Digital future is slow to transition and digital customers have to suffer.

[Pemalite]

Dr.Henry_Killinger said:

Pemalite said:

I can't wait for last-century physical media to be abolished completely for everything.

Not only do you have the cost concerns where it drives up prices for consumers (Even digital-only consumers), but it's slow and archaic, developers would probably benefit greatly if they removed the slowest common denominator in a console like the optical drive, suddenly streaming assets becomes significantly more feasible and load times are reduced for everyone.

However, for it to become a reality, console internal storage capacities need to increase, when games start pushing 50-60Gb+ that anemic 500Gb HDD is not going to last the distance... And who want's ugly external hard drives clogging up their entertainment area?
I wish both Microsoft and Sony had the foresight and supported the option of user-replaceable multiple 3.5" internal drives so power users could rock 6,000Gb or more in their machines.

Are you sure you are still talking about consoles?

I mean, what the heck would a console power user be doing?

Of course I am still talking about consoles.
It would have been trivial for the companies to include 2x 3.5" drive bays, then they/users could fill them both with 3/4Tb hard drives for 6-8Tb of storage space.

Game install sizes are ballooning to around the 50Gb mark today (And will continue to increase as the generation continues, aided with compression and day 0  content updates), I have roughly 100 Xbox 360 games, if I were to have a games library that large on the Xbox One, I would be looking at about 5 Terabytes of data on average installed.
That doesn't include trailers, Map Packs/DLC, Arcade games, Games with Gold.
Remember install times have also increased dramatically. (It took me about 20 hours to install MCC) so having them all installed at the same time creates convenience, which consoles are supposed to be for.

Lets not forget either that Consoles have transcended beyond just playing games, but have also turned into more of a general-purpose media consumption device where you can buy Music, Movies and such, I would only expect that to expand as the generation continues and Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo seek to monetize it's user bases even farther.