Future of Physical Media in consoles - end of disks?

[TheBraveGallade]

SvennoJ said:

hunter_alien said:

This. Honestly, the selfishness of gamers is a bit sickening. Do you know how much plastic pollution comes from those 3 billion+ discs that are printed every generation? Or the storage and transportation and their effect on the environment. Honestly, as much as I loath DRM practices, I am glad that discs and cartridges are going the way of the dodo. They will pretty much become niche collector's items.

Since others already discussed the plastic issue, have you considered this
https://e360.yale.edu/features/energy-hogs-can-huge-data-centers-be-made-more-efficient

All those data centers hosting digital downloads, movies and streaming games use a lot of power to work and for cooling. Save the planet, stay offline.

Data centers are the factories of the digital age. These mostly windowless, featureless boxes are scattered across the globe – from Las Vegas to Bangalore, and Des Moines to Reykjavik. They run the planet’s digital services. Their construction alone costs around $20 billion a year worldwide.

The biggest, covering a million square feet or more, consume as much power as a city of a million people. In total, they eat up more than 2 percent of the world’s electricity and emit roughly as much CO2 as the airline industry. And with global data traffic more than doubling every four years, they are growing fast.

yeah streaming is much more harmful for the environment.

not only does it use much more energy, but the rate of failure/replacement of said devices is greater then a console.