Agreed, nice to see someone with some common sense.
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Modular optical drives should be standard on today's consoles
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Agreed, nice to see someone with some common sense.
The only thing discs have is pricing. The advantages are all on the flash/cart side aside from that.
As said before , going to DD only you can remove quite a bit of bulk from your system while increasing cooling and life span of a console. In fact by using a solid state or even a traditonal hardrive instead of discs you can save alot of room.
Take a standard dvd drive , a 3.5 inch harddrive and a 2.5 inch ssd and look at how much room you'd save. Esp when you cnsider that you'd have to have at least two of these going foward.
corduroygt
Banned
A DVD drive costs less than $20 in the xbox and the wii, and blu-ray drives will come close to that level in a couple of years, so that's the most you'll be able to save.
Since the attach rate of a console is usually around 10 towards the end of its life, that means each disc should not bring more than $2 in cost to make up for it.
There is no way you're going to get 25-50GB SSD for $3 anytime in the future, so polycarbonate discs will remain king until the entire world is wired with reliable 100mbit connections.
Why are standard hardrives not faster than a optical format also ?
Last I checked you can ditch a dvd/ bluray drive and for $80 usd you can get a 1TB drive. Thats cost to the consumer. So cost to the console maker would be less.
You'd have a drive thats still much faster than an optical format even a 12x bluray and make almost no noise and you'd still save on interal space.
Remember both the 360 and ps3 have hardrives already in additon to the optical drive. Having need of only one of these will further reduce the cost.
The flip side is that moving foward during the generation just lke this one the standard drive will increase in capacity. When teh generation is over many can have 3-5 TB hardrives if not larger. Just like this gen we had 20 gig hardrives at the start and are now getting 250 gig drives.
SSD's can still be an option tho. Esp with a steam like service where you can download and delete games at will. A 64 gig drive can still be large enough for the average consumer.
In fact memory cards can simply make a come back.
An xbox next can come wth a 64 gig ssd and then have memory units to store saves and dlc content that doesn't need as fast of load times. Flash memory is pretty cheap. At the start of next gen a 8 gig mico sd card will go for under $12 as currently they are at around that price and capacity and speed will only continue to go up.
The price of a console with an ssd may go up. But there will be more profit for both ms/sony and publishers/ devs than an optical format.
corduroygt
Banned
Your post makes no sense, how are you going to distribute the games? On $80 hard drives? On $12 8GB memory cards as opposed to $1.00 50GB Blu-rays or $0.25 9GB DVD's? Digitally where many people don't even have access or prefer having a physical disc that they can trade in when getting a new game?
You're also living in fantasy land if you think next gen consoles will come with an SSD, they are simply too expensive, period. Price is always king.
You're also living in fantasy land if you think next gen consoles will come with an SSD, they are simply too expensive, period. Price is always king.
I was thinking of a magical thing called the internet personaly. You know the thing Al Gore invented ?
Some people may perfer to hae acess to a physical disc and some may even perfer buying new. What matters is what the developers and console creator want.
Having a DD only platform would cut out used games and increase their profits. No moe gamestop buying used copies for $20 bucks and selling them for $55 and taking profits from the devs.
corduroygt
Banned
I'm sure developers are thrilled to sell only to half the userbase, since there are only about 20M xbox live accounts, gold and silver combined. Also, many "broadband" users are 768kbit DSL with 10GB quotas, so good luck with that.
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Despite how much I would love a DD only platform it is very unlikely to happen for the next console cycle.
What's likely to happen is a reflection of what's happening on PC now. A mixture of DD day and date (like Steam) while physical media remains available for people that are either bandwidth capped or have limited (or even no) internet access.
As such removeable media will still be required. DD only for example would virtually eliminate entire countries. Australia for example still has predominantly low bandwidth caps for broadband from what I hear. As do some other countries.
Regards,
SB
No great loss then.
Slightly more seriously now, with the way they've been censoring games down under I think that, not DD, is going to wipe out gaming first.
How come they haven't just encrypted the firmware on the drive subsequently? If they were really bothered by piracy, thats still an option isn't it?
corduroygt
Banned
The 360 DVD firmware is encrypted, the problem is that 360 cannot update its drive firmware, unlike the PS3.
Xbox live only helps to prove my point. The 360 comes with no wireless internet and for a piece that would sit in many's living room 50% is great. Whats more there is no requirement to connect to the internet.
