Rumor: No Disc Drive For Next Xbox

[Gahars]

An interesting idea in theory, but I'm not sure how well it would work in practice. I wouldn't be surprised if something like that was a generation or two down the line, but I think trying it now could prove problematic.

 

[kthnxshwn]

This obviously won't be happening. Obviously.

 

[BORTZ]

Well i had more to say, but it looks like Guildy properly defended my points way better than i could have anyways.

 

[Qtis]

Yes, Nintendo used their oiwn proprietary optical discs with the Wii and the Wii U. You could use the typical complaints regarding proprietary formats with Nintendo... if Nintendo had released movies on their own discs. What Sony and other companies do is make everything specific to their console, in an attempt to prevent people from using what they already own and force them to buy proprietary products at an inflated price. Nintendo's just dodging costs to themselves, not imposing more on the customer.

I fail to see how they make me use their own product for a certain feature. I could just as well buy a BluRay or DVD player and forget the whole PS3 in my TV stand. The UMD movie feature for example is just as dead a feature as many other such attempts. The main reason is that digital content is much more appreciated in that market (movies, TV) for portables, be it Nintendo's or Sony's console.

I don't mind the Wii not having a Bluray player (wasn't even a standard back then), but the DVD feature should have been present by default. Using a propriety format is really an excuse for lacking something IMHO. Don't get me wrong, I like my Wii, but in case the Wii was my only console, I'd like to at least use it for the norm format of disc media ie. DVD. If it cost a few dollars more for a compatible drive and then the customer didn't have to buy another player for DVD, it'd be worth it in terms of costs. Probably for both the seller and the buyer :3

 

[TheDarkSeed]

I think it would be okay if they used NES cartridges. They would never have to worry about not having enough space to put a game, and you would never have to worry about scratching discs again.

 

[Midna]

Yes, Nintendo used their oiwn proprietary optical discs with the Wii and the Wii U. You could use the typical complaints regarding proprietary formats with Nintendo... if Nintendo had released movies on their own discs. What Sony and other companies do is make everything specific to their console, in an attempt to prevent people from using what they already own and force them to buy proprietary products at an inflated price. Nintendo's just dodging costs to themselves, not imposing more on the customer.

I fail to see how they make me use their own product for a certain feature. I could just as well buy a BluRay or DVD player and forget the whole PS3 in my TV stand. The UMD movie feature for example is just as dead a feature as many other such attempts. The main reason is that digital content is much more appreciated in that market (movies, TV) for portables, be it Nintendo's or Sony's console.

I don't mind the Wii not having a Bluray player (wasn't even a standard back then), but the DVD feature should have been present by default. Using a propriety format is really an excuse for lacking something IMHO. Don't get me wrong, I like my Wii, but in case the Wii was my only console, I'd like to at least use it for the norm format of disc media ie. DVD. If it cost a few dollars more for a compatible drive and then the customer didn't have to buy another player for DVD, it'd be worth it in terms of costs. Probably for both the seller and the buyer :3

Using a proprietary format, traditionally, has not been an "excuse for lacking something". The reason people get upset over them is that it's usually a company, instead of implementing a comparable or even near identical market standard, use their own incompatible technology that serves exactly the same purpose to try to gauge more money out of customers. Again, if Nintendo had released Nintando brand DVD movies when real DVDs were an option, this would have been something to get upset over. Using proprietary formats to dodge fees at the cost of not including certain features is not really something to get angry about, as it's not a direct attempt to screw the customer (you) out of your money. Especially when every family in America has a DVD player and Nintendo has never promoted their system's use as a media centre.

 

[Qtis]

Using a proprietary format, traditionally, has not been an "excuse for lacking something". The reason people get upset over them is that it's usually a company, instead of implementing a comparable or even near identical market standard, use their own incompatible technology that serves exactly the same purpose to try to gauge more money out of customers. Again, if Nintendo had released Nintando brand DVD movies when real DVDs were an option, this would have been something to get upset over. Using proprietary formats to dodge fees at the cost of not including certain features is not really something to get angry about, as it's not a direct attempt to screw the customer (you) out of your money. Especially when every family in America has a DVD player and Nintendo has never promoted their system's use as a media centre.

I don't mean that a propriety format should be used to spread movies and the such. I meant that the use of DVDs could be added in the same way as the 360 and the PS3 can read DVDs, while their games and the likes are in different formats. I understand your point with "every family in America has a DVD plater", but America isn't the only market for such devices. Devices with multiple purposes on general have a better possibility of serving more customers than just a platform for only gaming for example. On the other hand, having a Wii in one room (child's room) and a DVD player in another room (parents TV room) helps limit the amount of needed devices. It's not a must, but it would help. At least help with not making such a big amount of useless devices (useless being replaceable)

But on the actual topic based on the replies in the thread: The next format for movies and such may as well be something other than a disc format. We'll see :3

 

[retKHAAAN]

Err... with the media formats the 3DS and the PSVita are using, why wouldn't consoles gravitate towards that direction? If people are reading "may not contain disc drive" as "Digital Distribution Only" then their flawed perception is the only thing creating any controversy...

