Next Generation Xbox and Playstation Consoles Will Have Optical Drives

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Next Generation Xbox and Playstation Consoles Will Have Optical Drives

Posted by timothy on Thursday May 31, 2012 @05:41AM from the may-the-circle-be-unbroken-and-shiny dept.

First time accepted submitter dintech writes "The Wall Street Journal reports that while Sony considered online-only content distribution for its next-generation Playstation, the manufacturer has decided that the new console will include an optical drive after all. Microsoft is also planning to include an optical disk drive in the successor to its Xbox 360 console as the software company had concerns about access to Internet bandwidth."

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Internet Speeds Suck by 0racle · 2012-05-31 05:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

And they suck hard in very large parts of the US. Digital Only distributions would make it so those parts of the US wouldn't consider buying the consoles.

6 days to download TERA, I'm not doing that again.

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1. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by gstoddart · 2012-05-31 06:03 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  And they suck hard in very large parts of the US. Digital Only distributions would make it so those parts of the US wouldn't consider buying the consoles.
  And for a lot of people, the bandwidth is capped, with extra fees if you go over it.
  Assuming a modern video game puts a big dent in the disks now, I can only imagine that digital-only distribution would make the cost of the game more expensive overall.
  I wouldn't go to a digital download model. It's a video game console. I want to put in a disk an play games ... I don't want it connected to the internet all the time. But, it seems increasingly, video game companies are insisting on an always-on internet connection.
  
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2. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by skids · 2012-05-31 06:16 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Considering how many patches these games end up needing, and add-on content, the happy medium (pun intended) between download only and optical ROM might be a flash stick 2x the size of the base game or so (with some r/o and write-once protections built in.) That would allow the game to store patches on the same medium as it is distributed, rather than filling up your console drive.
  
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3. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by Sir_Sri · 2012-05-31 06:57 · Score: 2
  
  Except that for the price sony paid to put a 20GB drive in the initial PS3's they could have put in a 500GB drive instead. That was the stupid choice they made sticking in a notebook drive, today they could easily do a 1TB drive or 1.5 TB for that price. They're probably looking at buying 10-20 million units (before they refresh and add a bigger drive) so they're probably looking at 30 bucks a drive or so.
  I would expect next gen consoles to be looking at terabyte drives or more, as I said, since they cost basically nothing. With cloud storage for save games and small data, and the disks will serve as art distribution mechanisms.
  In that sense consoles will start to look more and more like regular computers, again. They have to. Stick a 1TB drive in a box with a cpu, a half decent GPU, a web browser and a way to manage a few hundred installed programs and what do you have but a simplified version of Windows/Linux/OSX or cell phones. They're just terminals attached to the big servers at XBL and PSN who will control the licences for the games you have access to, and like steam games that come on disk, you're merely using that to save downloading and activating with them.
  With enough disk space you don't really need a flash drive. Printing a CD or a DVD or a blu ray costs 20-50-80 cents, if that much anymore. A flash drive with 50-100GB capacity would be uh... expensive, and then you get into reliability etc. DVD's and Blu rays are surprisingly durable considering they cost next to nothing, whereas supporting fast flash storage would be troublesome, and artificially limits you in patch sizes for any sort of sensible price point.
4. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by Sir_Sri · 2012-05-31 07:03 · Score: 2
  
  So first off, about 70-75% of all consoles have always on internet. Secondly the primary market isn't kids, it's adults, the so called 18-36 although now it's more like 15-45 year olds, mostly men. Third, the download services (PSN, XBL and on PC Steam etc. ) have all been quite successful.
  You're right, in that it's completely unreasonable to expect someone on a 1MB/s DSL to try and download a 20-50GB game, which is why you can't have download only consoles. But expect much deeper integration between what you get on disk and the online service it's connected to.
  Realistically, by the time you can download games of that size you'll be able to just stream the content with dumb terminal anyway, and won't need any hardware in the console. Which is probably another generation or two away.
5. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by cpu6502 · 2012-05-31 07:48 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  >>>a flash stick 2x the size of the base game
  If you're going to do that, you may as well just go back to cartridges. Let's see... the N64's biggest cartridge was Resident Evil 2 at 64 megabytes. The new PS4 will have 50,000 megabyte carts. ;-) Of course the reason cartridges were phased-out is because assembling hardware is more-costly to build than a flat disc of reflective foil. So you idea is a nonstarter.
  
