fixed, and yes, blu-ray uses a special hard-coating that protects the disk from nearly any possible scratches.

and I, like you prefer bluray's uncompressed 1080p at a 40mbps bit rate. and uncompressed sound tracks such as Linear PCM, Dolby Digital, Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, DTS Digital Surround, and DTS-HD. and i kind of like the whole 1080p 3d content it provides, and the breadth of feature sets it has, such as BD live, all the special features that you can overlay during movie playback. i also like not having to either wait for the video to buffer, the average at best "HD" video stream, or wait for very long periods of time for the compressed video and sound "1080p" video download. and i dont really care to much for being dependent upon not only having to have access to internet, but also the speed of it. and then of course there are tons and tons of people that either dont have internet or subpar speeds for it. So sticking to a disk format goes without saying for the next generation of consoles, if not for the size of the games for next gen, which will easily be surpassing 30Gb (Uncharted 3 is 49GB).

i dont know though, maybe its just me.

You people realise that Sony was also one of the 4 original developers of DVD right? So MS has been paying money to Sony to use DVD since the OG Xbox....

They will use Blu-Ray as it is the best format currently available and is the current physical HD video medium, so as much as MS would like to go full digital they will need to include BLu-ray playback in their next console if they want to push the Xbox as a media centre. Globally Internet speeds just aren't there yet for full digital, but next gen is likely to be the last to feature physical media as the primary way of getting games/media, and probably transition to digital as the gen progresses. After that it's going to be all DL and cloud.

I say develop really large memory sticks instead. Very fast, very quiet and very little load times. It'll also mean a more sturdy console because less friction=less heat=less BS.

Actually, it would be quite foolish of them to avoid it.  Blu-ray is slowly starting to take over DVD.  I know stores like Wal-Mart now have just as many shelves for Blu-ray that they have for DVD.  How do you think the shelves are going to look in 2013, the year the NeXbox is most likely launching, after 2 more holiday seasons of people buying HD TV's and Blu-ray players dropping in price.  I wouldn't be surprised if DVDs only are given a shelf or 2.  If the NeXbox isn't able to play Blu-rays, in a time where there are more Blu-rays on shelves, it will be seen as inferior to general public.

Also, a 12x Blu-ray has a read speed of 432 Mb/s (54MB/s), not 350 Mb/s.  Considering that that is a constant read speed and is over 4x faster than the average speed of the 12x DVD drive in the 360, I think we'll be fine.  Of course, that's not even mentioning that Blu-ray already spins at a slower speed than a DVD drive, so higher read speeds can be accomplished without spinning so fast it damages the disc.  So, it would be quite easy to go beyond 52x, while still using one laser (something DVDs and CD-Roms can't).  Even if we just stop at 52x, that would be 1872 Mb/s (234 MB/s), or ~19x faster than the average speed of the 360's DVD.  So again, we'll be fine.

As far as digital download goes, we still have decades before we're to the point where it takes over, if it ever does.  Personally, I see them coexisting for quite some time.  Maybe even forever.  As far as next gen goes, no company is going to risk losing as many potential customers as Sony or MS would lose if they switched to digital only this early.  Download speeds aren't up to par in every region in the US, let alone regions in the world.  Then you have laptop HDDs, which the PS4 and NeXbox will probably use.  So far, they are up to 1 TB.  They will probably be up to 2TB by 2013.  Now let's say every game next gen decides to use Blu-ray to the fullest and uses all 25GB (some will be less and some willl be more).  That gives you enough space for 80 games.  But, like any drive, you don't get all 2 TB.  And then you have Live/PSN games, updates/patches, save files, and for many, videos and music.  It just ain't happening.

Theoretical data that can be achieved with a 12X bluray is 432...but none of the current drives do more than 350 mb/s

This is sequentieal read speed btw. For gaming you need random read speed as much as sequential. A 7200 rpm hard drive has a random read speed of 1-2 MB/s and a 12x bluray drive won't be any better.  This will cripple texture loading for next gen games when everything is 1080p.

Microsoft can include a bluray drive on the next xbox if they want, but they better give me an install to hard drive option as well and SSD storage.

Why do you think Battlefield 3 for consoles comes with texture install pack which has to go on the hard drive? Cause discs cant load them fast enough...same shit will happen next gen.

The reason Battlefield 3 uses an install pack is because the game is multi-platform, so they can't take advantage of the techniques used for Uncharted 3, Killzone 3, and GoW3, which don't require an install, yet are some of the best looking games this gen.  They are also dealing with a smaller disc size on the 360, so it has to be compressed, and a 2x Blu-ray drive on the PS3 (which is a little faster than the slowest read speed of the 360 DVD drive).  When we get to the PS4, which will probably have a 6x or 8x Blu-ray (maybe even 12x if prices are low enough), they definitely won't be worrying about that anymore.

And don't hold your breath for that SSD.  Even if they did go with one, it would be a smaller one to keep costs down.  Maybe a 120 GB one.  However, that's not going to be nearly enough if you want to install ALL of your games + Live games.  Plus, it's going to look like a measely amount when Sony launches the PS4 with a standard laptop drive with a size of, AT MINIMUM, 500GB.

There is a little too much Sony coolade in your posts my friend...You're the type of dude that defended UMD's cause Sony invented them despite hte fact they were gimping the PSP.

I hope we both get our way next gen. Then you can enjoy your load times and have bluray and I can pay a little more to get games on memory cartriges and have an SSD hard drive in my console of choice...

Seems there is way more anti-Sony Kool-aid (I prefer the name brand) in your posts.  It's funny you speak of load times as if they are god awful this gen and stop people from playing for a greater amount of time.  You must be very impatient if that's how see things.  Then again, if you added up all the load times from playing straight from the disc vs. the time it takes to install the game on a HDD+plus the load times (yea, things still have load times even if installed on the HDD), it probably would take the same amount of time, if not longer, to get through the HDD game.  Either way, load times will be greatly reduced next gen with the advancement of the Blu-ray tech/speed.  But, you just keep drinking your Kool-aid, and I'll continue to enjoy mine.

Edit:  Also forgot to mention that the largest capacity SD cards are 128 GB so far.  While that is larger than a dual layer Blu-ray, the current speed is only ~20MB/s as of now.  Less than a 12x Blu-ray player.  They do hope to get speeds up to 300MB/s, but who knows how long that will take (could be around the launch of the next gen systems) or how much those cards would cost.  My guess is that with every new upgrade, the cost would balloon to ~$150-$200 (the price a 128GB currently goes for.  Companies are not going to be waiting around for those cards, at those prices, to base their consoles around.  Not when Blu-ray is getting cheaper quickly and only requires higher speed drives, while using the same discs, to pull off similar performance.

Modnation racers, god those were some of the longest loading times I've ever encountered.

Not bothered in the slightest, I don't think MS will be either, they see it as an investment, and really to a company that big even the approximately calculated value of 111m is nothing, seeing as they probably made more profit this Q alone.

Contrary to popular belief, I am finding it hard to believe that MS and Sony hate each other anywhere as much as the majority of keyboard warriors on the interwebz.