blu ray with HDD.

The HDD can be a solid state though.

But i doubt carts, like the switch has are more profiteable than dics.

Anything that removes physical media is also not desireable for several reasons.

There is a lot of wrong here.....

Yes catridges are faster than HDDs, but I doubt HDDs are whatthe next consoles are going to use. Its not just about SSDs (be it in ttheir sata or m.2 formats) being better all round (espeicially better than any catridge will ever be) but its that the industry in general is shifting away from mechanical drives which in turn will bring the price of SSDs down.

Two things here are a given, its always going to be cheaper to cut games to a disc especially when you are looking at games that are 50GB+ in size than putting that same game on a cart. And secondly, if you look at what the likely storage options to replace HDDs are, they are both significantly faster than carts.

And have you seen the size of an m.2 SSD? Its literally the size of a chewing gum, has no capacity limitations and offers transfer speeds higher than 2.5GB/s. Opting to go with carts would be the single biggest mistake sony/Ms can make. Especially when you consider that come next gen all their games will be built for 4k natively. A $1 disk that can store 100GB would always be better than a $10 cart that stores the same amount. More so when they know every console has an internal drive. Even the switch has an internal drive/storage and it uses carts.

I think it will have a regular hard drive and maybe a Bluray player. I don't see them going with SSDs cause games themselves are requiring more and more storage space. Heck, we have already seen games take up to 120GB of space. Next generation with 4k... I am pretty sure games will take up even more space. So I think Sony/MS would rather have a 2TB-4TB base model hard drive than 500GB-1TB SSD.

Carts + m.2 SSD internal >>>>> disks + m.2 SSD internal

You need a way to get the game from the store and install to/play on the console. Carts can play at good speeds without installation, you could still install them to SSD for faster speeds.

I was thinking the same thing, but going with an SSD offers benefits to the entire development process that using HDDs wouldn't allow. Basically, say they go with an sata SSD as standard in every console, the devs can build their games around straming in data from that drive at at least 350MB/s+. As opposed to being locked down to under 100MB/s. That would mean a lot when you consider games built with 4k assets natively.

As for the size, anything from a 1TB SSD will be fine, possible and most likely probable. In 2020, it wouldn't cost them much more than what it cost them today for a 1TB HDD to put in a 1TB sata SSD. And if the switch is any indication, as long as from day one they offer external HDD support then everyone will be ok. Even if they gave us a 512GB SSD. 

Errrrr no man...... thats just not true.

So you feel that a 50GB-100GB cart will cost less or at least the same to make as a 50GB-100GB disk? Thats just not possible. 

And then look at the part of your post I bolded. So you know that these discs or carts primarily only serve to get the game from the store into your console, yet you feel they wouldn't go as cheap as they can for whatever does that? We are already at a point where two of the three consoles on the market run games exclusively off the internal hard drive. 

Yea but I don't think MS/Sony will care enough about that to do it. I think they would rather have more storage than let developers build games around streaming data, at least for next generation. Cause if they allow external hard drives or replacement hard drives like they have with ps4/x1 and someone puts HDD instead of an SSD, then the games that are built around streaming data will be hit with issues. Sure people could buy external SSDs but I doubt normal people know what a SSD vs a hard drive is. I just think that the advantage of lots of storage for cheap and ease of use when consumers want to add an external hard drive will outweigh the advantages of an SSD. At least for next generation anyway... Specially if MS and Sony wants to head towards the digital route, having lots of space in order to install loads of digital content is a must.

We will see though.

Carts. Nintendo is doing it right, this time. It's the best form of physical media.

I wonder how fast Nintendo cartridges are? Fast enough for decent load times in Zelda, but it's not a big game at 13.4 GB with low res textures, angular geometry and stylized low poly characters. Actually it should be loading faster for what's on screen, especially shrines.

SD cards aren't all that fast, 4 bit interface can only do so much. For 4K textures, terrain and models you want to install games to an SSD drive anyway. Might as well stick to the cheapest delivery solution, 4K blu-ray drive.

| chose scenario 2. I think next gen will be the last standard physical media console. It's also quite possible that PS and XB both offer a second digital based sku as well.

I think they can get it down to $399 instead of $450 by then. I also have a feeling PS would want to incorporate the optical drive into the console shell like prior consoles just to keep things as simple and sleek as possible. (They may also not care anymore since they folded on external storage and the mess of items that comes with PSVR. I see XB being much more open to having an external optical drive as compared to PS)

This would also work with a second sku where they simply ship the console without the internal optical drive. They could offer a $30-$50 discount or bundle in a digital game or free PS Plus for a year and charge the same price for both skus. (While an extra hardware design cost, I could also see the digital sku having the empty optical bay space being used as an optional bay for an SDD or 2.5"/3.5" HDD potentially)

Now that external storage is available to both brands and will slowly become the norm, that leaves consumers open to buying a 1TB-??TB mass storage drive that can hold all of their games and media. Games of course you would want to, or have to, transfer to the NVMe SSD drive to get maximum loading speeds during play.

I just don't think its quite time for a leap to digital first. People like me and most who game outside of a large urban area won't see net speeds faster than 5mbps for 5 to 10 years most likely, if not longer. I think if you added all of us up there's a very large number of physical dependent gamers.

Get rid of them. Discs are one of the worst things introduced to gaming. Theyre weak and easily broken. Either keep it cartridge based like Nintendo or do full digital