I was thinking about this today and was wondering if anyone shared my views.

I wouldn't be surprised if one of the big 3 (Well mainly MS & Nintendo, Sony will most likely used multi layered Blu Ray) released their games on some sort of flash device next gen, a return to the cartridges of old in a way. AFAIK using flash requires far less power, can be read faster than disc based media and is less prone to breaking and error.

The other option is having a purely DL only console with a large hard drive, although that seriously alienates the significant portion of the population that dont have a decent internet connection.

Either way i think that in the 9th gen that disc based games will most certiainly be gone as they become relatively old school.

So what are your thoughts?

I hope not, because if that happens we couldnt get used games =( (DL)
and about the flash memory games, well we can see that already on the DS, and the result is = very cheap games :D

i would like flash memory games. i sort of wish cards would replace discs entirely.

It depends on how long this generation lasts. DL will not be viable for 5-6 years(judging from current American landlines projections)

That being said, Microsoft will have to come up with a proprietary format, or pay sony for blu-ray. Microsoft is going to try and stretch this gen as long as possible because quiet frankly, as blu-ray adoption goes up(and it will sky rocket as the crisis slowly weeds out) dvds are going to be a thing of the past like vhs within 3 years. Blu-ray drives will be standard on PCs and the average PC game (which is already running up to like 15gb) will be 50gb. the PS3 will, of course, use 100gb blu-ray discs, or possibly 400gb (which is already cheap enough for mass production).

1 TB blu-ray discs are also available, though still too expensive for commercial use.

Blu-Ray is the last hard media that will be used, that is 100% sure. and DVD is going out.

Blu-ray is awesome because of how incredibly powerful it is. The Blu-Ray scales exponentially with write speed, so faster drives (albeit, currently expensive) are monstrous for speeds and make dvd drives look like little babies.

What I predict will happen is this. For the PS4, Sony will use a smaller cell, since the cell is already way more powerful than most PC processors, but its at least good enough. A new video card, and a faster BR drive. the PS4 will be so cheap for Sony to make, and will retail starting out at around 249.99. Its amazing, Sony only needs to live through this gen and they are set for at least 2 more gens due to high their tech is. Pop in another nvidia graphics card and the programming is virtually the same.

The Cell can grow, become more powerful while maintaining the same program and engine usage. Sony are actually in a fantastic position for the next gen. Cell v2.0 will be even cheaper than the cell we're using now, and so will hard drive space, as well as blu-ray drives.

TL;DR, blu-ray. It's here to stay.

Purely downloadable games would mean that we can't get used games, we can't sell them, and we can only purchase them from one place (meaning we couldn't look for a better price).

and it would be stupid too, people would stay locked in their rooms even more- some gamers seriously need to go outside and grab some fresh air.

i think CD's are fine- but DVD-9's have to go, come on MS. 9gb's aren't enough for games.

I think MS should buy the rights to HD-DVD and release games on that format. Why not? The technology is already developed and probably wouldn't be too expensive to buy. They could change a few things and call it some new proprietary format maybe GD-DVDROM.

Read faster isn't a problem.

DVD reads 6x faster then CDs. Blu-ray Reads 4.5x faster then DVDs.

1x BD drive is the same as a 4.5x DVD drive.

There is a 2x drive in PS3, 4x drives exist, and in context, 8x, 12x, 16x are all possible for the future. Even higher.


Difference between BD and DVD is that BD can read at it's top speed, constantly, DVD has a variable read speed, a 12x drive reads on average at 8x, between 4 and 12. BD doesn't, it's at top speed, when draw is occurring of course.

its only a matter of time before mass production of sdxc 2tb. plus sd readers are already everywhere. i actually doubt games will ever get that big without changing the entire industry standard. so maybe in about 10-15 years we will see games that big. who knows what they will look or play like.

DURR HURR. Go back on tibia.

Derp... Wait how do you know me : |