Should next gen kinda do away DISC DRIVES?

[EricHiggin]

| chose scenario 2. I think next gen will be the last standard physical media console. It's also quite possible that PS and XB both offer a second digital based sku as well.

I think they can get it down to $399 instead of $450 by then. I also have a feeling PS would want to incorporate the optical drive into the console shell like prior consoles just to keep things as simple and sleek as possible. (They may also not care anymore since they folded on external storage and the mess of items that comes with PSVR. I see XB being much more open to having an external optical drive as compared to PS)

This would also work with a second sku where they simply ship the console without the internal optical drive. They could offer a $30-$50 discount or bundle in a digital game or free PS Plus for a year and charge the same price for both skus. (While an extra hardware design cost, I could also see the digital sku having the empty optical bay space being used as an optional bay for an SDD or 2.5"/3.5" HDD potentially)

Now that external storage is available to both brands and will slowly become the norm, that leaves consumers open to buying a 1TB-??TB mass storage drive that can hold all of their games and media. Games of course you would want to, or have to, transfer to the NVMe SSD drive to get maximum loading speeds during play.

I just don't think its quite time for a leap to digital first. People like me and most who game outside of a large urban area won't see net speeds faster than 5mbps for 5 to 10 years most likely, if not longer. I think if you added all of us up there's a very large number of physical dependent gamers.