I was thinking more along the lines of Fable 4, Elder Scrolls, Stanfield, Fallout, DOOM, Wolfenstein, etc.  And that is just from one recent acquisition.  You desperately want to try to downplay it, but it only makes shows how stubborn you are.  And since Gamepass is a digital service, it is well within the topic at hand.  But hey, if you wanna pretend like gamepass is "a poor attempt at BC" then you are free to do so.  Just don't act suprised if you ever step back into reality.

On the topic of physical games, I truly hope you are right on that.  I always opt for physical games when the option is there.  But with more games needing day one patches, growing popularity of digital, and the weaning process already being started by console makers...the writing is on the wall.

I never stated that a disc cannot fit the entirety of a game. with 4k blu ray everything this gen and probably the next one will have enough room to fit in at least 2 discs.

the issue is that discs will never go back to plug and play, plus reading then writing to the INTERNAL SSD is going to take a while, not to mention the hassle when you have to make room for it.

at that point might as well go for a 128GB, 80$, plug and play cart for phisical.

Wow I don't even know what you are trying to do anymore on the gamepass topic.  You really need to check your definition of a big title of you think DOOM is the only potential loss.  But lets play devil's advocate here, even if Bethesda games do come to PS (they likely won't), they will still be day 1 on gamepass.  Your definition of gamepass is a joke and only serves to point out a bias against MS, or at the very least you would recognize the incredible value it serves without your sad downplay.

In fact, this isn't even about digital sales for you anymore it seems.

And a side note, no one said the market was ready for all digital.  I said they are easing us into it with digital only consoles, digital services with amazing value, and a younger generation that finds physical games a hassle overall (making them easier to mold).  The shift to all digital won't happen overnight, hell probably not even in next gen.  But it will happen in our lifetime.  It only becomes more evident as time goes on.

carts can't, by nature, be too slow if console makers still want upgradable 'internal' storage. its just the matter of making a port fast enough.

remember, carts back in the 80's and 90's were basically an 'extention' of internal storage, a cart that uses a plug and play implementation of NVME slot will be as fast as any installable piece of SSD would ever be.

Dude, I am calling out your downplay of gamepass because it is has a lot of value and your desperate attempts to go against that notion is pathetic.  It is almost like you feel threatened by it.  I never said that, "a rental service will eliminate physical games."  You are putting words in my mouth.  I said that services like Gamepass, along with other factors together, will help push digital media.

And are you really using 3rd party games like Tomb Raider and Cuphead to argue that Bethesda games (1st party now) will still come over?  Or how Minecraft already existed on PS4 before it was bought?  Dude that logic is wrong on so many levels.  I am not going into why MS doesn't need to release their games on PS again (I could care less), I have already been over that in other threads.  It seems like when it comes to MS, you would rather cover your ears and pretend that your own opinions are somehow law.  That is the only way someone could say with a straight face Fallout, Elder Scrolls, and Starfield (due to the hype) are not big IPs along with some of your other talk about gamepass.

If that somehow translates to me saying gamepass will kill physical games, read it again slowly.  Your comprehension is off.  As far as the other stuff about physical media, as I said I hope you are right.  I have always been against a digital future.  I would just rather be realistic and be pleasantly suprised, than be hopeful and be let down.

Iv been collecting phyiscal games since the beginning of gaming and honestly, its becoming more inconvenient trying to find space for everything. Sadly Digital media is superior is every way and collection a disk is now pointless especially considering you still need day 1 patches to use the disks.

Solid state read-only memories already are totally viable for durability and speed, so the right price and companies will are the only conditions left for them to replace optical discs. Your question is interesting, because you predict the end of discs, not of the physical media. I agree, because digital download only is very far away to become viable for the majority of users: outside of towns and big villages, even in developed countries, wired connections still are far slower, and wireless connection can be vary shaky, the download of a single game tens of GB large can take even days if you can't get fibre connection or latest and fastest wireless one with strong and stable signal, and in some valleys you should even take your console on top of a hill to get enough signal. Satellite connection can solve speed and reach problems, but it has higher costs and very bad latency, good for download, but very bad for online multiplayer, so in the less lucky cases, where single player, or at most turn based multiplayer are the only viable gaming modes, physical media, even after the disc death, is still the best solution, as it is also when latency can be kept low enough for online MP, but speed is still bad for massive downloads.
And as you write, this solution could make discless low-cost console versions able to offer physical media too, not digital download only.

You won't get 128 GB carts with enough speed to be directly playable from for $5 production cost extra. And if you can't directly play from it, there is no point to replace much cheaper to produce discs. Switch games load faster from internal storage than from carts, for example

Legend of Zelda Breath of The Wild - Great Plateau loading times
Switch Cartridge - 35:45 seconds
Internal 32GB - 30:42

You also get no benefit from using over UHS-1 cards so 100-150 MB/s is about the max you get vs 5 GB/s in the new consoles. The internal memory in the Switch peaks at 300 MB/s. 128 GB carts that can do 2.5 GB/s don't exist yet. Fastest carts atm do 300 MB/s and cost in the $100 range.

128 GB NVME 'carts' are more affordable, bigger as well but can be bought for $30 (internal version, needs housing etc). Still an order of magnitude more expansive than stamping a disc even at scale. Material costs will always be higher compared to discs.

You could make it so discs are a secondary source of data. Leave all the audio on the disc and load it from there while installing all the textures etc to internal storage. Uncompressed audio takes up a lot of space and loads fast enough from the 27 MB/s blu-ray drive while playing. It would save internal storage space and actually still be a bit faster since now you have 2 separate places to load data from. However this is extra effort and creates a difference between digital and physical versions.

Not gonna happen. The devs at this point want a 70USD pricetag with a disc that cost like 1 USD to print. So for your math to work we would need a cart that is 128Gb in size and 4.5 Gbps (at least) in speed costing 11USD right now. Do you really see that being a reality?

You can definitely do installs via USB.
Only thing stopping an external drives to the series s... Is Microsoft.

Actually going to test to see if my external BD Rom drive is compatible with my One X soon.

I would expect next-gen drives to top out at around 36MB/s, the actual spin rate of the disks remains the same, but the data is denser, so it can transfer more bytes per second.

But you are right, BDXL is inherently faster.

NAND or ROM doesn't need to match optical in terms of price, it just needs to justify the additional price with a plethora of advantages.
In saying that... 16 Gigabyte flash drives can sell for about $6 AUD... And that includes the controller, port, plastic housing and so forth plus profits on top.

NAND is definitely catching up.

Memory relies on multiple chips to extract bandwidth via parallel memory transfers.
You are definitely limited in that aspect in terms of space and complexity.