Not with me. Ever.

Or game prices would need to be halved.

I'm sure this has already been said, but not having a disc-based machine would be akin to committing suicide: retailers aren't going to give you much support if their only way to make money in this equation is on slim-to-non-existent hardware profit margins, and accessories--they'll hand that 'extra' space over to the hardware that gives them a steady income stream.

(And no retail presence=vastly diminished sales to the point where there's no way, unless they're handing retailers a sizable hardware margin (which will drastically reduce their competitiveness), that this happens.)

(Also: CliffyB has about as much a clue of the business end of this biz as your grandma, judging by this and myriad, non-Gears of War-related, commentary.)

Technically, Steam is already very successful as an all DD platform, so there is definitely a market for such a system, but even Steam allows for disk based installations to be added to the library.

The main reason why the optical drives will be around for at least one more generation is simply because it will remain a major means of distributing content through retail outlets.

Sure, every console maker would like to have what Apple has with the App Store, and what will be seen with the Windows 8 App Store, where all transactions are handled without giving away a cut to retailers or shipping or disk pressing/game packaging factories, but the majority of consumers are still conditioned to buy their games on what is essentially disposable media.

But successes like Apple's App Store and Steam are slowly changing that mindset among the average consumer.

But the real reason why Epic doesn't want games distributed via retail box is simple: they lose a significant amount of sales to the secondary market.

I know a lot of people don't agree with that so skip the rants as to why this is wrong. The point is this is how virtually ALL game publishers see it.

I signed up to ps+ but I have to wait until next month before downloading Infamous 2. 14.5gb left on my monthly limit, Infamous 2 download size 15gb, estimated 450 minutes download time.
I should time it right, download 10gb then pause it on ps3 until the limit resets. Otherwise I start next month with 25% gone already. Fuck download limits.

I'm not sure if the used market is really why they want it ...

Retailers get a pretty massive cut on the sale of most games and a company that is as graphics-focused as Epic games may see this as a way to get revenue to cover the massive costs associated with the "next generation" of big budget games.

Then go digital only. Duh :)

100% they will all have discs. Thats not to say Microsoft won't have a SKU which comes without a disc drive.

The simple fact of the matter is that it takes most people around an hour to download a 1GB demo, So what happens when you need to download a 25GB game?? Now add to that all the people who lack half decent internet...

Cliffy B can get the fuck out.

They only want DD to prevent used game sales, nothing more. Until they implement a trade-back scheme for DD games then I want to continue to own a hard copy for most games so that if I don't like / don't want the game I can sell it or give it away.