Same capacity ? If you have N devices of M capacity and O bandwidth you get N x M capacity *and N x O bandwidth with RAID-0.
Cheers
Alternative distribution to optical disks : SSD, cards, and download*
- Thread starter Cheezdoodles
- Start date
Same capacity ? If you have N devices of M capacity and O bandwidth you get N x M capacity *and N x O bandwidth with RAID-0.
Cheers
Erh, you're measuring true megabits per second as opposed to what? false ?
I'm guessing you're mixing up your bits and your bytes. 4MBps throughput would require 32Mbps of bandwidth (plus bandwidth for communication overhead).
Cheers
Unknown Soldier
Veteran
Erm, yes sorry, 4MB/s
But as I've said, it's certainly achievable in 33min.
And as for people with 20Mbps, which is a true 2.50 MB/s throughput, an 8GB download will take a meesly 53min.
Not bad imo.
US
Certainly isn't. I also think we'll see a Steam-like download service next gen (downloads and disc-based). If people pre-order (and pay) a significant amount of game data can be pre-distributed to the end-user (similar to what Valve has done) and thus lower contention on release-day.
Cheers
Yes, total HDD capacity.
Perhaps if we looked at it from another perspective in terms of cost/benifits?
If a console in 2012 cost $350 to manufacture with an optical drive and $300 without, couldn't the console manufacturer substitute the extra profit per unit for reduced royalties per game copy? Currently there are royalties of ~$10 being paid by publishers per game disk sold, if that was reduced to $5 it would be quite sufficient to offset the increased cost of a flash based alternative wouldnt it?
In addition to this, it would be better for a console manufacturer after the current generation to design and build a console with as low cost as possible and with the highest marketability possible. By removing the optical disk component it would allow the console to be packaged into a wider variety of 3rd party devices such as TVs, Cars, Cable devices, all in one entertainment systems (Stereo/Movie/Gaming) and enable these devices to leverage the HD consoles current and future improved multimedia abilities.
If a console in 2012 cost $350 to manufacture with an optical drive and $300 without, couldn't the console manufacturer substitute the extra profit per unit for reduced royalties per game copy? Currently there are royalties of ~$10 being paid by publishers per game disk sold, if that was reduced to $5 it would be quite sufficient to offset the increased cost of a flash based alternative wouldnt it?
In addition to this, it would be better for a console manufacturer after the current generation to design and build a console with as low cost as possible and with the highest marketability possible. By removing the optical disk component it would allow the console to be packaged into a wider variety of 3rd party devices such as TVs, Cars, Cable devices, all in one entertainment systems (Stereo/Movie/Gaming) and enable these devices to leverage the HD consoles current and future improved multimedia abilities.
That has been my guess.
Likewise a flash memory cache and HDD seem like the easiest / cheapest combo to keep costs low, offset some of the optical transfer speed issues, and tier console pricing (via SKUs). The HDD is finding itself more and more useful this generation (unlike the original Xbox) and with the increasing online activity of users, DLC, and opportunities for post-release revenue streams that the HDD opens up I think mass storage of some kind will be an essential part of new consoles from every maker (it already is this general for all practical puproses, even the Wii and 360 Arcade have some basic standard mass storage). The real question is "what type" and I think a flash cache / HDD combo has a solid performance envolope with a known economic cost. Unless someone can wow Sony, MS, and Ninny with some cheap / high performance SSD technology there is little point. A flash/HDD combo in the hundreds of GBs can be projected to be under $50 cost in 2011. Although Digital Distribition is beginning to weigh into the discussion, it isn't mainstream or world wide and I think people who popo the significance of a 250GB cap on monthly bandwidth are in for a rude awakening when they see how much active gamers/media consumers use per month (note: I have been on the IT end of documenting user bandwidth consumption and no one ever thinks they use what they do). Hence optical media for distribution is a given: it is cheap, it is big, and there are established outlets. Issues are a known quanitity that can be addressed in hardware and software design.
