Intensive Gaming Diary

The blog about videogames.

Tag: CD

Physical, Digital or Something Else?

Posted on by Viljami

Physical game cartridges and later discs (CDs, DVDs and so on) was how games were sold way before video games were available as downloads from internet. Internet came to be during 1990s and it was only in 2000s when game consoles started to be connected to it. First there were consoles like PS2 and Xbox that could be connected to internet. Later it came a norm that discs only held parts of the game and you actually had to download some parts of the game. This is also how many games were patched or updated even after they had been released.

The progress towards faster networks and downloading games has been a slow one. However just some days ago Sony announced that it will discontinue physical game discs in the year 2028. This makes a gamer think about the release of PlayStation 6 and the matter that it probably won’t have a disc drive at all. We have seen this kind of progression already in PCs. Steam and other software web shops have provided us the games that we play today and this has been the norm for already several years. You can buy yourself an internal or external DVD or Bluray drive for your PC and this can make you some trouble and you have to pay for it.

If we go from the beginning to end and inspect how have games been delivered to customers through times beginning from 1980s when Nintendo, or NES, was first released. Now, Nintendo wasn’t the first home console but it was the most successful console in the 1980s with some competition from Sega’s consoles. Back then games were delivered as electronic cartridges that you actually inserted into your video game console. The space that a game like this takes is only some tens or hundreds of kilobytes.

After cartridges we moved forward as the technology progressed to compact discs. First we saw CD-ROMs that could hold maybe 700 megabytes of information. So, the amount of information was 700 000 kilobytes when NES could onyl deal with games of maybe 100 kilobytes. So, the amount of data became 7000 times bigger when games began to be delivered as CD-ROMs. Later the technology progressed and we moved to first DVDs and then to Blurays and later to 4K discs. So, now Sony announced that the progression of discs is going to end in 2028.

It is very easy to rip PlayStation 1 and 2 games. You only need a regular CD-/DVD-drive. I am myself using an external one. I do buy physical game discs for both of these systems. I just want to always rip the game disc from the media I have purchased so I am not limited to use only the physical disc. This way I can play the game on a PC and on an emulator. So I mainly use emulation for PlayStation 1 and 2 retro gaming. I do have in my setup a PS1. I mainly use it for some games that have multiple discs so the swapping of discs is smoother. It might be possible to use emulation also with multi-disc games but to today I haven’t found a way to solve this matter.

So, actually the game disc can and maybe even should be ripped to a digital format. When you rip the disc it becomes an image of the disc that you can burn to a disc or utilize it to play the game that it holds. It takes only about 15 minutes for my computer to rip the disc and then I am moving the image to the PC that has Batocera as its operating system that is connected to my home’s network. That way the disc isn’t required but it is a sign that you actually do own the game and it is not just downloaded from internet as a pirated copy.

Is it pirating if you just copy a game that you don’t own? I think it can be considered as something like that. Now when games might become fully digital the matter of who actually owns a game is becoming more unclear. Actually instead of huge shelves in our homes that hold some game discs and cartridges should now become digital libraries of games that you can install and uninstall. But what happens if the system that holds this digital library becomes somehow unavailable? The matter that you own a physical copy of a game makes sure that you do own it even if some web service game library platform becomes obsolete. And this seems to be the biggest part of the debate that has already been risen. Here were my thoughts about this matter. I think it is now time to stop and think about this a bit. Maybe I form some opinion about this later. You, my dear reader, can also think about this and maybe have a conversation with some gamer like you.

Some Features of Optical Discs

Posted on by Viljami

Some time, not so long ago, we used to use optical discs way more and in a different way compared to how it is today. I have recently been playing lots of PS2 games using an emulator. I have these PS2 games in their original form. That is on these game discs. That copy of Metal Gear Solid 2 also has a documentary film also on another DVD. DVDs aren’t also so popular anymore. We are used to streaming our video content. If you prefer physical copies you can buy movies on Bluray or 4K.

Some things have changed. We do buy games, sometimes, as physical copies on optical discs. When we do we use the disc to install the game. Part of the installation process is handled through internet connection. Back in the days, in the early 2000s, we had game consoles like PS2 and GameCube. They utilized optical discs in a different way.

If we inspect our PS2 video game console we can see that it doesn’t have a hard drive at all. So games are basically on optical discs. It is the disc that holds almost all the data. There are memory cards used that can store the save files. These memory cards could hold only 8 MB of storage. GameCube is very much like PS2 in this way. It did handle smaller optical discs and it also had to use memory cards. Lets mention Dreamcast here, also.

What about the original Xbox? It actually had a hard drive. This makes playing a game like Max Payne a bit more of a pleasure since loading games from same save spot can make the game very repetitive. That’s why I find playing Max Payne on the original Xbox than on a PS2 console my preferred way to enjoy Remedy Entertainments masterpiece more enjoyable. I think it is best played on PC. But you probably get the point here.

