OntheEdgeofthemirror said:
MS was completely wrong, physical media isn't never going to die, blu ray is the obvious future here are some things to think about
-Storage size: the average game is about 8 gigs (behind held back by dvd) on 360 and ps3 exclusives are like 15-20 gigs on average there's no way you could build up a decent collection with DD only, not to mention if you wanted movies and other things on your harddrive, there just isn't the space
-The rest of the world: NA has pretty much the best internet network and still they can't stream blu ray quality movies, UK is next best and japan is up there I think everything else would be pretty much impossible to reliably download full size games or movies on, when you can just ship a dvd or blu ray to it the same as anywhere else and get sales, I mean MS doesn't even have xbl up in half the countries they ship too, and pretty much everywhere besides US they have a poor network so again not going to happen
-Price compare to HDDs: blu rays are cheaper to make then a harddrive of the same size, much cheaper, so for the consumer when buying something that takes up alot of space it's cheaper to buy blu rays then invest in a massive harddrive which still might not be enough
Don't get more wrong DD is going places, it makes it much easier, cheaper and faster for smaller files and works out great, but storage media is just so much farther ahead in terms of storage capacity and don't rely on online networks, storage media isn't going anywhere until the entire world is covered in wifi thats capable of downloading gigs a minute and even then we'll probably have storage media being set to a mars colony or something
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Defintely agree with you. While most games this gen can fit on a single DVD (sans a few multi disk 360 releases/PS3 exclusives), the same won't be the case next gen. Not when the standard for every game will be 1080p (which to look great requires hi-res textures), as well as longer than 5 hr campaigns and larger levels/worlds.
Then you have to take into account other people's internet access. I believe I read sometime back that only ~ 50% of Americans have high-speed internet in their homes. This number must be way less in other countries, especially the smaller ones Sony, MS, and Nintendo ship to. Going digital only would mean very poor console sales in those countries. It would also mean less retailers would stock them, even in larger regions, since they make very little off the sale of consoles and would no longer be making money off of the sales of video games.
Price compared to HDD's was one I hadn't actually thought about. Granted by the time next gen starts, 1-2 TB laptop HDDs will probably be the norm and will probably only cost a little over $100. But, games discs will still only cost you ~ $50-$60. Now imagine if it was DD only. Not only would you have to pay ~ $40 (if they are nice and lower the price) for a game, but you have to also pay for multiple HDDs. And 1TB may seem like a lot, but when your downloading games every 2-3 weeks at 10-20 GBs a pop (not to mention space for DLC, patches, and save files per game) and putting music/videos on your system, that TB won't last you very long. And god forbid your HDD fails and you have to re-download and re-install everything. Or if the online store you buy games from goes out of business and/or stops supporting your games. You're screwed.
Which brings me to another point. People like to complain about installing games on the PS3, but if you have DD only, every single game you have has to be installed. But when Sony puts a 6x or 8x Blu-ray drive on the PS4, you can pretty much kiss installs and load times good-bye.
