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Forums - Gaming Discussion - Will we see a digital-only console option next gen?

 

Will we see a digital-only console next gen?

Yes. It will be possible soon enough. 15 16.30%
 
Yes, but only if we still... 15 16.30%
 
Only if they use a good s... 14 15.22%
 
No. The market is not ready for that. 43 46.74%
 
Results. 5 5.43%
 
Total:92
kitler53 on 30 March 2015
teigaga said:
This gen is possible.

The question is whether removing the Bluray drive offers a big enough cost reduction. Would it even equate to $50? At this point in Bluray's life I doubt its really that expensive.

i did a quick amazon search and i can find a lot of blu ray players in the $30 to $40 range.   ...so no it wouldn't be even $50 worth.  like i said in my post above this,.. a discless sku wouldn't cost less.  at best they would roll those couple of bucks of savings into a larger harddrive but that, imo, has a lot of value to the digital only consumer like myself.



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Proxy-Pie on 30 March 2015

I mean, we could always go the Read-Only Flashdrive route, that works, but they aren't too pretty



grannamir on 30 March 2015

For the love of god... For all that is good in life... No, sir NOOOO...
Don't even start with this shit idea please. Don't give the suits the final permission to fuck us all.
The day that we as consumers don't have the power to choose and vote with our wallets, that my friend will be a sad day!!



kitler53 on 30 March 2015
Darwinianevolution said:
kitler53 said:
..


100 euro is waaaay too much.  the optical drive itself is maybe worth 10 and you could cut some cost maybe with a smaller form factor but the cost savings is a maximum of 25 euro.

no, no.  a discless sku would cost the same as the disc sku but come with a much larger harddrive at best.    ...and i hope so.  i am 100% digital buyer and i would have greatly appreciated a discless sku that game with a Tb drive instead of 500 Gb.  that way at least my money is going towards hardware i'd be using instead of hardware i'm ignoring.

 

to those praying for a crash and burn,.. a discless sku option (like the psp go was) in no way diminishes your experience so long as it is an option.  you should get over yourselves in thinking what you want it the only thing anyone is allowed to want.

I said 100€ not because of the disk reader, but because that company is incentivating costumers to go full digital. Would a digital only console be more profitable than a regular one, if we suppose they will sold the thing at a loss and compensate with digital services?

i can't say for sure,.. but i don't think sony recieves a massively more money for a digital sale than a retail sale.  the manufature cost of a disc is under a dollar.  the retail cut of a sale is only like $7.  to break even on a $100 loss-lead strategy demands then 12.5 full retail priced games to break even.   that's too much to make it worth it, imo.



kristianity77 on 30 March 2015
MohammadBadir said:
kristianity77 said:


You'd think, that if the switch to digital doesn't happen then something has to give.  I don't think its the fact that Blu Ray is outdated, its more the read speeds than anything.  An optical media needs to come out which isn't hampered by ridiculously slow read speeds, especially now that games are frequently 30-40gb in size.  Current read speeds just don't cut it for games that size hence why hard drives are being filled up at a ridiculous rate.  Something has to give.

Yeah but if games are around 40GB now then what about the future? We're already seeing ridiculously sized games now, said games wouldn't fit on a Bluray, and I doubt that Blurays will be able to handle whatever 4K+ games the next generation of consoles will bring...

I think that bigger blu ray discs that hold 100gb are already available commercially so I don't think storage on these discs is the problem.  If optical media cannot produce something for Blu Ray that dramatically increases read speeds then it will be a spent force at some point as writing countless GB's to Hard Drives isnt a long term solution nor is downloading the files themselves either when you consider the size.

In short, they are fantastic for movie watching and recording, all the way up to 4K, but for games, Blu Ray is the major bottleneck in consoles becasue the information cannot be taken off the disc anywhere near quick enough.

Another thing you have to remember is that quite a lot of the space taken up on Blu Ray games is just video files.  You'd think at some point games will shy away from FMV as I'd imagine that "in game cinematics" is possibly cheaper in the long term.  This would actually make certain games a fair bit smaller.  Maybe not this generation, but its possible for future ones to maybe ditch FMV altogether.



PREDICTIONS FOR END OF 2015: (Made Jan 1st 2015)

PS4 - 34M - XB1 - 21m - WII U -12M

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Proxy-Pie on 30 March 2015
kristianity77 said:
MohammadBadir said:

Yeah but if games are around 40GB now then what about the future? We're already seeing ridiculously sized games now, said games wouldn't fit on a Bluray, and I doubt that Blurays will be able to handle whatever 4K+ games the next generation of consoles will bring...

I think that bigger blu ray discs that hold 100gb are already available commercially so I don't think storage on these discs is the problem.  If optical media cannot produce something for Blu Ray that dramatically increases read speeds then it will be a spent force at some point as writing countless GB's to Hard Drives isnt a long term solution nor is downloading the files themselves either when you consider the size.

In short, they are fantastic for movie watching and recording, all the way up to 4K, but for games, Blu Ray is the major bottleneck in consoles becasue the information cannot be taken off the disc anywhere near quick enough.

In that case maybe my previous suggestion of using some sort of Flash Drives is valid, but something about them is off putting



estebxx on 30 March 2015
Blob said:
Too many places don't even have the internet capabilities to go digital only last gen let alone next gen. I just don't see it happening

yeah, this is very true.

i think the best solution is just to keep the same format, a console that has the physical and digital option, afterall they arent mutually exclusives and digital will keep growing more and more even if consoles have the physical option.



kristianity77 on 30 March 2015
MohammadBadir said:
kristianity77 said:

I think that bigger blu ray discs that hold 100gb are already available commercially so I don't think storage on these discs is the problem.  If optical media cannot produce something for Blu Ray that dramatically increases read speeds then it will be a spent force at some point as writing countless GB's to Hard Drives isnt a long term solution nor is downloading the files themselves either when you consider the size.

In short, they are fantastic for movie watching and recording, all the way up to 4K, but for games, Blu Ray is the major bottleneck in consoles becasue the information cannot be taken off the disc anywhere near quick enough.

In that case maybe my previous suggestion of using some sort of Flash Drives is valid, but something about them is off putting

Possibly.  But again, I "think" that those suffer from read speed issues also compared to actual Hard Drives.  I think that whatever replaces optical media, whatever it is, probably isn't invented yet.  Or if it is invented, its not developed yet to something which would be feasable.



PREDICTIONS FOR END OF 2015: (Made Jan 1st 2015)

PS4 - 34M - XB1 - 21m - WII U -12M

Proxy-Pie on 30 March 2015
kristianity77 said:
MohammadBadir said:

In that case maybe my previous suggestion of using some sort of Flash Drives is valid, but something about them is off putting

Possibly.  But again, I "think" that those suffer from read speed issues also compared to actual Hard Drives.  I think that whatever replaces optical media, whatever it is, probably isn't invented yet.  Or if it is invented, its not developed yet to something which would be feasable.

Aren't Flash Drives much faster than Blurays/Hardrives?
Some Flash Drives even have like 260MB/s read speed...



grannamir on 30 March 2015
MohammadBadir said:
I wonder if we'll see a succeeding media to Blurays.


Some time ago, i read about this new disc technology being in research, the holographic discs.

I don't remenber all the details, i think is something like capacity to hold 1tb and very fast reading.

Someone can confirm please!