Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*

[Prophecy2k]

I do wonder though, because it's not as if we haven't seen a commercial system on the market which uses flash-based SSD memory cards as it's primary distribution method.

Ninendo's DS, now the 3DS and Vita all use SSD cards, and it seems as if the end user cost of those games aren't any different to what they would be if those consoles used spinning disc media.

I guess there is of course an ostensible capacity difference, as Vita cards are 3GB max (iirc) and I dunno what the DS and 3DS carts were.

Perhaps some kind of MLC flash based solution can be manufactured cheaply enough such that the cost can be absorbed by the consumer in the nominal "next-gen" $5-$10 game price increase that we get each gen? After all, if dev costs can stabilise by devs saving time in being able to render their source assets directly (with smart LOD systems handling transitions on the fly), then they'll need something to justify the increase in next-gen game prices?

 

[Arwin]

Biggest Vita cards are currently 4GB (a few of them already use that), although they already mentioned that games can go higher if they want/need.

This is my argument too - Vita and 3DS do it, so definitely some room to do it for the next gen consoles as well I would think. I think the elegant part is that these cards behave similar in both cases - e.g. you can run a DD game from the Vita's memory card, or you can run it from a game card. There will be some performance differences, but you don't get vast differences in terms of seek time versus transfer speeds. I also think it could be neat if at some point a game card can patch itself, rather than need patches to live elsewhere.

In a purely non DD environment discs could still make a lot of sense, but in a transition phase to DD, carts could become more acceptable, and their performance has potential to outmanouver discs as well (though no, the Vita doesn't do a good job of demonstrating that part at the moment, at an estimated 7MB/s read-speed in current best cases).

I would hope that 50MB/s should be a piece of cake for cheap carts by the time next-gen consoles are out), in which case load-times for games could be in the 10-40 sec range, with better seek-times than, say, an 8x BD drive, which is still 'only' 38MB/s.

Perhaps you could also put some higher performing cache memory in the next-gen system to function as dedicated virtual memory? Of course that would have to be something decently durable.

 

[Gubbi]

I would hope that 50MB/s should be a piece of cake for cheap carts by the time next-gen consoles are out), in which case load-times for games could be in the 10-40 sec range, with better seek-times than, say, an 8x BD drive, which is still 'only' 38MB/s.

Sony has a class 10 SDHC card series that has 94MB/s read bandwidth, so it is clearly doable.

TLC NAND flash is at $0.50 per GB, but I'd still expect an optical drive for the standard SKU, and possibly a DD SKU without optical drive.

Cheers

 

[Shifty Geezer]

It is worth pointing out that a card doesn't have to be RW flash so doesn't have to be as pricey as an SD card, but I don't know what the cost for ROMs are going to be. That's an important aspect in trying ot gauge the expense of cards. As for DS and Vita doing it, they are costing Sony and Nintendo more than pressing a disc would but you have no choice for a portable, while the games themselves are smaller than a console game. If Vita is using 4 GBs, a next-gen console really should be aiming for substantially higher unless aiming for a moderate change to the experience.

 

[Blazkowicz]

Sony has a class 10 SDHC card series that has 94MB/s read bandwidth, so it is clearly doable.

shouldn't that be a "class 90", and how much does it cost?

 

[Gubbi]

shouldn't that be a "class 90", and how much does it cost?

Just saw it mentioned here: http://www.digital-cameras-dynamic.com/sony-launched-uhs-i-class-10-sdhc-94-mbs-read.html

Price is $648 HK, which is around $80 U.S. for 32GB, - pricy

Cheers

 

[Blazkowicz]

pricy?, that feels cheap to me
but I hadn't checked SD prices for a while, seen cheaper 32GB ones between 20 and 30 euros.

 

[hoho]

I bought 32G class 10 ( 20MB/s r/w) for my camera for 50€. A friend bought some cheap noname 32G microSD for ~5£ two years ago. It's speed was crappy (~5MB/s) but i worked just fine in my cellphone for a year before I lost the phone.

 

[liolio]

No optical drive in next generation hardware? I would like that but I wonder how they will manage to get the game prices where they wants while maintaining their margins.

