5 ms·

I think a harbinger of this was the fact that the latest console generation did not come with an upgrade in (physical) game medium. Previously, each console ge

by moskie 11y ago

I think a harbinger of this was the fact that the latest console generation did not come with an upgrade in (physical) game medium. Previously, each console generation came with newer cartridges, then with newer disc formats (CD, then DVD, then HD-DVD / Blu Ray). But this generation just stuck with Blu Ray. That signaled to me that this may very well be the last generation to even support physical media. If this console generation lasts the typical ~7 years or so... do we expect people to still be using any physical media in the early 2020s?

SapphireSun 11y ago
I think the limiting factor is how much hard drive space you want to take up with coresident games. If you use a blue ray, you can load a significant amount of content from disk. Otherwise you're forcing your players to make tradeoffs based on how much space they have left which would cause first releases for a system to have a natural advantage over later releases (sales wise) as HDD space fills up. Edit: Fair enough, it seems games are doing this already, so maybe this argument isn't as valid as it used to be.
- minimaxir 11y ago
  > If you use a blue ray, you can load a significant amount of content from disk. It should be noted that most AAA games install themselves to disk anyways to help alleviate loading times (especially in the PS4's case, as Blu-Ray is sloooow)
- nlawalker 11y ago
  The Xbox One (and the PS4 I think, although I don't own one so I'm not sure) doesn't let you play a game off its disc - you have to install it. The only functional differences between disc games and downloads is that you can sell/loan/trade/gift disc games via the physical media, and consequently the disc has to be inserted while playing as proof of continued ownership.
- jsight 11y ago
  I agree that the limiting factor is hard drive space. It would not have made sense to significantly increase the capacity of the drive by replacing Blu-Ray with something else. That would have just made the hard drive bottleneck even more pronounced. 500 GB really isn't enough for a heavy gamer.
  - SapphireSun 11y ago
    Luckily 4TB hard drives are on the market these days, however, their price alone would contribute significantly to the MSRP of the console.
    - techdragon 11y ago
      Yeah, at their level of bulk purchasing, it wouldn't. Cost on a Blue ray drive, cost of discs packaging, etc... All put together they would save. But they got bitten pretty hard by the "how dare you not let me sell my old games" crowd. That seems to have deterred them from "download only" distribution.
      - jonknee 11y ago
        The costs of discs and distribution don't come back to the console makers (for most titles). The hardware does and a Blu Ray drive is dirt cheap.
    - daemin 11y ago
      It's also better to have games on an SSD because it's an even faster loading time than spinnys. I've got my games on a 500"GB" SSD and it's always the most full disk. Although in good news the SSD disk storage sizes are only going up and the price is coming down, so by the next console generation it should be practical to put in a 1TB SSD into a cheap console.
      - rosege 11y ago
        I looked at benchmarks for SSDs in consoles and they were saying not to bother because the difference to loading times was minimal
- Pfhreak 11y ago
  I'm not that sure that's the limiting factor these days. If Sony/Microsoft/Steam can be trusted to remember what I have in my library, I only need enough space to store the set of games I'm currently interested in. And with sufficient bandwidth, I can swap that set around very easily. Especially if I can control what I have installed via a mobile device -- think I might want to play a game tonight? Kick it off during my lunch hour, and it's ready and waiting when I get home.
shmerl 11y ago
> If this console generation lasts the typical ~7 years or so... do we expect people to still be using any physical media in the early 2020s? This insane upgrade cycle will disappear. Steam Machines will hopefully increase competition in consoles market and will push MS and Sony to upgrade their hardware more frequently.
pandaman 11y ago
Are you talking about just Sony consoles? Because otherwise your observation is false: Microsoft Xbox One, for example, got an upgrade from DVD to BluRay as same as did Wii. And in previous generations both did not get any upgrades. The reason Sony upgrades media on its consoles is that Sony is a holding that also holds companies developing the said media and companies distributing movies/music on the same media. It's a cross-promotion.
zaroth 11y ago
I think you're right that the consoles missed a chance to upgrade the medium. Since disc access is so terribly slow, the disk is a sneaker-net. If the disk was a small fast SSD (which is a nice stable operating mode) or even like CompactFlash at least it would provide some physical value. The problem is it's a cost center. And downloading will always be more convenient. Connections are easily fast enough to transfer the static data.