 

[Deleted User]

MCV, the same jokers who claimed their top-notch source had some crap to say about the next-gen home consoles last time? ...

 

[FAST6191]

Various thoughts

Digital only.... probably not right now for much of the world. However as for requirements there are loads of services with exchange level peering, hosting, content distribution and such which I believe MS already has several toes in with MSDN (and if not there are several startups could swallow with money they found behind the couch that do very well here). Equally games on demand is a thing.

However as others have called no optical drive does not mean no physical media which would be very interesting as it might even lead to game store level "burning" which I would be extremely interested to see and would probably alleviate some of the potential issues in pressing media (optical disc presses are available pretty much everywhere but cart presses probably introduce a whole load more logistics or setup costs).
Even if an optical drive is not available in a standard SKU I would have to wonder if we would not see a HD-DVD style addon (maybe with bonuses to those opting for flash memory). Some called that there would be casualties for some company screwing up the motion controls vs standard bet but I would call this instead.

Equally optical media is getting very long in the tooth- we have been gaming the system hard since last generation and to slightly a lesser extent before that (see the original xbox copies (KOTOR being a good example) suffering texture pop with basic file copies rather than sector level copies) and it has come to head here with installs, caching and benefits for straight up hard drive installs. I would call space issues but I am not entirely convinced about that (most games fit fine on a DVD and of those that do not I still maintain that a lot of those could at least fit the game code on one and do even better if proper video encoding was used) not to mention flash memory is about on par with high end optical and only set to increase for the time being ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/21/nand_bleak_future/ is still a few years out). I admit I am the first to argue economies of scale and pressed media is probably an order of magnitude cheaper.

"proprietary media" means very little if it is still of the same wavelength as a regular disc- pressed discs are made using master copies and software has very little to say on the matter (not to mention disc burners are intentionally kneecapped so using them as a jumping point for your logic is not ideal). Truly custom stuff is however a problem but there are not that many benefits to such a thing.

Second hand. Take that and I will not be best pleased.

Interesting times ahead.

 

[DSGamer64]

I'd be interested to see if someone would come up with a renewable source of obtaining game data for a console from a store without having to have piles of physical media lying around. Downloading doesn't work in a lot of parts of the world due to bandwidth caps and the ever increasing size of game data so I think personal transportation of your own storage device to load games purchased from a store kiosk and installed directly onto an internal solid state drive for the console or even a portable SSD similar in fashion to the 360 hard drive and how it detaches, would be an interesting business venture. The problem with mechanical drives and optical discs is obviously loading times and with the larger games taking up so much data, it might be hard to load them effectively with mechanical methods. Why not buy a system with a large hard drive, pop the drive out of your system, plug it into a kiosk and download a game right to the drive.

 

[DSGamer64]

Making it a purely digital console would mean Microsoft's swan song in the gaming world, and they know it.

They'll die just like Valve did.

Seriously, digitial distribution certainly doesn't mean the end of a gaming company. It's probably the opposite. The difference is making a good digital distribution service (like Steam) vs. a crappy one (like XBLA, PSN, WiiWare/VC/eShop). You need to hit on certain points that make digital distribution worth going towards, one of them being price, which Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo have all been shit at. Pricing $60 for a digital copy of a game when it's about $40 at retail is ridiculous. Hell, they just dropped the price on Force Unleashed, for example, on Xbox Live. It went from $30 to $20. I don't think anyone would pay $20 for that game still.

The difference between Console and PC games is being able to sell your games. With the invention of CD keys, they may as well be digital. People choose console for a number of reasons. some of them for the lower price point, and some of them because they can pawn off their games every six months to a year (sometimes less). Especially sports gamers.

Steam is still alive for two reasons. One, like I said before, you can't sell PC games anyway after the CD key has been redeemed. But the other is the main reason. Steam knows the draw of value. Steam has sales every. single. day. Borderland is on sale every other month. Valve games are on sale all the time too. Quality games for awesome prices. I gotta be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm stealing when I buy a game for 10% of it's original price. Steam has that shit down.

I have to say though, I don't see Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo mimicking Steam's insane deals. I, however, would love to be proven wrong. If MS can match value games with Digital prices along with some killer deals at least once a week (not this shitty XBL sales crap they're doing now), they may be able to make a profitable system. Even a gradual price drop on all titles would be awesome. They need to understand that just because they are the only game in town, doesn't mean guaranteed sales.

