I could see there being an sku with a really big HDD but no disc drive, as the the cheaper option. Probably later in the cycle rather than at launch.

If that were to happen, GameStop would do everything in their power to help Nintendo win the 8th gen.

Sony will support Blu-ray again, they've already done so much to promote the format that they won't kill it this soon.

MS on the other hand has a choice to make. Will they support Sony's Blu-ray or another format. :edited clarity

I see this more likely happening next next gen, but just next gen?  Nope.

Not going to happen next-gen, in no way is it feasible (nor desireable) world-wide yet.

No. Not in the next 5 years at least. The infrastructure for internet is still not very good in most of the US outside of the large cities. There are still quite a few areas that have no access to high speed internet.

I doubt this will happen ...

The retail markup on a typical game console is approximately 0% and the only reason retailers carry these systems is because they get a decent markup on games and the regular purchase of videogames creates a lot of foot-traffic. In order to get retailers to stock a system that had no games there would need to be a significant margin on the sale of the hardware (probably 50% to 100%) and that would make the system remarkably unpopular.

Imagine Microsoft or Sony selling their next generation system for $600 to $800 ...

This guy is annoying

I already have to think about downloading a 2gb demo. After the Steam sale I had to wait until the next month to download the rest with my crappy bandwidth limit. If it's going to be digital only, I'll pass on it.

Even if I could download full games in 10 minutes without worrying about limits I would still prefer walking into a shop, browsing the bargins, and taking something home I didn't expect I would find. Plus I wouldn't have bought half the games I did if it weren't for trade ins.

Sorry, but no way.

Imagine you waiting to download a game with 40Gb... Its just insane. Most people dont want and CANT download that much ammount of data, they would lose a lot of consumers.