Future of Physical Media in consoles - end of disks?

[TheBraveGallade]

Alby_da_Wolf said:

TheBraveGallade said:

Now that even consoles are moving toward subscription based media, What you you guys think the future of physical media is?

Personally, I see them going toward the collector's item status, same as blu-ray.

Though however, I see everyone moving away from discs, as discs just don't work, hell, they haven't really since the start of gen 8.

even the much weaker wii U used install data on some bigger games to help loading (Xenoblade X)

I feel like everyone will move back to carts while simultainiously jacking up the price by at least 10$.

Making a port costs nothing compared to a disc drive, so there is a cost saving on a per console basis

plus they arn't as fragile as disc drives, and are much easier to repair and replace.

and by next gen, a 128GB read only SSD wouldn't be that expensive, currently they are around 20 bucks.

... Hell, now that I think about it, MS could do it right now with the series S/X, turning their proprietary expansion port from a 'detriment' into an asset since instead of moving around stuff from an HDD and back taking 30 minuetes, you can just hot swap a cart in and immediatly begin playing. even if it was 80$ (casue an ssd costs 20-30$ at 128GB when discs cost pennies) I'd say most people who would insist on buying phisical would buy this for the sheer convienience.

Solid state read-only memories already are totally viable for durability and speed, so the right price and companies will are the only conditions left for them to replace optical discs. Your question is interesting, because you predict the end of discs, not of the physical media. I agree, because digital download only is very far away to become viable for the majority of users: outside of towns and big villages, even in developed countries, wired connections still are far slower, and wireless connection can be vary shaky, the download of a single game tens of GB large can take even days if you can't get fibre connection or latest and fastest wireless one with strong and stable signal, and in some valleys you should even take your console on top of a hill to get enough signal. Satellite connection can solve speed and reach problems, but it has higher costs and very bad latency, good for download, but very bad for online multiplayer, so in the less lucky cases, where single player, or at most turn based multiplayer are the only viable gaming modes, physical media, even after the disc death, is still the best solution, as it is also when latency can be kept low enough for online MP, but speed is still bad for massive downloads.
And as you write, this solution could make discless low-cost console versions able to offer physical media too, not digital download only.

which is exactly the point i'm making.

phisical is not going away, much like how blu ray is still around and not dead yet, though i feel like it will eventually become a 'collector's item' rather then mainstream.

an SSD solution that uses some kind of NVME/PCIe based connection that slides into a port will be the next gen phisical port. it doesn't even need to be propreitary if they manage to pull off a thunderbolt 4 port solution.