I wonder if this rumors could be linked to the rumors about the next Xbox supposedly killing the second hand market (which might help to recoup the cost of the SD cards).

Precisely I wonder if MS could ship games on SD cards that are on the upper range of Vita nowadays cards, so 4GB-8GB.
Basically on those cards you have the .exe, having low quality assets (from sounds, to 3d model, to textures, etc.) so you can play the game straight of the box could be an option.
Something akin to the "HD" pack in BF3 is only available for download on LIVE (could be put online before actual release of the game as it would be unplayable till you buy the SD card for the game).

SD card would have a serial numbers that would be saved on LIVE, so each SD once used is linked to one and only one LIVE account. It's no longer possible for another users that would get his hands on the SD to download the "HD pack" (or whatever you call it).


So overall I would call the thing "soft" online distribution. Games are playable out of the box but you have a really strong intensive to connect to the LIVE, to get the "real experience". As a consequence second hand value of game crumbles.

 

[-tkf-]

It would be Epic to have a Flash based console versus a Optical (2 really) consoles. And a repeat of this gen, 720 limited on space forcing every developer to suit their games to whatever best cost/benefit/size they choose and the rest of the platforms getting the short end, except for exclusives.

As i see it the main advantage for a 720 would be a cheap SKU with zero Harddrives but a encrypted Flash storage (SD-Card/CF-Card) to hold the DLC and a, hopefully, very fast flash.

360 vs PS3 storage war, all over again. In this case however, the storage would really cost serious money for the 720.

 

[Squilliam]

The latest rumour is the next xbox will forgo an optical drive.

Seems kinda unclear to me though. Could potentially be an XB360+, with cards instead of disc at an entry level price with Kinect/Kinect 2. Or a download only version of XB360?

Maybe they want to reduce the price of the Arcade and they want to maintain profit margins on the hardware itself? Doing cart only for some consoles could be an excellent way of testing the market ahead of a full fledged cartridge based console. It'd be a good way to make the 360 competitive with stream only devices especially because the games themselves are rarely bigger than 8GB total.

If they went cartridge only on the Arcade it would effectively mean that any current user would be forced to pay for the more profitable HDD version if they released a + version and they wanted to upgrade to it. The only real question in my mind is whether or not it'd be worthwhile for them to stick an extra core and maybe an improved GPU in the current design, it'd probably push the replacement out to 2014 but that may not be a bad thing given the fact it'd give them a chance to look at the new console designs from their competitors whilst keeping the current 360 relevant in the market.

 

[MarkoIt]

What about this:
- they sell a 32GB USB3 drive with the console.
- Every store has a digital copy of the game,locked, that can open only on the date the game ships. The store received the digital copy on an encrypted hard drive, through mail or through internet connection.
- You go home and you copy the game on the 1 Terabyte drive of the console. (Less than 5 minutes at 100 mb/s)

Offcourse, you can still downloaded the games from the internet. When your hard disk is filled up, you can erase a game from the HD, but you still own it on the cloud.
No need for flash card, no need for flash readers, no cost for the publishers, no more used games. For the hardware maker, the HD will have an higher cost, but it's also a way to induce user to buy more content (movies, music) and a proprietary USB3 drive will be less expensive than a blu-ray drive (bigger console, bigger packaging etc, more power-consumption).

Limited Edition will have a physical USB3 drive, and will be much more expensive. (They are limited edition!)

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Sony and nintendo sticking to disks and ms going away from it. i would love it just to see the carnage that ensues.

in anycase i am glad sony has come up with 100 gb blu ray disks. i just wish you can go faster than current 16x blu ray speeds. need more research on that

 

[Blazkowicz]

the kiosk for "digital distribution" in stores has been done by nintendo in the eighties
with the floppy disk drive for the NES. it was in Japan though which has a culture of widespread vending machines (and pachinko games)

but the trouble is setting up all those kiosks in supermarkets and all, some small, and also that writing the flash will take forever. 10000 MB at 10MB/s is 1000 seconds is about 17 minutes waiting time with your expensive device plugged in.

 

[upnorthsox]

Sony and nintendo sticking to disks and ms going away from it. i would love it just to see the carnage that ensues.

in anycase i am glad sony has come up with 100 gb blu ray disks. i just wish you can go faster than current 16x blu ray speeds. need more research on that

16 x 4.5 MB/s = 72 MB/s. Seems good to me and bests by about 2x all but the most expensive nand.