Also you ahve to take into account that we are now into the 360's 5th of release. A 2011 console would sell 40m consoles by 2016 at that point. internet speed and adoption will only go up in that time period
Whats to stop them from releasing games on disc in Australia and DD only in America and Europe ?
Silent_Buddha
Legend
There's cost savings in both purchasing and manufacturing the larger the volume you have. Having 2 seperation consoles (Arcade and Elite are still basically the same console) one with a physical drive and one without would incur additional costs to both consoles.
Likewise, while in the US for example, broadband is fairly common but there are still many people with limited internet, either through low speed (768 Kb - 1.5 Mb) or bandwidth caps... Canada I believe has more ISPs with bandwidth caps. And many ISPs in Europe also have bandwidth caps. Although perhaps not as low as Australia, it's still going to be a problem.
Regards,
SB
A large percentage of gamers prefer physical mediums, have no broadband access, have small monthly quotas
Retailers tend to boycott systems without physical mediums.
Going DD-only doesnt work for games.
All the points you made are true but don't support your conclusion. There have been successful DD-only games, mostly PC and XBLA/PSN/WiiWare but the upcoming [strike]Tomb Raider[/strike] Lara Croft game for instance will be DD-only.
Anyway, I think the OT's suggestion is quite unfeasible for all the points made thus far: expensive, multiple SKUs, implausibility of IHVs selling hardware components at cost, etc. Having said that, it would reduce downtime (not increase reliability), reduce costs related to warranty, and could even be an anti-piracy measure.
Mostly smaller games that wouldn't have made much of a profit had they been published on physical mediums. They also don't support your conclusion, being that they aren't on a system that is DD-only.
Tell that to Assassins Creed II PC users
Silent_Buddha
Legend
Not on PC. The large majority of PC gamers prefer DD. Especially if you throw in pirates who are all DD. But even without that the buying public for PC prefer DD. Since there's virtually no DD other than XBLA and PSN on consoles currently, you can't make a judgement there.
Only applies to PS3, as MS gives retailers good margins for DD only through their point cards. For PC games you have a point. There's been a lot of back and forth sniping and deals with publishers between Gamestop and Valve (Steam). That still hasn't prevented DD from surpassing physical sales for some titles.
There's been quite a few successes of DD only games. Torchlight on PC was a hit as a DD title. The physical media for it didn't appear until about half a year later.
Regards,
SB
They have to start somewhere.
I'm not talking about DD-only systems. I specifically mentioned successful DD-only games. In my original post in this thread I also made the specific mention of "optical media for games".
The point you quoted was about user-replaceable optical drives, not DD-delivered games. (which ACII PC is not btw, those problems exist whether or not you have the DVD).
http://www.joystiq.com/2009/02/23/npd-study-says-that-gamers-prefer-retail/
According to a new study by the NPD, 75 percent of players share our preference for retail
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=27008712&msg_id=315299595
Disc (DVD, Blu-Ray) 71% [50]
Digital (Steam, D2D, Impulse, GamersGate) 29% [20]
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Play...opies-of-Videogames-132159.shtml-132159.shtml
http://www.gamerlive.tv/article/ces-2010-gamers-prefer-boxed-copies-games
Purchases of physical copies of videogames, both in their new packaging and used, are said by the NPD Group to represent about 90% of the total of videogames that were bought for gaming consoles during the third quarter of 2009. When the picture shifts to portable consoles, the PC, the Mac, mobiles and smartphones, 79% of the purchases made in the same period were of physical objects
http://www.gamespot.com/pages/forums/show_msgs.php?topic_id=26804834&msg_id=310240144
I prefer digital distribution 15% [49]
I prefer hard copies 75% [240]
http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/6...etail-releases-day-and-date-anytime-soon.html
Microsoft isn't quite ready to offer new releases as downloads day-and-date with retail releases. Simultaneous digital releases are a scary concept to retailers. Microsoft obviously doesn't want to anger retailers.
Everyone keeps forgetting the retailers and how much power they have. At least, till we get personal replicators.
Neither are DD-only. Does not apply.
I was specifically referring to the retailers who boycotted the PSP Go.
I am, and you replied to me.
Or rather, I was replying to this
By replying to me, you are talking about how going DD only wont work
Then it's not DD only. Being that there is a physical medium version, thus proving my point.
True, but even some XBLA games eventually came out on disc to maximize sales.
There are people who couldn't use downloads even if they wanted to, and discs are still around for them. They aren't an insignificant minority.
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