Solid-State Cartridges?

[Intrinsic]

HylianSwordsman said:

Pfft, not if I can help it. We're not ready for a full digital market from a legal standpoint. Technology advances at a breakneck pace that will only get faster. Politics advances like molasses in winter. I could see technology advancing enough that a cheap solid state cartridge could be manufactured in a couple of generations, maybe by the 10th or 11th. The legal consumer rights needed to have a viable full digital market are still being fought over viciously. I suspect the battle will wage until most of the people born before the internet are DEAD. So, you know, a HUMAN generation away. If we were going full digital within the next generation or so, Microsoft wouldn't have had to do a 180 with the XBO.

I'm orry but are we living in the same planet or are you living under a rock? Do u see what hapened with the music industry, whats happening with the movie industry as we speak and what has been hapening in th emobile industry? Have you not noticed that these days we are seeing an increasing number of laptops that are made without even a disc drive? Do you think the reason we haven't gone full digital is because of "leagal issues"? 

no. The biggest problem with full digital now is consumer resistance and download speeds. But even at that, if digital games cost $40 as opposed to physical games costing $60 which do you think consumers will choose. But that is another matter.

Truth is, we may never exactly have full digital, teher will always be the option to buy the disc, even if the disc option will then only ever be a "collectors edition" so it will be priced even higher thah $60. What i expect with next gen, is that every PS5/XB2 will be made without a disc drive and then a disc drive would be sold seperately as a $60/$100 option or they even allow people use any existing blu-ray drive they have lying around. The fact that every game today (even those on disc) are installed onto the HDD gaurantees that this is where we are going. Cause right now, the disc does nothing more than act as a container for the data, last gen the disc didn't just carry the date from the manufacturer to the consumer but its drive determined how you primarily played that game. Now, all the drive does is security checks and transferring data to a HDD. All of it.

They won't come out and say, hey... no more discs. But trust me, they will damn well make it seem stupid or harder to use one.