News - Latest Xbox 720 rumours suggest absence of Blu-ray drive

[Tpyo]

Physical media is important! How else do you justify the extortionately priced 'collectors editions'. The alternative is to try and justify charging double the price for a DL version that has few additional cosmetic skins, a virtual pet (for a game you may or may not play) and a set of blade wings (for a game you may or may not play).*



*No prizes for guessing the example. Incidentally - why is it that buying a hard copy of the game from a retailler (inc. beta code) should cost 25% less than buying a digital copy direct from the publisher? Really?

[crossy]

Physical media is important! How else do you justify the extortionately priced 'collectors editions'. The alternative is to try and justify charging double the price for a DL version that has few additional cosmetic skins, a virtual pet (for a game you may or may not play) and a set of blade wings (for a game you may or may not play).*
*No prizes for guessing the example. Incidentally - why is it that buying a hard copy of the game from a retailler (inc. beta code) should cost 25% less than buying a digital copy direct from the publisher? Really?

Good point, although perhaps the publishers will merely swap the physical gewgaws in the "collectors edition" for virtual equivalents as you suggest. E.g. maybe the Black Ops 3 "Special Edition" will ship with a wardrobe of items for your avatar, or "free" DLC for a year. Problem is that, as discussed in the EA story thread, as consumers we're too bl**dy dumb not to fall for that kind of chicanery.

Oh, and to physical v's digital, they're not the only ones doing that - Ticketmaster still charge a hefty "admin" fee for delivering (word chosen with care) tickets to use as PDF's you have to download from their site and print yourself.

[Biscuit]

Oh, and to physical v's digital, they're not the only ones doing that - Ticketmaster still charge a hefty "admin" fee for delivering (word chosen with care) tickets to use as PDF's you have to download from their site and print yourself.

I recently had to print an e-ticket for a train journey because it was the only option without additional cost. It would have cost me an additional £1 to pick it up at a self service machine...

[wombat]

No physical drive with the current state of internet access? Perhaps they will stipulate an Xbox membership that includes them laying fibre optic to your doorstep, no matter where you live.

Perhaps it's noisier then the original 360 and needs to be stored in a sound proofed basement, would explain the no media idea!

[Spud1]

Physical media is important! How else do you justify the extortionately priced 'collectors editions'. The alternative is to try and justify charging double the price for a DL version that has few additional cosmetic skins, a virtual pet (for a game you may or may not play) and a set of blade wings (for a game you may or may not play).*



*No prizes for guessing the example. Incidentally - why is it that buying a hard copy of the game from a retailler (inc. beta code) should cost 25% less than buying a digital copy direct from the publisher? Really?

It could be any big name game these days - EA do it with all their new titles now, although I suspect you are talking about any Blizzard game (given that Diablo3, Wow:Cata, Wow:MOP and SCII:HOS are all doing exactly that). I bought the MOP digital pack and felt a little cheated..so for HOS have again gone for the "traditional" collectors edition. It does come in a cool box so it will match WOL

Personally I can see Microsoft easily not including a Blu-ray drive in the next xbox and instead focussing on streaming..however they will have to include an optical drive capable of reading high capacity disks as a minimum. This may be Blu-ray, this may be another proprietary DVD modification.

The future is indeed pure digital distribution but we are simply not ready for it yet. It doesn't interest me even with high speed broadband - I like my games on physical media and am still not a fan of digital distribution. Personally I am hoping we're 5+ years away from abandoning physical media for consoles..long enough that I will be too old to care

[Lord Midas]

I have a huge dvd/bluray collection. I like the physical media. I do, however, have a dedicated bluray player for this purpose.

I also have 0.5/1mb broadband. Which barely gets me into a game of blops 2 or bf3 and just about allows my mates to understand what i'm saying over comms, because the connection is so slow it breaks up my conversations.

Purely digital media is no good for me (and many others). I bought Max Payne 3 in the Steam sale at christmas. it was 27GB is size!!! It took 1 entire week of my PC being on 24/7 to acquire. Whist that is happening I can't do anything else online. If I want to browse I have to pause the download.

BBC iPlayer is a 1 second view, 20 second buffer slide show.

The new Xbox coming without an optical drive will be a travesty. We aren't in a future where this is viable for everyone.

Oh, and relevantly, the new games will be much bigger in size. So if they actually want everyone to play these games, and not go digial only, they will have to go Bluray. It's the only physical media at the moment that can support modern blockbuster game sizes, like Max Payne 3, and keep them to one disc. Other wise we'll be having 5+ dvd games. Which will be ridiculous.

