Words Of Wisdom on 06 May 2008
| Dodece said: Microsoft might consider incorporating a new drive, but it wouldn't be used for gaming. That would come with the next console. Doing so would be very bad for gamers, and very bad for developers. Basically the console would rotate back to zero, and thus developers would lose all benefits of the large install base, and that bases lust for gaming. The reality is that most developers are not clamoring for more storage space. They view that more as a luxury item. Making a eight gigabyte game is financially easier then making a fifty gigabyte game. Even on the PS3 the vast majority of the games do not use that space. They instead use about the same space that they use on the 360. Once again the new drive was not about gaming. Gaming did not need it. Sony needed it to capture the home movie market. I actually doubt that Microsoft will use the drive in its next console either. Instead they will introduce a drive that is backwards compatible with all previous formats, but will instead be a step larger then BluRay. I say this, because that is what is needed for digital distribution to explode. A disc consumers can burn to has enough storage to store four or five high definition movies, or to burn and store four or five full length games. That is the holy grail of gaming. Consumers are never going to accept the hard drive swapping for purchased content in massive numbers. They will however accept the ability of purchasing, and then burning to disc. Not only burning to disc, but burning a lot on to a single disc. |
Imagine this...
You go to the store and buy a disc for Final Fantasy XX. The disc doesn't actually have Final Fantasy XX on it though. It has a digital key with purchase data for Final Fantasy XX. You go home and you put the disc in your console and it uses your internet connection to make contact with an online warehouse of games and downloads the game onto your local hard-drive encrypting it for your key AND liscensing the game to your gamer ID. As long as you have the disc in the drive, the game will play. Take it out, the game does not play. One a game code has been licensed to your gamer ID you can take the disc anywhere that has a console, log in with your ID, and have it download your game, and play.