No other media distribution has the same strength of consumer access and low production costs. The problem is speed; game distribution on expensive ROMs/Flash isn't the solution, and DD doesn't have the consumer reach. A large HDD cache, ala traditional PC gaming, solves a bit of this problem and the HDD resource can be leveraged for other technical and fiscal purposes.
I am not sure your numbers add up though. DD lacks reach (loss of $, customer base potential) and solid state technology for distribution of games is going to be more than the $5 margin -- plus, VERY importantly, if you produce 1M copies of a game and sell 500k you just ate a ton of your profits. This is one of the reasons people HATED the N64. Even if you could get your flash disks down to $5 manufacturing cost, that is still almost $5 MORE than an optical disk. And at 500k units you are looking at millions and millions of dollars of unused inventory sitting around. And of course what do the console makers have to gain? The average consumer buys ~11-13 games a generation per console (historically), so you have traded negatively, increased risk through inventory, etc. And I dare say $5 per flash disk is under estimated, and $50 for an optical drive next gen is over estimated. A 30-50GB game is going to cost a pretty penny in flash costs and a basic BDR is going to cost much less than $50, especially when sales pick up in 2013-2016.
Your proposal has a lot of risks for everyone involved to break even, it is a lateral move. This is where I think optical / HDD combo works better as it has lower cost and more vertical profit potential.
The question is market size: a lot of these are niche, unproven, or smaller markets for consoles compared to the relevance of the "plays Blu-ray" bulletpoint. HD optical is still in the early stages of amassing marketshare, but by 2011 the HD display and HD media market should be quite substantial and people will factor this in. Even if not a sales point, lacking such can be a demerit.
Google for : dvd replication prices
specwarGP2
Regular
Right and thats just standard flash. MS or whoever could liscense flash that has a much higher transfer rate.
Having just 16GB flash would already allow developers at the start of the gen to have acess to more than twice what the xbox 360 offered. Even if it scales only up to 32GB you'd still be looking at a 4 times storage increase and inbetween what bluray can offer.
Everyone is right about price that could be a problem but how much will it actually cost through next generation. I can see a situation where next year we see 64GB and 128GB sd cards and in 2010 the 32 GB flash cards costing what 4GB flash cards cost consumers today I'm sure when selling at 5-10$ to a consumer the fab , company and retailer are all getting a cut that makes carrying the capacity worth while . So how much does that actually leave for the actual cost to produce it. If in the end you can get a 4x4GB setup at $1-2 the cost of a game would onyl have to go up 1-2$ to cover the flash cost. Meanwhile you can get acess to many benfits. Over the course of the generation which will be 5-6 years the cost may allways be $1-2 but the capacity you get for that price will go up just like with hardrives. So we may start off with 16GB but may be able to scale up through 64GB or even a 128GB through out the generation. If next gen we see another addition to game pricing like this gen the additional cost of flash ram will be covered up. Additionaly you can produce a cheaper console. It will require a smaller case for the same component , flash readers are not as expensive as optical drives and have no mechanical parts so failure rates should be much less than optical drives, Flash uses less power than optical drives and thus the cost savings from that would carry through the whole system right down to power supply. You now have a much smaller dead space of air inside the case which will improving cooling and of course allow you to possibly get by with less fans or a smaller heatsink saving money . The case can alsobe reduced in size causing savings there as well as a smaller , lighter console saving moeny in packaging and shipping. It may not sound like much but i'm sure in the first year of its life you could possibly price a flash based console for up to $100 less than an equal optical based system from the savings incured. At the very least $50 bucks . That can continue to be a sizable advantage across the boardthrough the life of the console and can allow more rapid console shrinks.
There are a ton of positives with flash and few negatives , sadly depending on how it goes the major negative price could prevent this from happening , but i think if it did happen there would be few complainers and many people would be extremely happy
Having just 16GB flash would already allow developers at the start of the gen to have acess to more than twice what the xbox 360 offered. Even if it scales only up to 32GB you'd still be looking at a 4 times storage increase and inbetween what bluray can offer.