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6. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by Khyber · 2012-05-31 08:32 · Score: 2
  
  "Considering how many patches these games end up needing"
  And this is why I go Nintendo. Actual fucking quality control. Not *ONE* game in the entire history of me owning and using a Nintendo product have I had to get a patch for a game. The ONLY issue I've had with a Nintendo product was with Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which lay in a hardware issue (Older model Wii - disc drive couldn't handle the dual-layer disc properly. That was remedied within ONE WEEK.)
  Sony? No Quality Control. Ditto Microsoft. If they had QA/QC implemented, this shit wouldn't be necessary.
  
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7. Re:Internet Speeds Suck by b4dc0d3r · 2012-05-31 11:05 · Score: 2
  
  I think I paid $45 in 1986. It would be close to $90 in today's dollars, so they are down by about half price. And the premium doesn't come from the medium, it comes from having 25 year old games in working condition.
  It only takes 1 person with the right tools to copy carts - plenty of pirate carts were available for the NES if you knew where to look. And now we have the internet where you can learn and order equipment, instead of having to know someone who knows about the process.
  No premium, no piracy protection, nothing of substance. Just a bunch of words. Marketing skills indeed.
bbbbut downloading is so cool by alen · 2012-05-31 05:44 · Score: 2

optical disks i can use anywhere are for grandma
downloading the same games that are locked to my console is so much cooler and sexier. its like 3g vs wifi. 3g is awesome compared to grandma's wifi.
1. Re:bbbbut downloading is so cool by PTBarnum · 2012-05-31 06:04 · Score: 2
  
  Don't worry, Microsoft and Sony will make sure that the optical disks have the same sexy restrictions as downloaded content.
2. Re:bbbbut downloading is so cool by k3vlar · 2012-05-31 06:15 · Score: 2
  
  Probably true.
  If the console is "digital download focused", it's likely the game on the disk will be a hard-copy of the downloadable files, with a code to unlock the game. You insert the disk, enter the code, authenticate with your account, wait for the files to install, and then promptly throw all physical media away, because it's useless to anyone else now.
  For households with no internet, you'll have to do phone activation.
  ... I'm sad now. We live in a horrible world.
  
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3. Re:bbbbut downloading is so cool by marcosdumay · 2012-05-31 06:33 · Score: 2
  
  ... I'm sad now. We live in a horrible world.
  Why get sad? Just don't buy it.
  
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Reminds me of the old quote... by sidthegeek · 2012-05-31 05:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway. â"Tanenbaum, Andrew S.
1. Re:Reminds me of the old quote... by ninjackn · 2012-05-31 05:49 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  As a gamer I generally care more about latency than bandwidth.
  
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  [FUCK BETA 2.6.2014]
2. Re:Reminds me of the old quote... by tepples · 2012-05-31 06:04 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  If you try to download a 20 GB game over 5 GB/mo satellite Internet access, you'll have 4 month latency.
Good. by cpu6502 · 2012-05-31 05:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

(1) My 750k internet would take 7 days to download a 50 gigabyte Bluray-sized game. (2) Easier to just buy the disc from amazon and have it shipped to me. (3) Plus when I get bored with the game I can sell the disc and recoup my money. Example: I played Final Fantasy 12, thought it was kinda boring, and sold it for $55. Recovered my money.

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1. Re:Good. by DragonWriter · 2012-05-31 05:48 · Score: 5, Insightful
  
  (1) My 750k internet would take 7 days to download a 50 gigabyte Bluray-sized game. (2) Easier to just buy the disc from amazon and have it shipped to me. (3) Plus when I get bored with the game I can sell the disc and recoup my money.
  
  That they will support physical media doesn't mean they will play used games.
2. Re:Good. by alen · 2012-05-31 05:50 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  how are they going to lock out used games on physical media? they will just lock out levels and characters so you are in effect playing an extended demo unless you buy the whole game
3. Re:Good. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-05-31 06:05 · Score: 2
  
  Our old friend the burst cutting area can fairly trivially assign a machine-readable unique ID to a disk.
  
  Assuming a locked console(not implausible, unless the next generation is weaker than the present one), it would take next to no bandwidth and local storage to keep a local database of 'authorized' disks, refuse to play any others, and, upon encountering a new disk, query the server to insure that it hadn't already been authorized elsewhere.
  
