So what physical medium will Microsoft be using for their next gen console?

[Squilliam]

WereKitten said:

@Squid

Uhm, I think all of your points were addressed yet.
Who needs buffer RAM when you have a much larger Flash HDD? Who said that you have to ship the console with BR/DVD playback software licenses from the start go? How does Flash help companies fight piracy and 2nd hand when in the era of Digital Distribution content authentication is bound to happen on remote servers?
It's basically the model of Steam on PC (buy via download or via optical support, decrypt and authenticate your installation either way), how would a more expensive Flash medium improve it?

If a console makes extensive use of direct download it means that games will have to be resticted in terms of space allowable because anything over 10GB is starting to get too big to be practically downloaded in the timeframes we are looking at.

Download means two things, the first is the direct download over the internet and the second means download via kiosk which is starting to become popular. The means to do so have already started being introduced to game stores for the PSP Go!. The former needs no media and the latter needs only a medium of transfer between the console and the store, which is where flash comes in.

One kiosk in terms of overall cost is far cheaper for the retailer and publishers than a wall of games displayed on a shelf and so the cost of flash is paid back many times over.

The final cost of flash media for whatever fraction of people who do not download or use a kiosk would be lower than the overall cost of selling and releasing almost all media via optical disc distribution, as the space required by those games would increase to fill up the media as it generally does. This would almost certainly again make digital distribution impractical once again for that console.

With flash the media chain is stronger which means that its harder for a 3rd party to insert something into the content verification chain which spoofs or bypasses the content protection protocols. The media itself would be difficult to read or write by anything except for legitimate hardware vendors. Steam itself is cracked because they release their games on open hardware, however consoles are more difficult to crack and as of yet the PS3 nor Xbox 360 internal security has not been cracked open.