Investigating game storage mediums

Hey!

So when we all play our favourite games, we all want to be able to save our progress and continue next time we play the game. Well there are some different types of how we save are games with different options of storage used.

One of the forms of storage is a DVD which is also known as a Digital Versatile Disc, but usually everyone including myself just calls it a DVD. DVD’s are usually used to hold feature films and most modern games we all know, love and play. A single DVD can storage just over 4 GB of data, GB being short for Gigabytes, and manufacturers have increased the capacity for the DVDs due to the games being more complex meaning the games need more space on a DVD to hold it, if not, the game would have to be split between discs, like an install disc and a play disc like some games such as Halo 4 for the Xbox 360.
How they increase the capacity you may ask? Well the use double layered DVD’s which can usually hold a capacity total of 8GB. A specific laser is always used on consoles which require DVD’s to play game in today’s time, can you think of a console that still has games being produced for it without a disc drive? I can’t. The laser in the console reads the data from the DVD and does what it needs to do with it in order to play the game. DVD’s may sound all good but they scratch really easily and can be snapped or broken with ease, not being able to be fixed again.

UMD is another form of storage used within the games industry, it stands for Universal Media Disc and was create by Sony, the owners of PlayStation and was therefore only used on its PSP platforms. It can hold just under 2GB of data, which could include the usually media such as music, film and video games itself. UMD is not usually used in today’s platforms since the PSP due to the increased use of downloadable games from Sony’s own store, the PlayStation Store.

And one of the other forms of storage is Flash Storage, which we all must of heard of, but quite possibly not know what it meant. It’s most common within the handheld platforms, such as the 3DS, DS and PS Vita. It uses an internal flash memory system to have the video games save data stored too it, it saves the progress of the player. However because the flash memory tends to be usually quite small, some games don’t allow for the save files to be saved to it due to the save files themselves being too big. An example of this being some of the Uncharted Games on PS Vita and the Assassins Creed Liberations game.

One of the most annoying things games developers and publishers have to deal with in the world is Piracy, it’s illegal and it loses the companies money for all the work they put into the game, and no one pays back for it. Imagine your best piece of work, and you go to sell it, and someone gets it for free without your consent of it being free, you would feel all down. This is that but on a much larger scale, companies loose thousands of pounds to piracy each year and some games implement their own anti-piracy code into the games to help fight back against it. One example of an antipiracy doe would be Mirrors Edge created by EA. In this game it’s all about free running and parkour, and jumping around, well if you pirate it, the anti-piracy code kicks in and makes you run a lot slower only before key jumps meaning they stop the experience of the game and want you to buy it to fully feel the experience of the game, and give the workers and developers of the game the credit and reward they deserve.

Thats it I'm afraid drawing these topics to a close, I hope you have found them all to be interesting and you have learnt a thing or two from it all!
Until next time 

Fairwinds internet travellers!

Kristine