256 replies to this topic 1 votes

[HawkMan]

threetonesun, on 12 June 2012 - 13:52, said:

There are services which stream at 1080p, which is good enough for most people. I think the "it must be of ultimate visual quality, 20.1 channel audio" crowd is pretty small these days.

Zune stream 1080p at very high bit rates, any perceived difference the average person sees is mostly imaginary.

[Jason Stillion]

Crisps, on 12 June 2012 - 13:41, said:

Blu-ray is just as dead as DVD.

Digital / Cloud is the way forward.

I would agree with this, but not at this time.

With running out of spectrum and use exceeding ability by 2014 (cell phone, mobile internet), and our capitalist system causing (not wireless) data caps, high cost of broadband, slow internet speed (vs other parts of the world), unwillingness to to cover parts of the country, etc.

It's not as soon as you think, at least in the United States.

Sony and MS have already started a hybrid model, a lot of games sold both electronically and physically. I see this trend going on for the next 5-10 years.

In fact Sony mentioned PS4 will still have a drive is due to our infrastructure situation.

Also, there still people that like to own physical copies.

[Colin McGregor]

I know hd-dvd lost the nerd wars but MS should have still put a hd-dvd drive in the newer xboxs and just used that for games. Sony did it with UMD and i dont think anyone ever used them aside from psp.

[jerzdawg]

Audioboxer, on 12 June 2012 - 19:24, said:

Very likely, developers won't be happy if MS stick to DVD.

MS will get some flak if they don't support BD movies as well, look at how hard they're pushing the 360 as your all in one media stop now.

this. I would certainly skip the next xbox if they dont have a BD drive in it. I dont want to download my games or use some cloud system. I want a physical disk that I can re-sell or let a friend borrow if I choose to do so. I do have my stand alone bd player but as AB said - if MS wants to be an all and powerful media device it needs to support whats going on in the markets.

[~Johnny]

I thougt it was more or less given it would have a Blu-Ray based drive in the next Xbox? They certainly can't go download only without hurting their sales immeasurably (and I'd also not want it, considering the prices of their games on demand games), and DVD doesn't have enough space.

At this moment in time, Blu-Ray would also be cheaper than producing HD DVDs, whose factories are largely shut down given that no one produces them (bar the Chinese variant). At the VERY most, it may not be able to play Blu-Ray movies, letting them avoid paying the Blu Ray forum - as with the WiiU which uses a proprietary variant of BluRay, which still allows them the 25GB per layer, but removing support for playing movies avoids the license fee.

But given how media centric Microsoft are trying to position the Xbox brand, forgoing disc based movie support is nearly out of the question. And why wouldn't they pay? There's so much they already pay licensing fees for anyway.

[ndoggfromhell]

pickypg, on 12 June 2012 - 17:27, said:

I've always wondered about that myself, but I suspect that the costs must be too high. A Blu-ray is less than a few dollars, while a 16 GB flash drive still lingers around $10 at consumer facing prices. Stacking that up to a capacity necessary for hi-res textures of the next generation games, and I think we would watch the publisher lose all of its profits as webdev511 suggested. The nice perks of it is that read speed would almost certainly be improved, and publishers could buy the smallest size necessary to fit the game, but I think that cost must be too high to make it all feasible.

That's a rewritable flash drive. I'm talking about writeonce memory or ROM which is significantly cheaper.

[Growled]

Colin McGregor, on 12 June 2012 - 19:51, said:

I know hd-dvd lost the nerd wars but MS should have still put a hd-dvd drive in the newer xboxs and just used that for games. Sony did it with UMD and i dont think anyone ever used them aside from psp.

Sounds like a good idea to me.

[Jason Stillion]

If Ms was smart, they swallow there pride, Blu-Ray movies is a standard now with many different manufactures making and add it to the Xbox.

This would take a way a bullet point Sony can use to try and sell the PS3 over Xbox and go with there new multi-media angle Microsoft is pushing with the Xbox in your home.
It would also be a benefit for game developers and gamers with the additional storage capacity.

[Emn1ty]

Jason Stillion, on 13 June 2012 - 01:51, said:

If Ms was smart, they swallow there pride, Blu-Ray movies is a standard now with many different manufactures making and add it to the Xbox.

This would take a way a bullet point Sony can use to try and sell the PS3 over Xbox and go with there new multi-media angle Microsoft is pushing with the Xbox in your home.
It would also be a benefit for game developers and gamers with the additional storage capacity.

Or they could be really smart and just switch to flash drives as physical distribution. Games never get scratched, they are more portable and the only media drive you'd have to include is a USB port. I still don't understand why this hasn't happened yet.

[GP007]

Emn1ty, on 13 June 2012 - 05:16, said:

Or they could be really smart and just switch to flash drives as physical distribution. Games never get scratched, they are more portable and the only media drive you'd have to include is a USB port. I still don't understand why this hasn't happened yet.

