I got the World of Warcraft Collectors edition, and was impressed to discover that they gave me a copy of the game on DVD. Unfortunately I don’t have a functioning DVD player in my PC at the moment :smack: but I guess I could get one in the future.
I’m curious, are there particular advantages to having a PC game on DVD? At this point I’m pleased enough to have 2 hard copies of the game itself 
but I’m sure there must be some advantages for them to throw it in the Collector’s Edition, right? 
If you’re shipping content that exceeds the capacity of a CD, putting it on a DVD means you don’t have to use as many disks–thereby reducing your manufacturing costs–and means that your users won’t be required to do disk-swapping during the installation process.
Yes, there is an advantage, especially as games get bigger.
Some games these days come on five or even six CDs. Far Cry, I think, was a 5-CD install.
The transition to DVDs will be similar to the transition to CDs from floppies. As the installiation becomes more and more unwieldy the new, higher-capacity media will be adopted.
Now seems to be the transition phase. Several games are being published with both CD and DVD versions (not in the same box, but in different, uniquely labeled boxes). If a game is offered in DVD format I get that version - it makes the install process much less of a hassle.
Some companies are using the ‘Extended Edition’ approach to DVD games. Two off the top of my head with extra DVD features are ‘The Sims 2’ and ‘Sim Meir’s (sp?) Pirates!’.
Another thing to add is with the advent of DVDs, expect lots of padding to crop up in games - FMV, inane sound bytes, and other crap.
I would like it better if is wasn’t for the fact that most DVD versions are the “Platinum” or “Collector’s/Special Edition.” They usually have the DVD game, but also a t-shirt, special certificate of authenticity, and other crap i don’t want and don’t want to pay for. These versions are usually $10-$20 more than the normal.
I’m surprised that the PC industry is still stuck in the CD era while the next generation consoles (coming as soon as next year) will already be venturing into HD-DVD territory.
PCs can be upgraded on an ongoing basis, but consoles can’t. So it makes more sense for consoles to be based on technology that’s farther out along the curve.
Yes, but hardcore PC gamers (the ones who are running Doom 3 and Half-Life 2) are notorious having the latest hardware upgrades. It seems this applies to all areas but media storage, which is what I found odd.
The average gaming PC, for instance, is quite a bit more powerful than an Xbox or PS2. They have faster processors, more RAM, better graphics cards, etc. Yet the larger storage medium offered by DVD seems to be the sole component that lags behind the others.
Doesn’t the PS2 already play DVDs?
There aren’t really a lot of extras to The Sims 2 on DVD - and if you preordered the cd version directly from EA you got another disk with all the extras from the DVD on it too. I got the DVD version for the hell of it, really.
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Both the PS2 and the Xbox play DVDs, but the previous poster was talking about HD-DVDs. They’re basically a higher capacity DVD than the current standard. There’s actually two competing standards - I believe Sony has the Blu-ray and some other team of several companies has HD-DVD.
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Which, incidentally, is why DVDs are standard in most consoles. Sony doesn’t just make game consoles. It also makes DVDs. Putting a DVD player in the PS2 means everyone who buys a PS2 is now also a potential customer for Sony’s DVDs. Of course, if the PS2 doubles as a DVD player, that means the XBox has to double as a DVD player if it wants to remain competitive. Nintendo, as usual, totally blows it.
Most PCs, however, come with either a DVD drive, or a CD-RW drive, and most people are going to buy the CD-RW drive, because they already play DVDs on their PS2, and they want to burn the MP3s on their computers. I don’t think that the CD format will go away entirely until DVD-R becomes the standard drive in a retail computer.
Games on DVD-ROM have been slow to catch on for some reason. When Riven and Journeyman Project 3 were released on DVD-ROM, they did not sell very well at all (I was working for Broderbund at the time, and thus was happy with my free copies). That was probably due to the lack DVD-ROM drives in computers, even though, at the time (1997) they were cheaper than a DVD player (around $100). Even today, with DVD-ROM drives fairly cheap, I don’t know that enough people realize it to take advantage of it. I think that the early failures of DVD-ROM-based games left a bad taste in companies mouths.
My personal belief is that they’re great! You don’t have to switch discs at all, there are sometimes documentaries involved that play in DVD players (e.g. Riven), and the graphics capacity is far superiour. Supposedly, the transitions scenes in Riven were of much higher quality in the DVD than in the CD-ROM version, but I haven’t compared them side by side to be sure. It’s defintely easier to stick a full-screen transition onto a DVD-ROM, so you don’t have to mess around with 100px by 100px QuickTime movies seriptiously planted in a detailed graphic 
When Tex Murphy: Overseer was released, it was also a tremendous flop. Access was kind enough to include both DVD-ROMs and CD-ROMs in their edition, but just when it was released, the market for puzzle-based games dropped out completely with the rise in popularity of FPS and RTS, most of which, up until recently, have not required the space that a DVD-ROM offers. Besides, you can be sure that every computer nowadays has a CD-ROM drive, but not all have DVD-ROM drives, which means if you release CD-ROMs, you’re reaching a wider customer base.
And darned if they didn’t end Overseer with a cliffhanger…
Plus, it’s not a huge problem to have, say, two CD’s. And with the better compression and space management nowadays you can put a lot of game on 2 discs. We’re only now getting to the point where you absolutely need DVD’s (like with EQ2).
But how much is that because CD is the format of choice?
Take Halo 2 on the Xbox for example, which weighs in at 3.5 gigs. You’d have to do some serious compression to fit that on two DVDs.
Of course, different types of games will necessiate different amount of space. So perhaps the type of game that would use two discs doesn’t require the space used by more graphically intensive games.