So, the games were played from DVDs. This made the disc very valuable. If it had a scratch the game would stop playing. Sometimes the console you were playing on did break so that you couldn’t play it anymore since it couldn’t read optical discs anymore at all. There are ways to fix consoles, all right, but just let me say this. I have found it way more pleasurable to install an emulation system on a PC with a dedicaded operating system and just ripping my PS2 games to some .iso-files and playing them again and again, fully functioning, from a fast SSD hard drive. You basically have to rip your PS2s BIOS and also the games to enjoy gaming this way. After all it is very easy to rip a PS2 game. You just have to use an external DVD drive and some software application, like ImgBurn, that is also freely available.

We have went through lots of changes. The gaming has evolved a lot. If you think that we used to have games taking some space, like 4,7 GB. We are actually now in a place where a game can definitely take tens, or even several tens, of times the space we were used to back in the days. We went from large HDDs to SSDs. We went from slow internet connections to modern and very fast connections offered while using Steam or Xbox Store or some other web service. This makes me wonder where do we go next.

Today hard drives are faster and can hold even more space than they already used to. I have for example two 2 TB SSDs on my personal desktop computer. That is enough to hold some games. You don’t have to install every game you buy because you probably don’t play tens of games at the same time. There are more games available than ever. You probably play something from three to six games at a time. When you think that you don’t want to focus on a game you can uninstall it and keep your save files and continue playing after some time when you think that you want to install the game again.

We are actually doing something reasonal with buying games as digital copies. We are reducing the amount of carbage in this world. You can debate on that DVDs, these opticla discs, are something that you can hold on to for several tens, maybe even hundreds, of years. Buying a video game console or a PC without an optical disc drive is becoming also popular. You can save some money.

There are many facts here that you can debate on. In my opinion there are just facts against facts. There is no right or wrong answer. In this blog post I told you my perspective on optical discs and how and what they used to be compared to what is the situation right now. You can make your own opinions based on everything I have said here. I am going to enjoy some more time with Gran Turismo 4 since I started playing it again. I have played it for well over 18 hours. I think it takes over 70 hours to complete. I have lots of playing to do.

Is the Era of Audio CDs Really Over?

Posted on by Viljami

I remember when I first got my PS4 back in 2014. I came to understand that from the beginning it didn’t have support for audio CDs. I had to rely on another device for listening to my huge collection of CDs. A while ago I quickly counted how many CDs I have today. It seems that I have over 500 CDs.

My collection of CDs is huge. It has grown more as I have bought several classic hiphop, trance and dance CDs from flee markets. I have this old CD player that I bought for a cheap price. It was used when I got it. It probably didn’t even cost 20 euros. You can today get a new CD player for about 100 euros.

My CD player was always connected to my amplifier through RCA-connection. Earlier today I ordered an adapter that allows me to connect my audio device to any device that supports Bluetooth. Wireless connectivity is a common feature among new CD players. Now I got an update to my device. And it cost me only 40 euros.

So, is the era of CDs actually over? This format of audio has been present since the 1980s. It once decreased sales of vinyls considerably although listening to music from vinyls never completely stopped. When I was a child in the 90s every kid had a CD stereo system and some CDs in their own room. You also had to have a portable CD player since there were no mp3 players or if there were they were very expensive.

Today CD still provides digital quality of audio for different audiences. Some artists still release their music on CDs. Streaming services have made listening to music easy and cheap. The latest gaming console that I have that also supports playing audio CDs is PS3. You can get many kinds of music very cheaply on CD from several flee markets. Prices are for used CDs something form 0,50 euros to 3 euros.

The surface of a disc is very sensitive for getting scratches or dirt on it. When gaming went to storing games in CD format consumers were thinking that children wouldn’t be able to keep these discs working. Nintendo even decided to use cartridges when Nintendo 64 came available. What was the impact of mp3s becoming so popular? It waas clear that you could easily have more than just 700 MB of digital music with you. Actually you soon had something like 4 GB (thats 4000 MB) of space and the advancement of smart phones made the transition to listening music with mp3s or as a streamed service.

I still listen to CDs. I still sometimes even buy new CDs. If I do get some new record I often rip it for my personal use. I transfer then the music to my phone so I can listen to them everywhere I happen to go. Mostly I listen to Spotify. Sometimes I listen to it from my personal computer, like I do right now, and sometimes from my tablet computer. I rarely listen to Spotify from my phone. Spotify seems to be the new standard for listening to music. You can definitely see this when you think about audio CDs and how they are supported by newest gaming systems. Damn. We have this digitality coming from everywhere. We have more and more games and consoles that are only available as digital and not physical. I guess that’s just how the future is currently shaping.