At one point I thought that it would be interesting if the system came with a flash drive, 32GB or so, that you could then take to someplace like best buy or gamestop and the whole process of buying your game would be then copying over the game to your drive (instead of selling you a disc copy. The copy on the flash drive would have some type of unique hash/key for piracy reasons ofc, but then you'd take it back home, pop it into the system and play the game off of it or move it over to the systems internal storage where games and other contant you download go etc. Then you could reuse the same flash drive/stick w/e over. You'd basically have no discs or stack of flash carts or w/e, it'd be "digital" distro at retail for those who don't have the internet speed to download full games.

And using the same flash drive over you'd keep costs down for developers who don't need to press discs at all etc.

[+jeston]

GP007, on 13 June 2012 - 07:12, said:

At one point I thought that it would be interesting if the system came with a flash drive, 32GB or so, that you could then take to someplace like best buy or gamestop and the whole process of buying your game would be then copying over the game to your drive (instead of selling you a disc copy. The copy on the flash drive would have some type of unique hash/key for piracy reasons ofc, but then you'd take it back home, pop it into the system and play the game off of it or move it over to the systems internal storage where games and other contant you download go etc. Then you could reuse the same flash drive/stick w/e over. You'd basically have no discs or stack of flash carts or w/e, it'd be "digital" distro at retail for those who don't have the internet speed to download full games.

And using the same flash drive over you'd keep costs down for developers who don't need to press discs at all etc.

How would you propose people with multiple systems play their purchased game on more than one console, assuming your "hash/key" is a one time use thing and/or is tied to the original console (otherwise I fail to see how that would combat piracy)?


I personally don't care what format it uses as long as it's got more storage space than a DVD. If they switch to Blu-Ray, I'm guessing backwards compatibility would be more problematic or more costly than if they were to use some sort of HD DVD derivative. Sure BC isn't super important as it's got to end somewhere in order to promote evolution and I don't plan on trashing my 360 when this comes out, but it's always a nice feature to have.

[GP007]

jeston, on 13 June 2012 - 09:35, said:

How would you propose people with multiple systems play their purchased game on more than one console, assuming your "hash/key" is a one time use thing and/or is tied to the original console (otherwise I fail to see how that would combat piracy)?


I personally don't care what format it uses as long as it's got more storage space than a DVD. If they switch to Blu-Ray, I'm guessing backwards compatibility would be more problematic or more costly than if they were to use some sort of HD DVD derivative. Sure BC isn't super important as it's got to end somewhere in order to promote evolution and I don't plan on trashing my 360 when this comes out, but it's always a nice feature to have.

The hash/key or w/e would be a unique identifier so the system knows you actually paid for the game on the drive and it's not just copied over from some pirated source. It wouldn't so much as limit use to one system really.

[HawkMan]

jeston, on 13 June 2012 - 09:35, said:

How would you propose people with multiple systems play their purchased game on more than one console, assuming your "hash/key" is a one time use thing and/or is tied to the original console (otherwise I fail to see how that would combat piracy)?


I personally don't care what format it uses as long as it's got more storage space than a DVD. If they switch to Blu-Ray, I'm guessing backwards compatibility would be more problematic or more costly than if they were to use some sort of HD DVD derivative. Sure BC isn't super important as it's got to end somewhere in order to promote evolution and I don't plan on trashing my 360 when this comes out, but it's always a nice feature to have.

With both next gen consoles 90% likely to go X86/AMD this round, backwards compatibility is out the windows anyway. Unless they do what they did last, let you download new executables for the game.

[Scorpus]

jeston, on 13 June 2012 - 09:35, said:

If they switch to Blu-Ray, I'm guessing backwards compatibility would be more problematic or more costly than if they were to use some sort of HD DVD derivative.

Not really. Both Blu-ray drives and HD-DVD drives need three lasers (or two lenses, I forget) to operate (one for CDs, one for DVDs and one for Blu-ray/HD-DVD)

[compl3x]

threetonesun, on 12 June 2012 - 14:10, said:

Xbox live is where MS makes their money. I don't see flash memory costs being an issue. $70 at the store, $60 to download and the cost is covered (or $60 and $50).

Cost is always an issue.

Shadrack, on 12 June 2012 - 17:21, said:

Oh..that would be nice. I would love it if the new XBox goes back to cartridge based ROMs. Don't think it would happen though because they will probably want backwards compatibility and they probably don't mind it at all if you scratch the disc up and need to buy a new one.

I fondly remember the old cartridges, but I don't want to go back to them, frankly.

MorganX, on 12 June 2012 - 17:55, said:

The thing is, 4GB of flash is sooooooo cheap now, throw in USB 3.0 and why use optical?

I'm thinking the next gen game sizes would be around 30-50GB mark. Games now are larger than 4GB.