How long will physical media last?

[Fourjays Veteran]

Until the Internet is capable of handling 100% digital downloads. Few areas get fast enough and reliable enough Internet connections to make it possible at the moment, and even then networks have supposedly been struggling to handle the capacity in the last few years. So first we need good quality Internet almost everywhere, and I don't see that happening for some time. Especially when you've got governments spending billions on out-of-date infrastructure and phone companies barely interested in upgrading the network... that is at least the case over here, but from what has been said in this thread it sounds like it is similar elsewhere.

Probably another 20-30 years at least before it could be considered.

Trade laws also desperately need a revamp to handle it. Already been burned a few times by digital downloads that don't work as advertised. Response from the supplier was basically "we got your money so we don't care".

[+Audioboxer Subscriber²]

Forever I hope. It's nice to be able to have a physical copy of my games to carry with me and play regardless of my internet connection. Our power went out for two days last week, so I took the battery out of my car and wired it up to power a television, my PS3 and a lamp for about 5 hours. The internet was down, so any game requiring an internet connection to run would be useless. When my PS3 inevitably explodes, it'll be nice to be able to pick up a new one, or a PS4, and stick a disc in it and play my old games.

LOL, now this is hardcore gaming.

[M_Lyons10]

you have to remember that while you can stream an HD movie on Netflix, for example, you cannot easily stream the entire contents of a blu-ray disk. The HD streams on netflix are much lower bit-rate than blu-ray. and now the future is going to be 4k or 8k resolution, that means ever more data. Broadband simply cannot keep up. so, while some people suddenly hate physical media, it's not going away any time soon.

Agreed. And honestly, I would (And I'm sure I'm not alone) prefer to own a physical disc that cannot be taken away from me. What happens if a company that offers downloadable movies goes belly up and their protection can no longer validate your purchases? I'm not so sure I would want to risk that sort of thing.

LOL, now this is hardcore gaming.

ROFL! Indeed.

[Kelxin]

See Mac OS X Lion :p

You put a bootable partition which allows the downloading of an OS from the internet (if it already doesn't have a downloaded copy), and it starts the install process shortly after. Windows/Linux could do the same, or in the event of a blank hard drive, have it stored on the motherboard.

Yea, that last part would be awesome... Its too bad OS X Lion didn't do that right either, and you still HAVE to have a physical media to start a Lion install from a blank machine.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

For gaming specifically, I think that discs for games will be mostly gone within the next 2 console iterations, replaced with marketplace downloads. PC game clients like Steam have already proved that it's feasible to download game, and it's popularity shows that people are happy to do it (the only game I bought a physical copy of last year was BF3, all the rest were through Steam).

It also has the added benefit for the content owners that the DRM for online-managed games works better than discs ever could (2nd hand market would disappear overnight). Not that I'm saying it's a good thing, quite the opposite in my opinion, but that's how they'd see it.

I'm sick of discs now. I used to like them, but nowadays I just find them cluttering up my living room.

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Off topic, but for general purpose use, discs for media will disappear in the next decade or so I think (assuming that the entertainment industry doesn't destroy the internet, which is still a concern), to be replaced with services like Netflix and Spotify and iTunes entirely. Discs for things like operating systems will still be required (how could it be any other way?), but network installs via the internet will be possible (install Linux/Windows/OSX by streaming the install over the internet), but the preferred media will move towards USB sticks instead of disc drives.