http://www.mcvuk.com/news/read/exclusive-no-disc-drive-for-next-xbox/092534 Pinch of salt time, but the more I think about it the more it makes sense for many reasons (Richard prediction mode engaged): MS will never dump the retail market. The majority of sales is still retail driven and the internet is not fast enough or capped for many people. DVDs provide a fixed size and MS would never pay a license to Sony for Blu-ray. Flash costs have dropped dramatically and Flash can be random read faster than disc, so a) less time to install games and b) can mix installed + flash cart required = form of DRM. You can AES256 encrypt the Flash drive, and modern CPUs have realtime decryption built-in. Breaking AES will take years and help kill piracy. The cost of a card reader is about 10p. The cost of an optical drive = $10. The size of a card reader = 20x20x5mm. The optical drive is the biggest thing in a 360. Card reader = silent and soild state. Optical drives are one of the biggest cause of failures in the 360 - especially at launch. They're also noisier than the fans. Publishers can make games ANY SIZE. You've got a 60GB game? Sure thing. No multiple disc BS. The cost of flash is down to the publisher to swallow but as the cost of flash comes down and the volume goes up (economies of scale are astronomically above NES/SNES/N64/Genesis cartridges = much lower cost) so does the price come down. Maybe include a writeable-once flash chip that burns on the Xbox account or console number, so no sharing or 2nd hand market. (It's doable).
It does make a lot of sense to go that way. Would you even need to install games onto the hard drive or could you run it directly from the card?
All sensible thoughts - I've been expecting someone to go flash-only on a major console (either the Wii or the X-whatever) due to one main reason that everyone will get in a flap over - stomp out piracy.
I'd buy into that prediction. I can't see a reason why it isn't the most feasible option in the short term.
It certainly makes sense and let's be honest the piracy issue is probably one of the primary concerns suggesting this, which is a good thing.
Meh i understand the need for a more robust delivery of video games and a flash drive is the way forward but Sony brought this up for the PSP 2 didn't they? I don't really remember but i think they did. And piracy what piracy i bet the percentage of pirated console games is dramatically less than the Playstation ever had. That's my opinion anyway. PC gaming is better!!
I'm not keen on downloading my games and storing them, MS's prices for HD's on the 360 was ridiculous and add the speeds to download a game and if you have caps on bandwidth you might be waiting for your new limit I like the idea of games on memory sticks of some sort espeicially if it makes a smaller quiter console. As for piracy, they is always a way round things
cartridges ?? there like SO 1990s seriously tho, id imagine it would be some sort of propiety connection based on USB sticks
Could well be! I'd imagine USB sticks could vary in size (promotional advantage) and be less likely to get lost too if they were sizely. SD cards are just as cheap though - it's the flash that determines the cost. The port needs to be unique as it's the 'special gaming slot' - like 90s carts were so iconic - and clearly not confused with controller ports to deter noobs.
Didn't MS do a 'games on new media' trail in the states, i always assumed it was games on flash drives but didn't know anyone who got accepted to the trail...
I wouldn't be against it as a move but.. 1) I would like to see it drive down consumer costs rather then MS just pocketing the difference if the production costs would be a lot lower (ie example above 10p vs $10) 2) I wouldn't be too happy if they created some kind of on board serial / lockout to prevent the 2nd hand market / sharing on another console. I have two xbox's at two different houses so If that idea was brought into effect I wouldn't be able to play games the way I currently enjoy (however with the recent intro to the cloud system on the 360, I can't see what they would wish to lock a game to a consoel as it would make the cloud side a bit pointless surely)
I think this is just a case of crossed wires somewhere, my bet is MS are going to launch a new low cost version of the Xbox 360 without an optical drive.
I can see the appeal of a 'cartridge based' system, if it's more than fast enough to run the game off it; wave goodbye to installing times. Locking the games to a console/account would be a bit far just to try and eliminate the second-hand market. The Games industry already pulls in a fortune each year. I just hope this shiny new eggsbox doesn't have the same issues with 'Your saves are completely unavailable unless you have the exact same damn console you had when you first bought the game' crap that I hear about the 360 all the time.
This makes a shed load of sense. It's already been rumoured that MS are launching a bare-bones Kinect centric system, so this would play right into that.
I read the title and thought "is this guy dumb or something" Then when I read all your predictions I thought "Wow, it all make sense now, this guy is a genus"
Cartidges would work, but I don't think it would be write once. Imagine the amount of money that would be required to sustain such a model. And how wasteful it would be. Unless of course one could retain the writes on the flash. Back to the N64 days.
I'd believe it. It's just happened in the handheld market with the PSP going from UMDs, discs, to flash memory cards with Vita. There are a few differences, the cost of UMDs is likely higher than DVDs so replacements wouldn't have to be as cheap to be viable and the handheld market is even more likely to favor a smaller form factor, even if it's financially not quite as viable, but it's set a precedent. Cartridges are still possible. A skeptical predition: If cartidges were used expect games to be made more compact (read: short and content-less) to save costs of using larger capacity cartidges.
I have always said that the next MS console would have no CD/DVD and no hard drive. I still believe that they will be aiming to stream most games by the time they release it.
MS have already thrown around the idea of a 'cheap' casual and 'expensive' core gamer consoles hitting the market. The method of game loading would likely be the same between both to simplify the approach and it's very well documented that a cheaper console sells more. Maybe they do launch the cheap one as a 360 revision, but they won't sacrifice all that disc market already out there for the 360. Unless you can buy a DVD drive add-on for backward compatibility. True, but 8GB flash costs very little of your $60 game. Also it could be part subsidized by downloading content - or worse yet - even more is DLC.
Truth be told when I saw a friend play a play station or ps2 or whatever it was and put a disk in and then wait, and wait, and wait, and wait for it to load. I wondered why they moved away from a cartridge. Hope that this is true and they are going back.