it is very simple blu-ray because it is format that has dominated (HD-DVD vs Blu-ray)after DVD

The only reason MS has distaste for BR is because they made the mistake of not havin it in the 360. Trust me, if it was the other way around and they had BR instead of Sony and it was successful over the rival,they ld be boastin about it

No physical media please. Unless it is a small flash drive.

Actually, I always like the idea of having a huge capacity sim card or something and being able to go into a store and buy games off of a computer kiosk. Retail will have to do something like this if physical media goes bye bye.

well microsoft being microsoft they will go dlc. I too havent opened my dvd drive on the pc for a long time now. I just find discs the size of a plate too big nowadays. Evrthing gets smaller and as another poster said MY phone too has more bloody memory than a BR disc, who needs it. DLC or Cards but they might just put in a dvd drive for compatibility with 360 games. Other than that the next generation's leap will not be in controls as the case with this gen it will be in the storage side. SSD's and dlc for Microsoft, their advertising is heavily geared towards dlc content. BR really is just for the PS3 console wise maybe the PS4 too but other than that I really dont see why consoles NEED a BR drive and please no better gfx and sound crap that is just plain laziness from developers

They can go for a heavily modified Blu Ray specification. Theres no reason why the next Xbox has to be able to play Blu Ray movies and it would save them the $10 per player license fee as well along with many of the patent costs for duplication. Im sure one of the major patent holders would be willing to spin off a side specification for the Xbox next as well. Personally I hope for them that they do this as it may allow them a better data density so they can release discs with just one layer which read faster at the same rotational velocity.

This is about what I was thinking. Remember that MS was working with Toshiba on the HD-DVD specs, so MS already has a hand in this format. Plus, in a few years, finding blank media and drives for piracy will be a bitch (but not impossible). DVD, as has been said, I don't think will be an option, due to space issues. I can see BR also being an option due to keeping a multi-media front, but I think that piracy will be something that MS will be looking harder at next gen. Either way, it will be one of those 2 I mentioned.

well... don't you think MS and the customer would like to pay $10 / console (I doubt it is that much actually) to watch BluRay movies? $10 is not that much. The next Xbox will have an insane CPU / GPU lots of ram, at least a 250GB HDD etc etc. $10 won't make the difference for MS and they would offer a lot more value for those $10.

I am not a BluRay-friend at all. Not becuase I am a stupid Xbox fanboy, but because I am a disc hater. The time of a disc should be over IMO. It is noisy, it generates heat, it can scratch etc etc. Flash is a better alternative IMO.

Sure MS will insert something to let their customers watch movies, so I voted for BluRay, but for a gamer, I would like to see them use Flash memory. You can get a 32GB USB stick for 40€. So in 3 years you might find this for <10€. And this is the price amazon.de offers to its customers. You can basically put 4 regular XBox360 games on this. More than enough. And in 3 years, sky is the limit. you can get USB-Sticks up to 256GB today.

If you are a big company and you talk with the producers of these usb-stick and you go like: "Hey we want to put our latest Halo game on this device. We need about 12 million of them" you might get this a lot cheaper. Or "Hey, we want to put all of our retail games for this year on your device. We need probably 110 million of them" :D So flash should be affordable in the next years.

But I say they will use BluRay.

*edit* what is DVD 2.0 btw?

Yeah you don't have to spend too much to add a Blu-Ray drive to your laptop. I had the option of taking a slot-load Blu-Ray (read only) drive/DVD RW writer drive (more expensive) instead of a slot-load DL DVD RW drive for $150 more at Dell but since I have no interest in renting or buying Blu-Ray movies (I rarely rent/buy movies to begin with anyway), I passed on the option.

From what I've seen though, Blu-Ray is still not the standard though. You have to pay a bit extra ($150) for the Blu-Ray option since most of the time it's not included already like DL DVD RW's are now. But like I said, it's only a little bit. By the time the next gen hits, Blu-Ray burners on laptop will be standard. Let alone Blu-Ray read-only drives. So for sure the NextBox will use Blu-Ray.

ROTFL @ DVD 2.0. that format has no future, on existent DVD players it gives nothing more than a normal DVD, to be played with all its improvements and interactive bits it requires that DVD owners buy another player, but then, why not buying a BD player instead, now that they're starting to become cheap?

This is basically the articulated truth. Though i'm not sure if its next gen or the gen after that.

That said if MS is hoping to continue to make the XBOX the center of the home it must embrace BRD. If it can't play my movies, which will start to be half DVD/half BRD it will lose that segment of the market. I would still buy the X720, but it would lose significant ON time due to PS3/PS4 being able to play my movies. Not to mention that game size is still increasing and I think we might finally start to push the limit of DVDs being able to keep up.

Really though there are quite a few different things that could happen next gen or the gen after that.

1. Everything being replaced by direct download.

2. The numerous DISC formats (BRD, HD-DVD, HVD, DVD, etc)

3. Flash. (This is very iffy, a 50gig cart is going to be much more expensive than stamped discs, dollars to pennies).

4. A hybrid of download and physical medium. Heck they could have a very small cart that has some limited install data + hardware encrypted key to validate that can be sold in stores, making gamestop happy. All the rest is downloaded.