| Squilliam said: What physical medium in say a couple of years time? Hmm, how about digital distribution and catridges!  Physically an optical drive adds about $100 to the baseline cost of a console when you factor in the required HDD, Ram, packaging and optical drive itself. So much extra stuff has to be added to a console to make up for the deficiencies of the optical drive format. My guess for the next generation they will keep the console simple. Xbox next Arcade = 10GB of fast flash storage + cartridge media. Xbox next Premium = 10GB of fast storage + cartridge media + HDD Xbox next Elite = same as above with optical drive for BC. The transition to 450mm wafers is upon us! Flash is just getting cheaper. |
Economically though, it makes more sense to use the optical media for distribution (which also means you're compatible with all movie formats and with PC media) in parallel to Digital Distribution and to use Solid state discs instead of HDD for storage/to overcome "the deficiencieses of the optical drive format" with which I suppose you're thinking of random access lantencies and throughput.
With flash getting cheaper - in a 3-5 years timespan, I'm pretty sure that the first thing to go away will be the flash memory/HDD separation, and with digital distribution becoming a viable alternative at least for a minority of people the whole software and hardware will have to be tailored around playing installed and authenticated games. So why burden publishers with extra cost for the flash stick physical medium, if the console can provide the fast buffer itself? It doesn't make much sense as an alternative to DD.
