True.  Maybe in the future, or perhaps FAR into the future, digital downloads for everything will be feasible.  In the meantime, have fun waiting over a day to download the new 50 gig HD game and filling up all those terabyte hard drives...

Are you laughing now as well since Sony said a few years ago that the PS3 will have two HDMI ports that can output two separate native 1080p signals and that it'll have 4D graphics?

Anyway, the next Xbox will still have a disc drive. Why? Because they want to include backwards compatibility. Aside from that, games on demand is just a test to see how well digital distribution will do, and until now, I don't think it's doing that well. It'll take more than 10 years for digital distribution to be effective globally, and people love their hard copies.

The more important question is, which disc format. And to tell you the truth, I don't know if it'll be Blu-Ray. There are rumors already that the PS4 will bring another format on the market yet again. MS'll probably go with another disc format (there are a lot of them out there..) or even their own disc format. Maybe based off the HD-DVD and further optimized with larger capacity? HD-DVD might be dead for movies, but it doesn't have to be for a console, as long as they improve it. Or a major toned down version of the HVD (500GB is overkill..) or 5D-DVD (two laser colors instead of 3 or something..)?

Before you say they can't, Nintendo has always used their own disc formats (though still based on DVD), why can't MS? It would actually make sense. Streaming and renting videos in HD seems to be working fine for MS, so to go with the standard HD format to watch movies is not really needed for that purpose (though it would be nice, but if the PS4 brings another format to the table, Blu-Ray might become redundant anyway and I don't think Blu-Ray will be more popular than DVD by that time..). Having their own disc format probably means less piracy, maybe less space needed for copy protection, no need for a license for the use of Blu-Ray discs, and if they include a hard-drive out of the box (which I'm pretty sure they will) they can always "silently load/install" games in the background. In 10 years I doubt any game will require more than 30GB of space though, unless you fill them with pre-rendered cutscenes that is, or duplicate data is used to increase load times.. 

The main issue would be read speed and seek times.. They need a format that reads faster than DVD and Blu-Ray if they're going to load 2GB of game data (or however much the consoles are going to use in the future). I'm pretty sure the 5D-DVD can do that since it uses different laser colors which in theory could easily have twice the read speed, but, don't know about the seek times and I don't know of any others that could do it, even the HVD. I think 5D-DVD has the "easiest" way to be compatible with standard DVDs, making that the most obvious choice.. We'll see..

As for the hard drives, I think MS will allow users to use their current hard drives on the next Xbox as well, and also let the next Xbox have an internal hard drive.. This will allow the old game data (like save files) and profile data to be transfered to the new console. The internal hard drive might have some amount of space not usable by the user but reserved for developers to use. 

This is all speculation and my opinion (and wishes..) and what I think MS should do. If you don't agree, fine, and you can argue against it, but, no need to be an ass in your argument. Play nice. (This is a disclaimer, just in case..)

@edstation just because your brother was not economically bright enough to figure out he didn't have to spend 699 to get the exact same value for less doesn't mean you're right -_-

Well thanks for making a long post because I really didn't bother reading your entire post. You see I never said that the Next XBox should not have a disc drive nor did I say MS shouln't use Blu Ray and nor did I say that MS will eventually use BLu Ray and hence this is a lie. My point is if they've said this, then they should stick to their words. Nobody knows what the future might hold but people should stick to their words.

And as for your first question I never heard of that claim myself so I can't really comment but I've heard other lies such as back at PS3 launch, Ken said "The PS3 is gonna make people work harder for them to buy the PS3." I laughed at that claim coz that's clearly not the majority case and hence it became a lie. And sure my example right now is not hardware related but if people say something that they're not gonna do but do in the end or visa versa then it's a lie and I'll laugh at them. Just like how I laughed at Peter Molyneux's claims back in Fable 1 days.

And no I'm not trying to argue against you or anything and I don't like to coz arguments go nowhere since I'm not gonna change your opinion nor are you gonna change my opinion through an argument. So yeah not trying to discourage you or anything but I'll keep MS' comment in mind for the future.

If online content is the future...then why'd they even bother with HD DVD? Jumping from one fail boat to another if you ask me

Damn right. It makes no sense to pay $60 for a game, then have to wait days to play it....when you can just go to WalMart or something and start playing in 5 minutes

@Cross-X: Only the first sentence was meant for you. The rest was just a general response to the whole thread =) Sorry if that wasn't clear. And yeah, PR talk should never be trusted..

PC's don't need Blu-Ray drives. MS should work on a smarter install strategy than what they are using.

I get 40Gb downloads per months for $50. So downloading God of War type games will cost me more than $50, just for the download costs, plus the cost of the game?

Ridiculous. We will see who is right, Nintendo or MS.

i dont think that much is lost due to multiple spots of data, sure if its contiguous its faster but the disc drive should have no problem with it the shifting of the laser takes a fraction of a second, after ripping roms (for my own personal backup) you get an idea of how much space what takes up and where,and cgi and audio takes up probably 70% of the discs anyway, givin that multiple sets of the same data are on each disc id say a  DD version of this would be like 18-21gb. and even if it could fit on 8gb dd like nightwish thinks wouldnt they only used 2 (18gb) dvd instead of 3(27gb)