Microsofts Next Media Format?

[Comrade Tovya]

freedquaker said:

Using HD-DVD is a VERY GOOD IDEA for all those points you mentioned, so I totally aggree with you about that! There is one problem though, those drives will be old-technology then and very slow in comparison. You can't simply use though those old drives because of this, you need to improve the technology. There is a chance that some other format or Bluray can be cheaper by that time.

People are complaining about the size of dvd in 360 and then speculate about "digital download" only media in the future. Its uncomrehensible! I mean given that the dvd size is barely enough now, future games will be dozens of Gigabytes and do you honestly expect people to download all those data? The bandwidths will not be THAT good, they will probably increase 3-4 times in the next 5 years, which is still a pain in the ass if you'd like to download a 20-30 GB data! (with 10 mbps, it will take ablout 10 hours for the best scenario! Plus many potential problems).

 

It's really hard to know what is going to happen, but I do know that all 3 console manufacturers have been putting serious thought into it already.  We all know that MS claims they started preparing for the next console generation the day after the 360 was released, so it's no doubt that this has been the subject of great debate in Redmond, WA.

Really, who can know what the bandwidth capabilities will be in 3+ years?  I get a full 3mb download speed for $17.50/month through Charter now, so I can only imagine as Fios starts to take over that the speeds will jump 10 times.  I worked at Verizon years back with the Fios team, and we were easily sucking 20+ meg download speeds in tests, and that was back in 2004.  By 2012 it will be just sick.