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disolitude on 23 October 2011
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thismeintiel said:
disolitude said:
Microsoft will be smart to avoid it as I am sure they will...

By next gen, bluray and any disc media in general will be a data bottleneck. Looks like Bluray will top out at around 12X read speed and even at that speed, most blurays have a maximum transfer rate of 350 megaBITS per second(44 MB). This is slower than most newer 7200 RPM hard drives. Not to mention that bluray or whatever drive just adds to the cost of the console which I'd rather have Sony or MS invest in to a better video card or more ram.

PS Vita has the right idea as does the 3DS when it comes to game storage. Solid State memory should be used with a minimum of 100 MB/s data transfer rate. Now we will see if SSD prices can be driven down enough to be used as gaming storage.

Actually, it would be quite foolish of them to avoid it.  Blu-ray is slowly starting to take over DVD.  I know stores like Wal-Mart now have just as many shelves for Blu-ray that they have for DVD.  How do you think the shelves are going to look in 2013, the year the NeXbox is most likely launching, after 2 more holiday seasons of people buying HD TV's and Blu-ray players dropping in price.  I wouldn't be surprised if DVDs only are given a shelf or 2.  If the NeXbox isn't able to play Blu-rays, in a time where there are more Blu-rays on shelves, it will be seen as inferior to general public.

Also, a 12x Blu-ray has a read speed of 432 Mb/s (54MB/s), not 350 Mb/s.  Considering that that is a constant read speed and is over 4x faster than the average speed of the 12x DVD drive in the 360, I think we'll be fine.  Of course, that's not even mentioning that Blu-ray already spins at a slower speed than a DVD drive, so higher read speeds can be accomplished without spinning so fast it damages the disc.  So, it would be quite easy to go beyond 52x, while still using one laser (something DVDs and CD-Roms can't).  Even if we just stop at 52x, that would be 1872 Mb/s (234 MB/s), or ~19x faster than the average speed of the 360's DVD.  So again, we'll be fine.

As far as digital download goes, we still have decades before we're to the point where it takes over, if it ever does.  Personally, I see them coexisting for quite some time.  Maybe even forever.  As far as next gen goes, no company is going to risk losing as many potential customers as Sony or MS would lose if they switched to digital only this early.  Download speeds aren't up to par in every region in the US, let alone regions in the world.  Then you have laptop HDDs, which the PS4 and NeXbox will probably use.  So far, they are up to 1 TB.  They will probably be up to 2TB by 2013.  Now let's say every game next gen decides to use Blu-ray to the fullest and uses all 25GB (some will be less and some willl be more).  That gives you enough space for 80 games.  But, like any drive, you don't get all 2 TB.  And then you have Live/PSN games, updates/patches, save files, and for many, videos and music.  It just ain't happening.


Theoretical data that can be achieved with a 12X bluray is 432...but none of the current drives do more than 350 mb/s

This is sequentieal read speed btw. For gaming you need random read speed as much as sequential. A 7200 rpm hard drive has a random read speed of 1-2 MB/s and a 12x bluray drive won't be any better.  This will cripple texture loading for next gen games when everything is 1080p.

Microsoft can include a bluray drive on the next xbox if they want, but they better give me an install to hard drive option as well and SSD storage.

Why do you think Battlefield 3 for consoles comes with texture install pack which has to go on the hard drive? Cause discs cant load them fast enough...same shit will happen next gen.