Windows 10 seems to be shipping inside a USB flash drive for its retail release

http://betanews.com/2015/07/16/windows-10-usb-flash-drives-now-available-to-pre-order-on-amazon/

-----

And our next generation will be disc-less!

That's like reading "Man Jumps off Eiffel Tower" and posting it in a thread titled "Humanity Nearing the End of Days?" lol

Well flash drives are better than discs.

I hope not that optical disc dissapear from retail

So nintendo was right with cartridges all along...

CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray are still bloody cheap compared to USB sticks though, so don't expect them to disappear anytime soon.

1 USB Stick holding 32GB is what? £15 or less? (i dunno), you can get 10 blu-rays each holding 50GB for that).

From a technical point of view, yes, go. ODDs are just not fitting nowadays. And to consoles: discs are only a legitimation to play the game. Way too many games have day-1-patches which are often required to play the game as they either fix crucial bugs or add features to a game which isn't present on disc. You don't even play off discs, they all get installed on the consoles.
So basically this gen is already close to "digital only" and I guess next-gen consoles won't feature an ODD if streaming services for video evolve even more than they do now.
Yes, people who prefer playing their blurays on consoles will be disappointed but they can always use standalone players or by then the old consoles.

I stopped buying things retail for my PC a long time ago, so it won't make much of a difference. As for Windows 10; I have my digital copy waiting, it will automatically download on the 29th.

Let's all hope so.

I guess that makes sense for an OS. Surface doesn't have a drive for example.

Yet optical media leaving retail, not for a long time.