Everyone is right about price that could be a problem but how much will it actually cost through next generation. I can see a situation where next year we see 64GB and 128GB sd cards and in 2010 the 32 GB flash cards costing what 4GB flash cards cost consumers today I'm sure when selling at 5-10$ to a consumer the fab , company and retailer are all getting a cut that makes carrying the capacity worth while . So how much does that actually leave for the actual cost to produce it. If in the end you can get a 4x4GB setup at $1-2 the cost of a game would onyl have to go up 1-2$ to cover the flash cost. Meanwhile you can get acess to many benfits. Over the course of the generation which will be 5-6 years the cost may allways be $1-2 but the capacity you get for that price will go up just like with hardrives. So we may start off with 16GB but may be able to scale up through 64GB or even a 128GB through out the generation. If next gen we see another addition to game pricing like this gen the additional cost of flash ram will be covered up. Additionaly you can produce a cheaper console. It will require a smaller case for the same component , flash readers are not as expensive as optical drives and have no mechanical parts so failure rates should be much less than optical drives, Flash uses less power than optical drives and thus the cost savings from that would carry through the whole system right down to power supply. You now have a much smaller dead space of air inside the case which will improving cooling and of course allow you to possibly get by with less fans or a smaller heatsink saving money . The case can alsobe reduced in size causing savings there as well as a smaller , lighter console saving moeny in packaging and shipping. It may not sound like much but i'm sure in the first year of its life you could possibly price a flash based console for up to $100 less than an equal optical based system from the savings incured. At the very least $50 bucks . That can continue to be a sizable advantage across the boardthrough the life of the console and can allow more rapid console shrinks.
There are a ton of positives with flash and few negatives , sadly depending on how it goes the major negative price could prevent this from happening , but i think if it did happen there would be few complainers and many people would be extremely happy
Developers disliked the N64 because the carts were $20-30 from nintendo with the data replicated onto them. We were takling about a 19-29$ diffrencei n cost between that and a cd along with a much much smaller memory foot print.
As I said I can buy 4gigs of sd for $5 bucks. I highly doubt it costs them $5 to make it. I can buy today 16 gigs of flash for $40 . I highly doubt it will cost that much for them to make it. The fab makes money , the company selling it makes money and the store makes money along with the pakaging and shipping. 16GB of sd continues to drop in price and many expect it to hit the $20 price point this holiday season with 8 gigs hitting the $10 price range. I see no problem with 16GB of storage capacity at the start of next gen. xbox 360 games had acess to 7GB so your already looking at over 2 times the storage space and you should also see newer more powerfull compression in next gen consoles. With the current rate of price drops on sd you should be able to d ouble capacity each year at the same cost to the developers
As for unsold copies. If its true you have to pay $10 bucks per game printed on bluray / dvd today whats it matter if you do the same next gen if they reduce the royality rate. If $5 goes to ms and $5 goes to flash ram your still only loosing that same $10 bucks per copy sold. What it might do is have developers plan ahead. Of course flash is reprogramable so ms might even be able to offer reformating and reloading the carts with a new game on it for half the cost or some fixed rate so developers can recoup the money lost.
Bluray drives may cost less than $50 I really don't know and don't harard a guess , however when moving to flash the price savings is across the board. As in my last post you save money on the casing , cooling , power requirements and of course packaging and shpping.
But here is my question , what happens towards the end of the generation if one went flash and one went bluray. What happens when 128GB scales down far enough that the console is using that and bluray is still at 50GB. What happens to the bluray console when it has to force mandatory installs to get close to the same transfer rates as the sd console and of course the cost to the console when it has to provide large hardrives just for installing games .
And of course if you go with the kiosk design you would effectively kill off used games which will in the long run help developers as while fewer gamers may buy a game at the $60 price point at launch more gamers will pick it up at lower pricep oints which used games used to get to before new ones. Also you could reduce the price of games using the kiosk as now you don't have to print and ship games. There are many interesting ideas that can come of flash.
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I think you'll find profit margins are pretty...marginal. I don't there's a lot of room for savings on the industry price versus the consumer price, at least regards the cheapest consumer stuff available.
