will there ever be a console with SSD-ROM-based physical games?

Submitted by andimuhammadrifki t3_zmjcet in consoles

as we know, after Bluray disc, there seem to be no breakthrough in physical games storage. most (if not all) games are now bought digitally and stored in internal storage (hard drives and SSDs). but sometimes, the capacity of internal drives is limited (only up to 1 TB in current generation while games now have size/capacity of around 100 to 200 GB). so should we just go back to the way it is supposed to be, but making it more modern (having physical games in the current, much-faster SSD M.2 NVMe, and making internal drive solely the place of saving system data from the games)? this will also be helpful for users living in places with poor internet connection speed.

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PositionLower2243 t1_j0bl8ln wrote

I'm a physical media guy so I'd be happy to see something like this but its not gonna happen and getting less likely each year... Price mainly, the cost of including a ssd with each purchase is huge, on top of the case and the prints that the physical media comes in/with, Vs the cost of providing a DL for the game. Also I guess the amount of people having poor internet decreases each year. Plus the big companies love control and money, so being able to lock customers out of their games and making them buy them again is profitable. Many more reasons am sure!

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andimuhammadrifki OP t1_j0btaml wrote

of course someone is gonna pop up the issue of the SSD production cost. it was similar to the case of cartridges back then (more expensive than CD-ROM at the time), but the difference is that SSD, of course, has more capacity (up to 4 TB, although only the 256 GB and 512 GB variants will most likely be used for modern physical games) than that of the latest optical disc technology (4K UHD Bluray, with "only" up to 100 GB), while cartridges back then had less capacity ("only" up to 64 MB) than that of CD-ROM (which is up to 600 MB).

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Brainvillage t1_j0bvb5x wrote

>of course someone is gonna pop up the issue of the SSD production cost. it was similar to the case of cartridges back then (more expensive than CD-ROM at the time), but the difference is that SSD, of course, has more capacity (up to 4 TB, although only the 256 GB and 512 GB variants will most likely be used for modern physical games)

From a quick look on Amazon, a cheap 256GB NVMe is minimum $40. So, add that cost on to the price of the game, are you willing to spend $110 on a new game?

It's not a terrible idea, but costs need to come down quite a bit before it's realistic.

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Kear_Bear_3747 t1_j0cjufa wrote

The way forward is still digital, but with better storage management. The way I have things situated I have all of my games stored and updated with one console on three HDDs which can then be sent out to other consoles on my network.

My setup is as follows… Living Room: Xbox Series X with two external HDDs (One for Xbox One and previous, one dedicated for S|X titles which are massive). I shuttle new gen titles back and forth from the internal SDD and SX dedicated HDD.

Work Station: Xbox Series S (receives games from SX via Network Transfer)

Bedroom: Xbox One X (receives games from SX via Network Transfer)

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RollLocal1804 t1_j0eih4y wrote

There are quadruple-layer blue-ray discs that hold 128GB now. A blue-ray disc is 4.7 inches, so if you had larger discs of say 7 inches you could more than double that to at least 256GB easily.

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andimuhammadrifki OP t1_j0fkj7p wrote

but the speed. an optical disc doesn't have the same read-write speed as that of an NVMe PCIe SSD. what we (or at least I) want is a non-volatile storage with high speed, used for physical games.

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RollLocal1804 t1_j0g4jtv wrote

OK, well just use large 256GB USB flash drives then. But they'd cost an extra $10-$20 per game. Otherwise you could install games from disc to an SSD in the console to avoid using the internet.

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andimuhammadrifki OP t1_j0gl2d5 wrote

  1. USB flash drive? are you sure it can get at least 5 GB/s for read/write speed? for the next generation of console (in around 2026; PS6 or whatever Xbox's next console is), most probably it needs higher speed; maybe 10, 15 or even 20 GB/s.
  2. USB flash drive has too small form factor for physical game storage, making it easier to lose. that's why I prefer NVMe PCIe SSD because the physical size is still large enough.
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