Are next-gen consoles going to be 'no optical disc'?

If you a fan of game discs in their current form or a collector, then you probably won’t be glad to hear that even a industry veteran has said that it “wouldn’t surprise” him if the next-gen consoles would operate without discs.

[stonecold3]

already stated that the ps4 will have optical disk if everything goes download then im going to finish of gaming forever been gaming since nes super nes master system mega drive saturn ps1 n64 ps2 xbox1 game cube ps3 360

[r0gueZA]

I wont be chuffed either, SA speeds suck!

[chazjamie]

oh god no. if this happens, then i cant game. the speeds are terrible. playing online is already a luck thing. downloading is a sleep thing.

[Jdoki]

Consoles are not ready to move to a download only model.

Broadband speeds are not fast enough (although this could be mitigated by pre-loading, like Steam does).

Not everybody has broadband - so why cut off potential customers.

Cost to manufacturer to supply a large enough hard drive to hold a decent amount of next gen games. - If games continue to grow in size and complexity (which is a safe assumption) the balance between production cost and hard drive size will raise costs for the manufacturer which will need to be passed on tot he consumer.

Gamers still seem fairly attached to physical media (as shown by the increase in Collectors and Special edition releases)

I can see downloading becoming much more prevalent in the next gen (especially with Steam coming to PlayStation), but there will definitely be an optical drive on the next PlayStation, and probably the next Xbox

[chazjamie]

its not steam. its steamworks. but i understand what you saying. i would hate to download games. that means if i wanted to share my game with a friend, he would have to download it for himself or from my account. hopefully, if this idea ever becomes a reality, you can 'copy' everything on an ex hdd. but that sounds terrible. i like my disks and cartridges.