I still think that's optimistic. The cheapest cards out there are a little over $3. You can't buy a 256 MB for 50 cents. Like HDDs I think there's a minimum price (at least to be economical, unlike HDDs where it's a hardware limit) and you won't get cards below that price, instead having greater capacity at the bottom price. I expect a 4GB card to something like $2 to the console makers, and 4 of those would cost $8. That'd be excluding the effort of designing and cost of building the flash array system to make them a parallel storage.
Of course we're all guessing on figures, and this is just my take.
I agree there is a minimal price , that is why i don't think you will see 4gb after this year or 8 after next year. As for the cost to console makers . I don't know but i can tell you that console makers will buy it in much larger quanitys. If a game uses 4 4GB dims that means for 1m copies MS would buy 4m dims. NOw not every game is a million dollar seller but the first year should show 50 games and should sell though a good 20-30m units of software. I think buying 80m dims or mroe could get them a very good deal.
I think the kiosk talki s the easiest one for flash to take off on. seperate the cost from the game and that way users will decide how many cards to buy. A user can buy a 64gig card or a 256 gig card as the generation progresses the price and capacity would go up. Developers can choose the size of their games and at the start they may have to be 16gigs or so , so that you can fit multiple games on a 64 gig card , however in the future they could be 64 gigs or greater. As long as the memory cards do cost more than 20-$30 bucks they should do fine. If prices keep droping you should be able to get a 4x16 one for under $30 in 2010/11. As the years go on a 4x64 wouldn't be out of the world at $30. Give the option of a kiosk or a download at home and i'm sure people will be happy
I think the kiosk talki s the easiest one for flash to take off on. seperate the cost from the game and that way users will decide how many cards to buy. A user can buy a 64gig card or a 256 gig card as the generation progresses the price and capacity would go up. Developers can choose the size of their games and at the start they may have to be 16gigs or so , so that you can fit multiple games on a 64 gig card , however in the future they could be 64 gigs or greater. As long as the memory cards do cost more than 20-$30 bucks they should do fine. If prices keep droping you should be able to get a 4x16 one for under $30 in 2010/11. As the years go on a 4x64 wouldn't be out of the world at $30. Give the option of a kiosk or a download at home and i'm sure people will be happy
Only if a deal is actually possible to the manufacturers though! What if at the moment flash DIMM makers are making 20 cents on each $2 unit? Would a good deal be 10 cents off to the console company? That's not gonna make much of a dent in the base $2 per DIMM! Without any ideas what the margins are for the manufacturers, it's all pretty random. Without any actual figures, the nmatter can't actually be discussed. We can present two sides to the IF statement :
IF cards are cheap, a multi-chip package is a reasonable option ELSE it's going to come at a noteable cost to someone.
I'm sure everyone can accept that. The question is what are the figures?
Adds considerable infrastructure expense, plus some inconvenience.
Yes , I say we elect someone to start getting the figures we need.... not it !
As for the kiosk , it will add inital cost , but over the long run i don't think it will be all that expensive. They already ship a kiosk demo unit at the start of each generation. How about building it into that. They can play multi TB hardrives in it which should be enough to carry every game made for the console. It will allso allow games to sell for years after they are released unlike now adays when you can't find games that are a few years old.
I don't agree on the inconvenience. People already have to go to a location to buy games. They can do the same now. Also they can allow people to download through their home console and thus cut out a trip to a store. We already see with steam that its very popular to download games. They can pre"ship" a game and let you start downloading it days early and only allow it to be played launch day where you consoledownloads a code that day to unlock the game. They can offer games instore for say $50 instead of $60 and at home for $45 instead of 50 or 60. Thus everyone saves moeny and the store can still get paid and it will be worth while for them to keep the kiosk. No more ship delays or anything , the kiosk could also predownload the content over a series of days or hours to make sure everyone can get it.
The only problem i see is managing the content , however they should be able to offer a back up to hardrive (while the game isn't being played) or link your live account and let you download it multiple times and as long as its your live name loged in you can play it on a console. They can do it just like live arcade games are now. Power users who want alot of games will most likely have multiple cards anyway.