Unfortunately the problem is that it's nearly impossible to keep track of daily and weekly sales like Steam does and the reason for that is because Steam sales are part of the PC interface, you see them when you log into the store. Microsoft would have a harder time selling their games digitally due to things like limited hard drive space in their systems as not everyone has a 120GB drive and even then that's going to hold 15 full 8GB games at most (some games are larger then that). The obvious advantage Steam has there is the copious options for hard drives for your computer, not to mention how cheap they are these days online. Steam gamers are generally people who know some things about computers, hard drives are never an issue. I have something like 45 games in my Steam library and I am only sitting on about 500GB worth of data, you couldn't do that on a 360.

 

[kthnxshwn]

You guys are just jumping over one huge whole in this: people who play games without internet connection. That, alone, is why Sony sold the PSP Go along side the PSP and offer physical games alongside PSN downloads. Of course it'll have an optical drive.

 

[Qtis]

You guys are just jumping over one huge whole in this: people who play games without internet connection. That, alone, is why Sony sold the PSP Go along side the PSP and offer physical games alongside PSN downloads. Of course it'll have an optical drive.

Not necessarily. There are many other ways to physically distribute stuff instead of Disc Drives. Also using XBL for distribution is the way to go for DLC already so people who buy DLC would not miss anything anyways.. PSP Go was a good idea, but it was before it's time. Just like Nokia with touch screens.

The future is not really clear on how gaming develops. Hopefully we'll see some real innovation in terms of distribution

 

[Raichy]

Maybe they will make the console without a built-in disc drive, but for those who will want backwards compatibility, there will be an external drive accessory.

 

[FAST6191]

The difference between Console and PC games is being able to sell your games. With the invention of CD keys, they may as well be digital. People choose console for a number of reasons. some of them for the lower price point, and some of them because they can pawn off their games every six months to a year (sometimes less). Especially sports gamers.

Steam is still alive for two reasons. One, like I said before, you can't sell PC games anyway after the CD key has been redeemed. But the other is the main reason. Steam knows the draw of value. Steam has sales every. single. day. Borderland is on sale every other month. Valve games are on sale all the time too. Quality games for awesome prices. I gotta be honest, sometimes I feel like I'm stealing when I buy a game for 10% of it's original price. Steam has that shit down.

I have to say though, I don't see Sony, Microsoft or Nintendo mimicking Steam's insane deals. I, however, would love to be proven wrong. If MS can match value games with Digital prices along with some killer deals at least once a week (not this shitty XBL sales crap they're doing now), they may be able to make a profitable system. Even a gradual price drop on all titles would be awesome. They need to understand that just because they are the only game in town, doesn't mean guaranteed sales.

Unfortunately the problem is that it's nearly impossible to keep track of daily and weekly sales like Steam does and the reason for that is because Steam sales are part of the PC interface, you see them when you log into the store. Microsoft would have a harder time selling their games digitally due to things like limited hard drive space in their systems as not everyone has a 120GB drive and even then that's going to hold 15 full 8GB games at most (some games are larger then that). The obvious advantage Steam has there is the copious options for hard drives for your computer, not to mention how cheap they are these days online. Steam gamers are generally people who know some things about computers, hard drives are never an issue. I have something like 45 games in my Steam library and I am only sitting on about 500GB worth of data, you couldn't do that on a 360.

CD keys need not be the end of second hand- it is just an arbitrary concept. Granted the stick lodged up the rear end of a lot of games companies on the matter of second hand games is probably beyond retrieval at this point (initiate old yeller protocol?). I do like steam's "That’d be like wrapping up and presenting the toaster you’ve used every morning for the past year." - oh no my 1's and 0's are looking less like 1's and 0's.

Daily and weekly sales- MS and Sony seem to have no problem bombarding people with adverts for various games (it is almost like surfing without adblocking whenever I see someone that uses XBL or PSN sign in) and simple RSS a like feeds could well do the job (what little I have seen of steam and something like the 360 hard drive management options would do stunningly for game sales (and maybe even sales of the games themselves). If they can wind something into the boot procedure then even better (they have previously demonstrated standby power is not a issue they care for).

Small hard drives- ignoring the discussion on the return to cartridges (rewritable or otherwise) have we forgotten quite how many litres of piss MS and Sony (although I suppose they might win a point for allowing easy swap outs) and I guess car makers have been taking these last few years telling people their hard drive sizes are good and at a price point that is certainly taking the piss when anybody that can do online shopping can easily find out is very much false as you say yourself. Similarly tell that to my JTAG box or better yet MS themselves added a measure of USB support.