[Tpyo]

I bought the MOP digital pack and felt a little cheated..so for HOS have again gone for the "traditional" collectors edition. It does come in a cool box so it will match WOL
...
The future is indeed pure digital distribution but we are simply not ready for it yet. It doesn't interest me even with high speed broadband - I like my games on physical media and am still not a fan of digital distribution. Personally I am hoping we're 5+ years away from abandoning physical media for consoles..long enough that I will be too old to care

That's my point. Physical media is almost necessary for the existence of collector's editions. IF all DVDs/blu-rays disappeared and it swapped to a platform neutral (so everything could be in one place) steam/iTunes style library - I'd be okay with it, but I'd still want to be able to buy physical copies (if only)for collectors editions etc!

I don't really think there should be such a thing as a digital collectors edition (what exactly are you collecting?) - it is just the normal edition with some extra DLC. Ask yourself - would you pay the difference separately for just the DLC?

[MustardCutter]

No blu-ray drive isn't the same thing as no physical media games. It's time to bring back cartidges, people

[Biscuit]

Other wise we'll be having 5+ dvd games. Which will be ridiculous.

As i said above, i suspect they will be dual layer disks and install before play if that was the way it went, which is fine in my books.

[kingpotnoodle]

The foreseeable future of physical media IS Blu-Ray, whether or not there is a successor or evolution of the format remains to be seen and probably depends on how compression codecs and available bandwidth develop for streaming/download models. Blu-Ray and optical media in general might well end up a high-end niche format for enthusiasts and eventually die but right now it is fairly essential for a console with media centre aspirations, only really useful if the functionality matches a reasonable stand-alone player though, i.e. upscaling of DVDs etc.

Blu-Ray is currently the only practical way to deliver proper high definition video/sound for films to most consumers. The 50GB capacity of a regular dual-layer disk is far too much for most internets and the ISPs to cope with, few households have enough bandwidth to stream one full 1080p HD stream, let alone 4K or multiple streams to different rooms. Perhaps many people will make do with poor quality viewing from streams and downloads but if you are a movie buff and have a good AV setup (i.e. 5.1+ and a 40"+ 1080p TV) then you will still likely prefer to get your films on Blu-Ray. The "HD" quality downloads/streams from services like iTunes/Netflix might be better than the SD versions but are still heavily compressed and dependent on fat internet.

[Brewster0101]

The foreseeable future of physical media IS Blu-Ray,

+ 1

Bluray has a long way to go, the technology is yet to mature. I believe a bluray disc has been made that can hold over 150GB.

Physical media is fair fair from dead and won't be gone for at least 20 years +.

If Microsoft is excluding a Bluray drive from the 720, then they have their own drive and media format lined up.

[nacasatu]

Funny, out of all the options that might be available, the only one I'm looking forward to is the Steam Box.

[nacasatu]

...and as for BlueRay, well, in all the years it's been out, I've one BlueRay, the Bond film the PS3 was bundled with. Could not be bothered in the slightest with BlueRay.
Who cares when you can just download or stream a movie anyway.

[nacasatu]

...see, I called it Blueray instead of blu-ray - that's how much I couldn't be bothered with it, I never even bothered to check the spelling even when the article linked here had a pic of it.
It's in the past, move on, digital distribution or bust.

[Hicks12]

Dont believe MS have HD-DVDs lined up again, if they did then they could pull it off since HD-DVD has much more storage available and its cheaper to use... however I doubt they will revive that dead horse.

It would be silly to no include a Blu-Ray drive because for starters MS make money off the main codec used so the more blurays sold the more money they get, sony already pays MS royalties for this . Sony do not own Blu-ray technology, I believe Philips was the main pioneer but there is a whole consortium who founded this tech so royalties arent specifically going to Sony and it cannot be that much for a drive in this day and age, I would say £10 per drive tops!. Bluray medium is not going anywhere soon and I think people who assume physical formats are dead are really stuck in tunnel vision, no infrastructure in England can support that many people streaming Blu-ray equivalent picture and AUDIO quality, cannot believe people like netflix while providing an awesome service still have no HD audio only 2 channel! HD Audio is certainly a big bonus on blu-rays and I would not like to give that up. I reckon if we all were streaming 50GBs of data VM and BT would crawl to a halt, maybe in 10 years when they both get their act together we shall see this become reality.

[kalniel]

It wouldn't at all surprise me if it doesn't have a Blu-ray drive, but it's still going to need some kind of high-capacity optical format; they can't possibly stick to DVD, every game would end up being spread across multiple discs.

We coped with multiple floppies for years.