big is it, and im sure they woudl compress it down quite a bit if they had to.

Yeah, the thing is - 50mb on LIVE feels like 500mb for me.

Its kinda....slow

Have you tried downloading at different times of the day, maybe those that wouldn't be peak times in the USA/UK time zones etc, Or maybe even playing a game wile something downloads? (you can do that cant you :s)

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How big is it, and im sure they woudl compress it down quite a bit if they had to.

Have you tried downloading at different times of the day, maybe those that wouldn't be peak times in the USA/UK time zones etc, Or maybe even playing a game wile something downloads? (you can do that cant you :s)

Yeah, But I mainly play online - so all downloads are stopped for obvious reasons..

Any way to moniter the speed?

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Speaking to Firing Squad about the new service, dubbed "e-Distribution Initiative", Hight said, "Sony's third party publishers will undoubtedly provide updated versions of classic arcade games."

Shouldn't it be dubbed the "Copy Microsoft Initiative"?

Speaking of which, Double Dragon is joining Xbox Live Arcade.

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oh man i would so love Killer Instinct. What happened to that game anyways? I remember playing with Jago and some of the other killers and that thing was hella fun. Mortal Kombat kinda fun. They had some sorta "finish him" too and that was great. I don't think that was on any of the last gen systems but they better bring it to 360! I remember playing that till 8pm at night at the arcade close to my school instead of going home and doing homework!

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Yeah, the thing is - 50mb on LIVE feels like 500mb for me.

Its kinda....slow

That's ridiculous.. Maybe it has something to do with your connection?

I've downloaded 1gb games from Xbox Live in no time flat (like in 20 minutes or so). Granted my downstream bandwidth is 10mbit.. But the fact that I get that much speed is a great sign.

But I will say I don't like the 50mb limit on Arcade Games. It does restrict things a bit too much. Hopefully MS will raise this to 256mb once the new memory card comes out. I think that would be a reasonable size limit.. For original titles (not arcade classics :p).

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Great news about the 500MB, people are getting annoyed at the 50MB limit of Live, especially devs like Team 17 making Worms HD.

A few things here:

Firstly, XBLA titles are currently capped at 50mb. I think the content on the PSP version (low definition) was something like 700mb (all audio, voices and levels). All the art in the XBLA version is high definition for a start (the images are huge) and 4X the size of anything else - if you see the swollen size of things like Defender (a 16k arcade game was 30mb on XBLA!) then you must understand that it's pretty impossible for us to pack everything into 50mb as we have to provide the base game and cater for 5-6 languages. That said, we will release a good mix of content later on, some will be free and some will be chargeable - but you won't need it to continue playing the game. Note: On PS3, our Lemmings title is about 300-400mb (I can't recall the exact figure) in size, since there is no cap on the download size - such is the size of the high-def artwork (even after compression).

Secondly, the price of the game. As you'll find out when it's launched, it'll provide stunning value for money - particularly compared to some other offerings on Live Arcade. At least you'll have the choice if you want anything or not and charged offerings will be good value given the price people charge for phone Ringtones! As for "everything should be free" then I suggest you go to the trouble of developing video games on a professional level with 70+ staff and see how long you can survive as a business with those tactics.

Thirdly "what version of Worms is this and what weapons will it have?" - we're going to be a little coy on feature set until nearer the time. It's safe to assume though that we've got a version that's hopefully casual friendly as it is hardcore-player friendly, so it's positioned as such given XBLA is a pretty casual game-space. It's a pretty pure, more strategic version (rather than crazy, kitchen-sink insanity) and we hope the lure of -secure- weekly, monthly and all-time leaderboards will prove fairly exciting for all.

It seems like the 50 MB limit is preventing devs from delivering a solid core game (I'd say this happened with Lumnies) , and they have to bank on add-ons to provide standard game types/options which has been pretty badly received (again Lumnies).

Anyways, I'm happy Sony is giving devs some breathing room with the size. This will no doubt allow for more types of games, not just the old ports they're planning to bring.

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Yeah, the thing is - 50mb on LIVE feels like 500mb for me.

Its kinda....slow

:| I get nothing but great speeds from the servers.. XBLA demos download in 5-10 minutes or less.

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Yeah, the thing is - 50mb on LIVE feels like 500mb for me.

Its kinda....slow

ROFL!

You must be kidding or probably lying. :rolleyes:

Anyway, good for Sony, they are doing something great...

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Hmm the speculation I've heard was that the XBLA limit would be raised when larger memory cards (like 256MB) were released.

They will probably do that. The question is, when does the 256MB card come out?

They announced the card, just not when it would come.

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Does that mean we won't get an arcade-perfect version of Killer Instinct on XBLA? :cry:

The arcade version of Killer Instinct is circa 120MB, so yeh, it'd be trouble.

however, if you found yourself satisfied with the SNES version, you might be happy to know that the SNES version is around 4MB... hence they might be able to make some intermediate version of it to fit the 50MB limit. not to mention that they probably can compress the whole thing and uncompress it all to RAM at once as if it were an arcade machine (since the 360 has the RAM for it)

worry not, young padawan.

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That's ridiculous.. Maybe it has something to do with your connection?

I've downloaded 1gb games from Xbox Live in no time flat (like in 20 minutes or so). Granted my downstream bandwidth is 10mbit.. But the fact that I get that much speed is a great sign.

But I will say I don't like the 50mb limit on Arcade Games. It does restrict things a bit too much. Hopefully MS will raise this to 256mb once the new memory card comes out. I think that would be a reasonable size limit.. For original titles (not arcade classics :p).

Im on 5mbit/768kbit - I should be able to get it in less than 2 minutes :s

I live in Europe btw.

ROFL!

You must be kidding or probably lying. :rolleyes:

Anyway, good for Sony, they are doing something great...

Yes, im definitely lying :rolleyes:

When is WormsHD due release? Id definitely buy it - first arcade i actually buy..

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