Does the Xbox 720 need Blu-ray to succeed?

[Squilliam]

Jo21 said:

Squilliam said:

Jo21 said:

arsenicazure said:
DVD wont be making a comeback with 720.. It would put MS too much at risk. The ps4 will likely support 50GB+ discs( im not saying the ps3 doesnt support these..im simply saying that they might become the de facto standard)

It would be silly if SONY was two jumps ahead of M$ in terms of disc space. 1080p will become the standard def next gen- consoles will probably support higher resolutions even. They will use the cheapest most efficient route.

Blu ray.. likely? sure.. if they can get 6-8x DVD ROM drives at cheap prices they will.Digital distribution Im not so sure about. It would restrict their market space, plus consumers like taking their games over to their friends to play.

 

this.

and flash memory 50gb VS a disc 50gb the disc will always be cheaper to manufacture.

 

I doubt most games would need to use much more than 16 GB, especially now that in-engine type cutscenes are becoming more popular. Also you wouldn't have to use FMV as a cover for loading as a SSD would load blisteringly fast. The only genre that really needs the space is JRPGs and they could easily switch to in-engine cutscenes to cut costs and if they can't its not like its an important genre anyway.

 

that isn't cost effect still, and still restrict what can be made.

a 16gb flash memory will never be cheaper as a 15gb disc.

even if the flash memory drops the price the disc based one will always be cheaper since it was  cheaper before to manufacture, and i got way cheaper with the time also.

so unless its cheaper to mass produce than disc, anything from flash or SSD based storage for games it's not possible.

64gb-128gb SSD are right now way expesive, getting close 500$.

You can get a 16gb SSD with 170mb/Sec read speed for $70 on Newegg. The actual drive probably costs less than $30 to manufacture, considering the ammount of markup is needed to pay for research and development.

By 2011/2012 they could produce it on the 32nm process and easily fit 4-6x the information on the same quantity of flash and produce disks which cost less than $5 with over 300mb/sec read speeds, which is about 2x faster than a 4x Blu Ray drive with very little latency.

So a console with a Flash drive can be produced simpler with a simpler motherboard as it would need less ram, no disk drive which would probably cost $40 for a high speed Blu Ray that would be pretty much fixed for the life of the console.

From the consumer perspective it would allow people to take a blank drive into a store and rent games by just using a Kiosk, so places like Best Buy could increase their revenue without using much floor space to do so and developers would also love the ability to implement DRM on the disks themselves, say allow for only up to 3 or 5 consoles to use the disks and kill the massive resale which can be a problem, obviously it would still allow you to Ebay the items.