 

[TheWretched]

Why not go a similar route like the 72x drive from Kenwood? Use PTP discs (probably BluRay) and have 2 or n lasers in them, or rather one for each layer, and let them read in parallel similar to a RAID system. I know it's non-standard and thus a bit more expensive (at least the laser unit), but the rest is pretty much the same, but it would allow for n-times higher sustained reads AND would remove layer change penalties, too.

 

[manux]

Sony and nintendo sticking to disks and ms going away from it. i would love it just to see the carnage that ensues.

in anycase i am glad sony has come up with 100 gb blu ray disks. i just wish you can go faster than current 16x blu ray speeds. need more research on that

Why would you want such speeds? Just have 2-4x(cheap and power efficient) CAV blu-ray drive for megatexturing/predictable streaming(it's enough) and decent sized flash/hard drive (preferrably flash) for caching the random reads. Similarly there could be second sku with flash only(+optional hdd) which would support digital download only(compare to xbox arcade).

If console is going with flash based distribution it would anyway be cheaper to put that flash once to the console(and extend via optional hdd) instead of having each game on separate flash media. Digital download would be way cheaper than manufacturing those flash cartridges+delivering them. People with crappy network can use those blu-rays still. Assuming the big markets like europe, usa and japan would be ready for digital downloads in big way the market for physical distribution might be quite small and not warrant building yet another distribution media.

 

[Elan Tedronai]

Why would you want such speeds? Just have 2-4x(cheap and power efficient) CAV blu-ray drive for megatexturing/predictable streaming(it's enough) and decent sized flash/hard drive (preferrably flash) for caching the random reads. Similarly there could be second sku with flash only(+optional hdd) which would support digital download only(compare to xbox arcade).

2x blu ray speed? you have to be kidding me. The ps3 has 2x blu ray speeds and it's not fast enough because of the size of the storage medium. There's a reason why you have installs on the ps3.


16x speed is minimum. And it costs nothing to sony to have that speed. I personally wanted more speed reads. If you are going to have huge memory like 4-8 gb then read speeds should be a lot faster. Certainly more than 2x lol

 

[manux]

2x blu ray speed? you have to be kidding me. The ps3 has 2x blu ray speeds and it's not fast enough because of the size of the storage medium. There's a reason why you have installs on the ps3.


16x speed is minimum. And it costs nothing to sony to have that speed. I personally wanted more speed reads. If you are going to have huge memory like 4-8 gb then read speeds should be a lot faster. Certainly more than 2x lol

Did you read what I wrote? 2-4x is plenty for megatexturing/streaming. It's not plenty for random reads where my proposed flash caching/installations comes to play.

Each ps3 comes with hdd. Replacing HDD with reasonable fast flash should be cheaper than hard drive. Hard drive fixed cost is quite high compared to flash soldered to motherboard.

 

[Squilliam]

the kiosk for "digital distribution" in stores has been done by nintendo in the eighties
with the floppy disk drive for the NES. it was in Japan though which has a culture of widespread vending machines (and pachinko games)

but the trouble is setting up all those kiosks in supermarkets and all, some small, and also that writing the flash will take forever. 10000 MB at 10MB/s is 1000 seconds is about 17 minutes waiting time with your expensive device plugged in.

Maybe the concept of what we call a kiosk is impractical, instead of the concept of bringing a blank book to a store and leaving with a novel, why not print on demand? Maybe some kind of self contained cartridge/artwork combination which can be printed and developed in say 60-180 seconds per cartridge? If you have say 1-7 of these kiosks in a store you could effectively replace your minimum wage staffer for someone who comes in once a week and puts new blanks into the machine and thus make back much of the additional cost from the media with labour savings? If a person comes in and buys say 3 games at once you could always multi-thread the production process because you're only limited by the minimum time it takes to make one game and not as much limited by the number of machines which you could scale.

Maybe a concept of a machine which can write to flash chips and then inserts it into a printed container which works as both a case and storage medium ala the old PSP media discs? It gives you a box and cartridge in the one unit.