As for the kiosk , it will add inital cost , but over the long run i don't think it will be all that expensive. They already ship a kiosk demo unit at the start of each generation. How about building it into that. They can play multi TB hardrives in it which should be enough to carry every game made for the console. It will allso allow games to sell for years after they are released unlike now adays when you can't find games that are a few years old.
I don't agree on the inconvenience. People already have to go to a location to buy games. They can do the same now. Also they can allow people to download through their home console and thus cut out a trip to a store. We already see with steam that its very popular to download games. They can pre"ship" a game and let you start downloading it days early and only allow it to be played launch day where you consoledownloads a code that day to unlock the game. They can offer games instore for say $50 instead of $60 and at home for $45 instead of 50 or 60. Thus everyone saves moeny and the store can still get paid and it will be worth while for them to keep the kiosk. No more ship delays or anything , the kiosk could also predownload the content over a series of days or hours to make sure everyone can get it.
The only problem i see is managing the content , however they should be able to offer a back up to hardrive (while the game isn't being played) or link your live account and let you download it multiple times and as long as its your live name loged in you can play it on a console. They can do it just like live arcade games are now. Power users who want alot of games will most likely have multiple cards anyway.
aaronspink
Veteran
at least $5-10 more than a pressed disc. AKA nearly infinitely more expensive.
In order to make the same profit the cost of the game for a 1-2 gross product cost increase would have to increase on the order of $10-20. This is both because of the increased upfront capital required as well as the increased losses on unsold units compared to disc based media.
The basic costs would likely be even higher as custom packaging for the flash chips would likely be required in order to maintain the same level of security as RO discs currently offer.
I also think your cost factors are way low. The flash you get for those prices even now are generally in the 1-2 GB range and have performance at a fraction of even BR.
For a reasonable price comparison you can expect a ~4x capacity/price differential over the next 3-4 years.
Assuming you are looking at 32 GB capacities (fairly reasonable), you are looking at costs in the 15-20 range instead of the 1-2 range. Which lets face it, is significant.
any additional increase in game pricing will be eaten up by inflation and development cost increases.
Its quite simple, devs expect ne DEMAND a fixed production cost in the .1-.5 range. If you can't deliver that but your competitor can, they will design primarily for the competitor. Its all about volumes and unsold product. 100k unsold copies at .5 per copy is only 50k not a big deal.
100k unsold copies at 10-20 per is 1-2 million. Thats effectively the profit for most games except the block busters, and the block busters have many more unsold copies than that. Its major major money. Its one of the reasons that everyone want to move to net based DD as the primary method with disk based DD as the backup channel.
Tons of positives I tell you. TONS, all for the OTHER guy. The guy who's devs don't have to pay an extra $10 per game SHIPPED!
Its not going to happen, flash just isn't a viable distribution method. Significantly more costly than BOTH alternatives available. The price it saves in the consoles is beyond minimal and it greatly increases the per game costs (on the order of 10x higher per game costs). It will never make sense to distribute via flash. Now eventually the HDs within the consoles may be made out of flash but thats a different nugget all together.
aaronspink
Veteran
thats funny, I have a hard time finding any 4 gig flash for less than $9. Then again, I want my flash to actually be faster than a CD drive from 1990!
the decent devices easily cost that much of 4 GB.
BR drives already have retail prices below 100 and will fairly quickly converge into the 30-40 range in volume.
who cares. Media will just be for distribution anyways. everything will run from the HD whether downloaded or bought at a store.
aaronspink
Veteran
BTW one MAJOR thing you are leaving out of this whole equation is actually writing the flash. At general writing speeds for consumer grade flash, you are looking at it taking between 10-30 MINUTES per game just to write it to the flash device. That alone will likely push the cost of flash based distribution up another $1-5 beyond what the raw devices costs. For comparison the write time for a DL BR is ~12 seconds. And that accounts for >50% of the cost of a DL BR disc!
