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

[JEMC]

kitler53 said:

teigaga said:
This gen is possible.

The question is whether removing the Bluray drive offers a big enough cost reduction. Would it even equate to $50? At this point in Bluray's life I doubt its really that expensive.

i did a quick amazon search and i can find a lot of blu ray players in the $30 to $40 range.   ...so no it wouldn't be even $50 worth.  like i said in my post above this,.. a discless sku wouldn't cost less.  at best they would roll those couple of bucks of savings into a larger harddrive but that, imo, has a lot of value to the digital only consumer like myself.

But it's not only the cost of the drive itself.

Without a Bluray drive neither MSoft nor Sony will have to pay royalties for its movie player capabilities, plus the console itself can be a lot smaller, making it cheaper to produce and to ship from China to the rest of the world.

Because of that, the disc-less console could be those $50 cheaper, or even a bit more.