Moore: Games industry is a decade away from saying goodbye to physical discs

[Zeus]

EA's Peter Moore has revealed that the games industry is at least TEN years away from parting with the physical disc. This thought then leads us onto what shall the next generation of consoles possess? Will it be just internet connectivity or something else?

<blockquote>Then Moore said, "[The industry is] at least a decade away from saying goodbye to a physical disc. The more important question is what does the next generation of console look like?" Will it have a disc drive or just anInternet connection? Whatever it is, says Moore, it'll probably be Microsoft that makes the jump first.</blockquote>

News Source: <a href="http://kotaku.com/5384537/talking-points-brought-to-you-mostly-by-peter-moore" target="_blank">Kotaku</a>

[showstopper]

Well if they still want to charge £40+ a game when you dont have any physical media, then I wont be buying one.

[tech3475]

I they want me to go DD only then they must lower the price of things.

They are charging £20 for old games which I can pick for a fiver in a shop.

I have dealt with DD retail games through steam but I only ever buy on the weekend deal which saves me money.

[jackoneil2000]

I think that is a very foolish predication as a lot of ISP providers are constantly lowering their bandwidth usage to ridiculous levels like 60GB/month. They are all doing this in an oligopolistic fashion which only begs to ask, why is there so much secret collusion and disinformation in the ISP industry? Nobody will want to waste MANY expensive GB of their bandwidth on a single game and forget about multiple games in a single month. Unless this changes physical media is here to stay.

Usage Based Billing is destroying the digital marketplace and abusing consumers' internet requirements & dependencies on various internet dependent services.

Unlimited Internet for all.

[nestortoy@hotma]

Physical Data will not go away soon. Next consoles will still have DVD drive. I wonder what Microsoft is going to use, Will they finally give in and get Blu-Ray drives or stick to double layer dvd's and release each games like in 5 dvds'?? only time will tell.

I do believe their will be hell of a lot more stuff to download... like more real full games.

[DanASBO]

10 years? Probably, if not sooner. FTTC/H is coming very soon and we'll all have that unlimited bandwidth at stupidly fast speeds, in the UK at least. 2012-13 for the network, another few years for uptake and we're there. Welcome to Digital Britain.

[jackoneil2000]

I don't see the point in any new internet technology if it only means making internet access increasingly expensive just to have usage limits at par with realistic user bandwidth usage requirements. Its way outside of the affordability bracket for most people.

[kcvfr400]

10 years? Probably, if not sooner. FTTC/H is coming very soon and we'll all have that unlimited bandwidth at stupidly fast speeds, in the UK at least. 2012-13 for the network, another few years for uptake and we're there. Welcome to Digital Britain.

You don't paint a correct picture about the U.K. there. It won't be 2012-13 when its finished as very few get the 20Mb/s speeds over bt lines now and even then its capped mostly and cable is useless as they give you fast speeds but if you use it they slow your speeds right down.

So as it is very few get unlimited useage and thats been in decline for years so leaves the 2012-13 timeline to be unrealistic as surely speeds would have already gone up for lots of us and not few and more would have access to unlimited broadband useage. Until recently my own broadband had slashed in speed as more of my neighbours take up broadband so going from 6Mb/s down to just above 3Mb/s in 4 yrs. Thats the wrong direction to meet 2012 targets. Luckily my current ip now has control of my line in the exchange so that has reversed to back to 7Mb/s but still its not gone only in the right direction it should have from the start.

So ten yrs from a U.K. perspective sounds about right and still we need to see the price drop on direct downloads to reflect the lack of retail costs and previous share of the profits by the shops that won't be there.

[DanASBO]

You don't paint a correct picture about the U.K. there. It won't be 2012-13 when its finished as very few get the 20Mb/s speeds over bt lines now and even then its capped mostly and cable is useless as they give you fast speeds but if you use it they slow your speeds right down.

So as it is very few get unlimited useage and thats been in decline for years so leaves the 2012-13 timeline to be unrealistic as surely speeds would have already gone up for lots of us and not few and more would have access to unlimited broadband useage. Until recently my own broadband had slashed in speed as more of my neighbours take up broadband so going from 6Mb/s down to just above 3Mb/s in 4 yrs. Thats the wrong direction to meet 2012 targets. Luckily my current ip now has control of my line in the exchange so that has reversed to back to 7Mb/s but still its not gone only in the right direction it should have from the start.

So ten yrs from a U.K. perspective sounds about right and still we need to see the price drop on direct downloads to reflect the lack of retail costs and previous share of the profits by the shops that won't be there.

BT say there 21CN network will be ready by 2012 (probably a few years behind schedule being BT), VM are already using FTTx, 10 years is probably a better bet but it could be sooner.