soccerdrew17 said:
Sqrl said:
kitler53 said:
don't forget about space and efficiency. I have 3 bookshelves in my living room just for dvd's. although i do love my movies i'd prefer to get rid of them in favor of electronic copies just like i did with my music. and i love the search features for finding my music, beats the hell out of searching the shelf for ten minutes to find that one CD you want to listen to. I want those convieniences for my movies too. xD
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Yes very true, an alphabatized list on your console is a lot more conveniant and space efficient than a bookshelf with game boxes on it. Not to mention that all you would have to do is sit on the couch and pick up your controller to play any of your games. You just start up the console and pick the game from the menu, no ejecting one disc and putting in another and then putting the boxes back up on the shelf every time you want to play a different game.
Hard drive space really isn't an issue either if they are designing a console for DD. Right now you can get a Seagate 1TB drive on newegg for $180 and that has enough space to hold twenty completely full BR discs. By the time the connection speeds get to the where they need to be for the average consumer the drives will have grown considerably, we may have even switched to solid state drives by then.
Speaking of solid state drives I also want to point out that games will load faster from a drive, particularly if we are using solid state. Current SSDs are already around 250 times faster than current HDs and HDs are faster than disc drives.
I really don't see any drawback to DD system other than that people will have to get used to not owning a physical disc. While at the same time the advantages are enormous; reduced living room clutter, no need to swap discs to play games, much faster game load times, games cannot be stolen, cannot be lost, cannot be broken, and it will help put more money directly into the pocket of the developers by reducing their costs immensely. The effect of which would be that expensive HD games are a lot more sustainable because developers don't need to sell as many copies to break even.
Remember that not only does this increase the amount from each game that goes to the developers it also removes the need for manufacturing which means more of the money they recieve will be profit. More profitable games means developers who can afford to try new things, one of the reasons we have sequels coming out of ears right now (SC4, GTA4, MGS4, RE5, etc..) is because massive HD games are an extremely risky proposition.
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the $180 hard drive is too expensive and too small. although within two generations i expect tthe dd to be all but useless. time solves so many problems with technology.
ssd is too expensive to think about right now, but it hold lots of potential.
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First 1TB would be more than sufficient today, the accessability of the price is debateable but if you would prefer you can get a 750GB drive for $120 which would also be sufficient. Keep in mind that average game size, including PS3 games, is at about 10GB, which would mean room for 75 games..I don't know many gamers who own 75 full-price games (ie the ones that would take 10GB) for a single console let alone like them all enough to want them all on their drive all the time. The cost issue is something that would actually be further reduced just by the use of the drives in this application.
As for SSD, I agree they are too expensive right now, but I don't think anyone expects them to be in use tomorrow. We are quite clearly talking about future console generations so discussing what is too expensive now is frankly shortsighted and missing the point. What we do know is that annually the costs are halving and capacities are doubling. At this rate in 5 years the current 256GB SSD which costs around $6,300 will cost $200 and store 8 TB.
What people aren't quite understanding I think is that while storage space is going to continue to increase on a ridiculous curve the size of games will not increase at that same pace for several reasons. The costs of creating the art assets at current resolutions is already immense for developers and is proving to be a difficult business model as it is, but it will also be unable to keep up because another quadrupling in texture resolution provides diminishing returns for the increased cost in time and money. Game sizes will continue to grow but they will not keep up with the storage solutions for practical reasons.
