Blu-Ray investment justified, says Sony

Responding to comments from PGR4's developer indicating that the team had problems fitting the data on a single DVD, Sony says that its Blu-ray investment is justified.

"We took a lot of heat at launch for including Blu-ray in PS3. Now it looks like that investment is being justified," said SCEA spokesman Dave Karraker, speaking to GamesIndustry.biz.

"Next generation games simply need more space on the disc to contain all that high definition content. Take a look at Lair, for example, already pushing 25GB of content, and that is a first-generation title. At 50GB storage capacity, Blu-ray gives the PS3 plenty of headroom for developers to fully realize their visions well into the future."

Bizarre Creations, the developer of PGR4, recently announced on its forums that players would not see different times of day in each racing location, not because it was a problem for the development team, but because it was a problem to fit the texture data on a single DVD.

In order to work around the issue, Bizarre provides different lighting models for each city.