hinch said:
WolfpackN64 said:
Depends. I think the fact that most games are fully installed on the console has more to do with game devs not wanting to deal with partially installed games. A Blu-Ray disc can sustain read speeds up to 72MB/s (and unlike SD cards, this read speed is constant, no caching BS that drops your performance off a cliff after a few Gigabytes). With Blu-Ray discs being able to hold up to 128GB's a piece, being quite durable and relatively cheap to manufacture, I see them sticking around.
It would be a much more efficient use of space if a physical game from a Blu-Ray could be partially installed to minimize boot and loading times, with the SSD pulling data off the disc as a cache to quickly stream data when the game requires it.
The largest problem I see is that we've kind of plateaued in SSD's getting cheaper and/or larger in capacity. The larger capacity and cheap"er" SSD's are QLC, which means they're quite slow. PLC technology is on the horizon, which means if we just wait long enough, SSD's are going to be nearly as slow as reading from a Blu-Ray disc.
Furthermore, Blu-Ray Discs might still get some development as sony uses them as a base for their Optical Disc Archive storage (Blu-Rays are much more durable then DVD's and CD's ever were). |
SSD's prices are expected to fall from Q4 2020 to 2021 due to overproduction. They're only going to get more affordable next year.
I would assume most console makers would love to cut out an optical drive as the used game and retail distribution channels and productions will certainly have an effect on their revenue. However they can't ignore those who buy games physically (like myself). As always, vote with your wallets and we will have more options on where to buy ;)
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IF flash manufacturers aren't just going to sit on their stock, lower production and sell the flash at regular prices.
They did that with DRAM, and seeing SSD pricing basically plateau for the last 4 years doesn't inspire me with much confidence. And yes, I did pre-order the PS5 with the Blu-Ray Drive. I still watch the majority of my movies on Blu-Ray and I like to go bargain diving from time to time.
