I don't think Moore's Law states what you think it states.

From Wikipedia:

My whole point was/is that if technology continues to improve by doubling every 18-24 months - the same pace when the Xbox 360 released - that if the next Xbox uses a last-gen optical device (such as the X360 using a DVD drive), which would be Blu-Ray in a X720, then the processing power of the X720 would easily be proper to exact all of the abilities that BR-DVD would allow, in the same way that the Xbox 360 has pretty much reached the limits of what can be done with 1 DVD drive in terms of graphical fidelity, and other components. What is wrong with using Moore's Law for that aspect of hardware?

What exactly is wrong with that statement? Moores law works for just about every electronic device: As technology gets better, faster and smaller, then said devices can do more. That includes the abilities of a next-gen system when it comes to compiling and playing a game on Blu-Ray. What may be a massive system like a Playstation 3 now, that can handle BR-DVD, today will be a meager device when the next-gen systems come. We aren't even quite in the "middle" of this generation, so attempting to make crazy assumptions that BR-DVD players, in 3-4 years won't be cheap is a crazy assumption.

Dallas, you might want to notice that the tree your looking at is part of a forest. I'm not even going to bring up points there are far too many and many other have pointed them out already. Just a point

BR is part of a consortium not sole propiertership. If/When MS uses BR MS has far more muscle with the other companies than to be concerened with Sony.

Otherwise look at a bunch of the other answeres.

Anyways can someone actually provide a real link with real specs on the CPU required for BR. I bet it's not that high. Also don't bother with PC spec requirements. I am reffering to an actual dedicated BR player.

More than likely the CPU are very low. Instead what you have are dedicated decoder chips or reader chips. This is why the Wii doesn't have DVD playback. They only have reader chips not decoder chips. If the Wii wanted to play DVD they would either have have the decoder chip or bridge it in software. If anyone can prove i'm wrong.

Downloading wont be around for a very long time.

Average hard drives at the moment for a new computer are around 400 GB to 1TB.

Blue ray discs can hold up to 50GB each.  I dont think games will ever use that amount of space but it doesnt take much to fill a 400GB hard drive these days.

I have bought around 20 Xbox 360 games and if each next gen game was to use around 20gb then thats my hard rive used.  I wouldnt want to have to keep waiting for a game to redownload.  Internet speeds are not likely to perform anywhere near what would be required until 2020 for this type of content.

Discs will stay for quite sometime to come.  Be assured.

And if any of the 3 console maker do release a download only console.  I probably wouldnt buy it for these reasons.

If toshiba allows, MS could use HD DVD in their next console and since HD DVD is dead, people won't be able to pirate games as easily on the 720

All well and good, but they'll have to also include some mechanism to play store bought movie disks, surely...and possibly even a mechanism for B/C with x360 game disks

Who's to say that M$ won't come out with their own proprietary HD optical disc media by then? I mean, they are Microsoft. It would be premature to assume that they're just going to settle on using blu-ray for their next system.

costco has a bluray stand alone for $230.00, in 3 years they;ll be way cheaper licensing will be cheaper bluray will cost what dvd cost now. and xbox played dvd's so the biggest cost will be cpu gpu combo. and downloadable games is what Sony does now with gt5 and warhawk and nfs paradise. so that model is a great possibility.
but still a multifuntional entertainment center piece needs bluray and dvd compatibility in the future.

Don't you tell us what we are basically assuming..

I expect the 720 will play audio from cds, movies from dvds and download, and games from HD-DVD. It's the logical move for MS - Toshiba owes MS a hell of alot of gratitude because MS tried to help them float their tech, so they can get the rights to use it extremely cheap.

HD-DVD is actually very good technology, it has read speeds comparable to Blu Ray, and I believe a dual layer can hold 40gb (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong) and with voluntary installs onto the huge harddrive that the 720 will have, there is no need for Blu Ray. And we all know MS joined he console game to weaken Sony and push things like movie downloads to stop the TV taking over from the PC for entertainment king

Another thing yall should remember that Sony gaming does not represent all of Sony. All of Sony's different branches are very different.

Just like how Sony pictures doesn't give a crap that a Sony Pictures IP appears on a 360, Sony doesn't care that Microsoft uses BluRay as long as they get their money.

Microsoft Games and Sony games can try to one-up each other all day but that doesn't apply to granddaddy Sony and Microsoft studios. It's in nobodies best interest to screw the other one over that way.