  If you had to work with no bandwidth at all, a modification of the disk format, allowing the first console that encounters the disk to permanently modify it in some way(eg. tiny sliver of writeable area, that the console writes a signed block of data to on first insertion(and verifies on subsequent insertions, so you can't just cover it with tape).
  
  Not 100% foolproof; but you just have to make resale uneconomic...
4. Re:Good. by cpu6502 · 2012-05-31 06:08 · Score: 2
  
  >>>That they will support physical media doesn't mean they will play used games.
  On the day that happens, such that I can no longer sell my used discs to other people, I will stop buying any games priced higher then $10. Unless it's a top title like Final Fantasy or Xenosaga*, then I'll pay the $20 greatest hits price. Why? Because I have a game collection extending from the present all the way to 1977. I can live without the new stuff, since I have tons of other games to keep me busy..... just as I rarely buy new TV shows/movies but mostly just watch the old stuff for free (antenna).
  *
  *Was this game/story ever finished, or did they just cancel it midstream?
  
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Bandwidth isn't the only problem by rokstar · 2012-05-31 05:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

Data caps present another problem. There are plenty of multi disc games out these days and the size is likely only increase as time goes on. The prospect of blowing through a significant chunk of your monthly data limit on a video game could easily discourage sales.
Very smart, consoles heavily media oriented by SuperKendall · 2012-05-31 05:57 · Score: 2

More and more game consoles are also media consoles. Shipping without some way to play Blu-Ray and DVD discs greatly reduces the utility of those boxes.
Sure lots of video is moving online, I use that myself quite a lot and it's fantastic. But I also like owning movies, and for the foreseeable future the only way to "own" a movie is on disc.
People also have a lot of existing discs they would like to keep playing...

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Re:Offer a SKU that does not have an optical drive by localman57 · 2012-05-31 06:06 · Score: 4, Funny

and how am i supposed to watch blu ray's without an optical drive?
The same way you make toast, despite the fact that your PS3 doesn't have an integrated Toaster slot.
Re:What's the problem, Sony? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-05-31 06:08 · Score: 2

The, er, superb performance of the diskless PSP Go probably didn't help. And that was a design that axed a disk that everybody loathed and mocked...
Re:There has to be another alternative. by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · 2012-05-31 06:11 · Score: 2

Given that even a 25GB BD-R(which is more expensive per unit than the mass produced pressed flavor) only costs a dollar or two, with case, the economics of using SD cards are a trifle questionable...
welp, by P-niiice · 2012-05-31 06:18 · Score: 2

Welp, looks like xbox pulled ahead in this one. Now if I can somehow purchase and play used games on it, we'll have a winner. I refuse to purchase a console where I can't play a damn used game. I'll leave consoles before doing that.
Re:Offer a SKU that does not have an optical drive by Dewin · 2012-05-31 06:26 · Score: 2

However, the way some things are headed, why have any hardware at all? The only hardware you need is a screen to display the content/produce the sound which has been generated in the cloud...

And perhaps a controller or other input device.
It's been done before...

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Content already owned by internerdj · 2012-05-31 06:27 · Score: 3, Insightful

This generation sold as a "media hub" with the capability to play the video discs, play games, and serve apps because they were so expensive. It served a host of needs out of the box. If they drop discs then I can't play my existing media out of the box. I need to drop $500 for a new console and repurchase my media? That is going to cut into the sales figures at least a little.
Re:It would be stupid not to by dreemernj · 2012-05-31 06:29 · Score: 2

I agree with basically everything you say. But I do think there is another model for game distribution they could have in mind: partial downloads on demand. You buy the game, it downloads 10% of the game and lets you start playing, as you play through it has to download more, and if you never finish the game, it never actually downloads the whole thing. I imagine MMOs already operate this way, so it's not a novel idea or anything, but using it for every game for a console could be a new take on using the technique.

I don't think this is a good idea to do for a console right now because 10% could still easily be 500MB, which can be a daunting download on PSN, even with a good connection. But I can see that being a desired approach for the future from the standpoint of distribution and piracy. People that play 15% of the game download 15% of the game and, since you download the game a chunk at a time as you play, I would imagine there is an argument to be made for how this could prevent piracy.

I don't know if it would actually put a dent in piracy, but I can imagine people convincing execs that it will.

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Re:Offer a SKU that does not have an optical drive by marcosdumay · 2012-05-31 06:39 · Score: 5, Funny

The last time I tried to watch a blu-ray disk the same way I make toast the disk didn't support it very well.

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