Grabbed from http://forum.beyond3d.com/showpost.php?p=1192467&postcount=788 A few items snipped by me to make it shorter/more VGchartz suitible. Poster is a Console Developer and this is his perspective.

Play from the HDD, or, Testing & Conditioning for 3D Gen 4

Synopsis: "Play from the HDD" is as much about future consoles as it is for the here and now. Is the right/wrong approach for the 4th gen 3D consoles? Can you think of a better solution for "next-gen" memory design?

General Thoughts: MS announced they are allowing gamers to now copy their games to the HDD which, in turn, will allow for quiter gameplay (less DVD whirl) and faster load times (HDD > DVD in seek time, transfer rate). The press release read something like this:

On the testing front MS has the ability to track how many consumers use the feature, the impact on HDD space, benefit/detriment to the gaming experience, and so forth. They are also now in a position to survey consumers on their thoughts on the implimentation, what demerits consumers find with it and what they like, etc with an eye toward future console development.

The conditioning element, though, is what I find interesting. The amount of "positive" response I have seen here and at Gamersyde is surprising, yet it appears a lot of gamers are willing to trade off HDD space for less noise and faster load times. Having endured 3 years of non-HDD standard performance limitations it appears the HDD options is now a "positive point" which can be conditioned into a consumer selling point down the road (instead of taken for granted).

My take on this is that this is a strategic move for MS that plays into the Xbox 360 as well as the Xbox 3.

The Now
* Give consumers less noise now.
* Give consumers faster load times now.
* Resolve disk spanning complaints (ugh, I have to swap disks?!).
* Resolve some disk space issues (dev needs 20GB of space? Require the HDD).
* Performance tracking.
* Consumer feedback.

The Future
* 4th Gen consoles are facing storage issues.
+ Games will continue to grow in memory footprint requirements.
- As worlds become larger and more detailed there becomes a need to populate memory quickly for game access.
+ Bandwidth needs will increase for storage and immediate access.

<Snip>

+ Optical media is cheap, but...
- Optical media is not fast; transfering 2GB-4GB of data (extrapolated memory footprint for new consoles) at 20MB-30MB/sec. is a much lower ration than even this generation and won't suffice on new consoles.
- Optical media is not quick; seek rates are pathetic.
- Optical drives can be loud (especially faster ones), take up significant space, increase failure rate, design complexity, etc

* Distribution: Digitial distribution from online networks is be a major factor
+ May not displace retailers (shelf space is important for mindshare, retailer exposure) but will continue to suppliment.
+ Other media, like music and movies, are encourching the console consumer market.
+ The community/social network concept is slowly trickling into the console space.
+ Steam has demonstrated that pre-caching content is viable (game goes "gold," consumers with intent to purchase cache large chunks of the game so when the game is officially released they can play sooner than later).


I am not sure how the new consoles will tier their memory systems but there are significant troubles ahead. While there isn't a single motive behind the Xbox 360 game caching, I believe it has been positioned for market research and testing for their next console. What I find interesting is that it is a low-tech "PC" approach. IMO the PC is often a ripe market for product testing: if something is viable and affordable it can gain some headway in the PC market. At this point the approach of "installing" games to a HDD appears to be a viable middle ground for the 4th gen 3D consoles:

<Snip>
* HDD's offer superior seek times compared to optical media.
* HDD's offer superior transfer speeds compared to optical media.
* HDD is necessary for continued Digital Distribution development.
* HDD installation allows companies to retain Optical Media for cheap media distribution but leveraging the HDD for superior performance.

While not a sexy solution, and HDD costs don't diminish much over the lifecycle of a console, I think the new consoles are at a point where a HDD will finally offer enough "selling points" (digital distribution, perpetual social networks, pre-game release caching, "Avalache" style p2p networks, semi-resolution to game load times and perpetual world issues, game modifications and customization, demos and trailers, and so forth) to justify their inclusion again from MS. And not just as a content save area, but in a PC-style "installation" approach. Buy a game, install a game (play a minigame, watch a intro video, etc to viel the installation), play the game.

If asked right now what my ignorant opinion was about the biggest hurdles facing the next consoles (2010-2012 window) I would say input and storage. Per storage consumers are not going to desire enduring even longer load times than faced now. And with diminishing returns increasing graphically it is my opinion that some games becoming "bigger worlds" and more interactive (hence more memory) will be a big factor in console designs (will trading up to 4GB of memory over 2GB be a bigger boost to game design over, say, 20% more die space for GPU/CPU power?) Tiering memory for best performance/cost is going to be a focal point of new console design and, as of right now, I think the PC model which MS is introducing to the 360 seems to be a strong front runner for their new console. There may be better approaches, but this one is a known quantity at this time.

Discuss.

Read all of that and it makes sense. Memory and Data Transfer will be a problem. However if i may be bold maybe the solution is in games on cartridges in combination with internal flash memory instead of optical storage and mechanical HDD. However this will all depend on whether the proprietary carts can be made cheap enough.

Cloud storage on MS servers with individual Live/.Net/Passport accounts?

That's the thing. Flash would be a very very nice way to go, but the downside to it is how expensive it can be to produce flash with large storage space. With optical media and hard drives you can have larger storage at a cheaper price, but at the cost of speed. While it's the complete opposite with Flash.

 One great thing about Flash is that the cost goes down much more quickly than HDD cost as the process nodes shrink and you can get more space on the same quantity of silicon or use less silicon for the same quantity of space.

Then it would probably be a good thing to push flash to the point it will get just as cheap as optical media. I doubt the industry is willing to make such a big shift. It would be an awesome thing to see though.

If the costs get low enough by the start of next gen maybe console makers should use flash memory. Plus shouldn't costs drop faster from widespread manufacturing?

Solid state disk drives are the future. Well, it's actually the present for high end pc's. If done correctly, a SSD will allow nearly instantaneous on/off and say goodbye to loading screens. By the time the next gen of consoles comes around, I suspect a 250 GB SSHD will be about $50. The real trick will be if one of the console makers decides to use a new architecture for transferring data, as SATA/PATA is far too slow to actually use a SSD to it's full advantage (or they could just use the SSD on the RAM bus, so the RAM could potentially be the size of the drive). Games are still going to come on optical media, however, and require an install. They're just the cheapest and easiest way to mass produce and distribute. Unless, of course, everyone on earth gets high speed internet connections.

Now think about how nice that would be for a second. Now say goodbye. The next generation of consoles are not going to be cutting edge high end machines. They'll be more powerful than this gen, of course, but I doubt that MS or Sony is going to want to absorb billions of dollars of losses again just to watch Nintendo crush them with a money making cheaper piece of hardware.

JMO

Because consoles are closed box affairs they don't get held back by outdated PC standards if they are willing to spend the money and implement their own/different one.

A SSD on the end of a fast bus to the southbridge would be pretty fast and it could replace some of the ram expenses as needed data could be quickly accessed from the drive.

Optical Drive - 150ms seek (PS3) 100ms Xbox360 IIRC.
HDD - 10ms seek (Smaller laptop HDD spin slower than desktop)
Flash - 0.1ms seek.
Ram - xxx Nano seconds lol (something like 120 IIRC???!?!?)

Seek times go 100x slower on HDD vs flash and 10-15x slower on optical than HDD.

This means they could use the SSD as like a level 2 ram for persistant data and store the meaty stuff on the HDD/Optical media and the latency intolerant/frequently accessed data on the ram.

This would be perfect. Though I think Sony and Microsoft would probably have to be the ones to take a hit for the team on this one (again) considering Nintendo is mainly a gaming company. Sony and Microsoft could probably afford to take this risk...wishful thinking though. :/