Will we see a digital-only console option next gen?

[kristianity77]

MohammadBadir said:

kristianity77 said:

You'd think, that if the switch to digital doesn't happen then something has to give.  I don't think its the fact that Blu Ray is outdated, its more the read speeds than anything.  An optical media needs to come out which isn't hampered by ridiculously slow read speeds, especially now that games are frequently 30-40gb in size.  Current read speeds just don't cut it for games that size hence why hard drives are being filled up at a ridiculous rate.  Something has to give.

Yeah but if games are around 40GB now then what about the future? We're already seeing ridiculously sized games now, said games wouldn't fit on a Bluray, and I doubt that Blurays will be able to handle whatever 4K+ games the next generation of consoles will bring...

I think that bigger blu ray discs that hold 100gb are already available commercially so I don't think storage on these discs is the problem.  If optical media cannot produce something for Blu Ray that dramatically increases read speeds then it will be a spent force at some point as writing countless GB's to Hard Drives isnt a long term solution nor is downloading the files themselves either when you consider the size.

In short, they are fantastic for movie watching and recording, all the way up to 4K, but for games, Blu Ray is the major bottleneck in consoles becasue the information cannot be taken off the disc anywhere near quick enough.

Another thing you have to remember is that quite a lot of the space taken up on Blu Ray games is just video files.  You'd think at some point games will shy away from FMV as I'd imagine that "in game cinematics" is possibly cheaper in the long term.  This would actually make certain games a fair bit smaller.  Maybe not this generation, but its possible for future ones to maybe ditch FMV altogether.