by moskie 11y ago

SapphireSun 11y ago

I think the limiting factor is how much hard drive space you want to take up with coresident games. If you use a blue ray, you can load a significant amount of content from disk. Otherwise you're forcing your players to make tradeoffs based on how much space they have left which would cause first releases for a system to have a natural advantage over later releases (sales wise) as HDD space fills up. Edit: Fair enough, it seems games are doing this already, so maybe this argument isn't as valid as it used to be.

minimaxir 11y ago
> If you use a blue ray, you can load a significant amount of content from disk. It should be noted that most AAA games install themselves to disk anyways to help alleviate loading times (especially in the PS4's case, as Blu-Ray is sloooow)
nlawalker 11y ago
The Xbox One (and the PS4 I think, although I don't own one so I'm not sure) doesn't let you play a game off its disc - you have to install it. The only functional differences between disc games and downloads is that you can sell/loan/trade/gift disc games via the physical media, and consequently the disc has to be inserted while playing as proof of continued ownership.
jsight 11y ago
I agree that the limiting factor is hard drive space. It would not have made sense to significantly increase the capacity of the drive by replacing Blu-Ray with something else. That would have just made the hard drive bottleneck even more pronounced. 500 GB really isn't enough for a heavy gamer.
- SapphireSun 11y ago
  Luckily 4TB hard drives are on the market these days, however, their price alone would contribute significantly to the MSRP of the console.
  - techdragon 11y ago
    Yeah, at their level of bulk purchasing, it wouldn't. Cost on a Blue ray drive, cost of discs packaging, etc... All put together they would save. But they got bitten pretty hard by the "how dare you not let me sell my old games" crowd. That seems to have deterred them from "download only" distribution.
    - jonknee 11y ago
      The costs of discs and distribution don't come back to the console makers (for most titles). The hardware does and a Blu Ray drive is dirt cheap.
  - daemin 11y ago
    It's also better to have games on an SSD because it's an even faster loading time than spinnys. I've got my games on a 500"GB" SSD and it's always the most full disk. Although in good news the SSD disk storage sizes are only going up and the price is coming down, so by the next console generation it should be practical to put in a 1TB SSD into a cheap console.
    - rosege 11y ago
      I looked at benchmarks for SSDs in consoles and they were saying not to bother because the difference to loading times was minimal
Pfhreak 11y ago
I'm not that sure that's the limiting factor these days. If Sony/Microsoft/Steam can be trusted to remember what I have in my library, I only need enough space to store the set of games I'm currently interested in. And with sufficient bandwidth, I can swap that set around very easily. Especially if I can control what I have installed via a mobile device -- think I might want to play a game tonight? Kick it off during my lunch hour, and it's ready and waiting when I get home.

shmerl 11y ago

> If this console generation lasts the typical ~7 years or so... do we expect people to still be using any physical media in the early 2020s? This insane upgrade cycle will disappear. Steam Machines will hopefully increase competition in consoles market and will push MS and Sony to upgrade their hardware more frequently.

pandaman 11y ago

Are you talking about just Sony consoles? Because otherwise your observation is false: Microsoft Xbox One, for example, got an upgrade from DVD to BluRay as same as did Wii. And in previous generations both did not get any upgrades. The reason Sony upgrades media on its consoles is that Sony is a holding that also holds companies developing the said media and companies distributing movies/music on the same media. It's a cross-promotion.

zaroth 11y ago

I think you're right that the consoles missed a chance to upgrade the medium. Since disc access is so terribly slow, the disk is a sneaker-net. If the disk was a small fast SSD (which is a nice stable operating mode) or even like CompactFlash at least it would provide some physical value. The problem is it's a cost center. And downloading will always be more convenient. Connections are easily fast enough to transfer the static data.