Disc Drives Are Obsolete, Here’s the Better Alternative

SuperC

SuperC

Member
This idea came to me while thinking about the hardware costs of the next consoles and how companies could reduce those costs without going only digital just to increase profit.

As we all know, discs don't really serve much of a purpose anymore other than acting as a key to launch the game. The actual game data is installed on the hard drive or SSD, and sometimes the Blu-ray disc contains only a few megabytes while the rest has to be downloaded online.

Next-gen consoles should drop disc drives entirely and offer them as an optional accessory for players who own older physical discs. That leads to a problem though—there's still demand for physical media, and major retailers won't be happy selling consoles that cut them out of the game sales market

The solution? Cartridge-style game key cards
Not for storing the entire game, but simply as keys to unlock it. Cartridge readers are cheap, compact, and adding one to a console wouldn't increase costs much. And since these cartridges only act as keys, they wouldn't need to be large or expensive.

This way, retailers still have physical games to sell, the physical market remains alive, and consoles are freed from the burden of disc drives. Plus, cartridges are smaller, more practical, and more durable than discs, they could essentially last forever
 
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I hate that Switch 2 went this way, and if the rest of the industry follows suit then physical games will be well and truly dead
 
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We went did that :poop: years ago on PC... it didn't work out.

Magic No GIF by Morphin
 
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That doesn't really make sense OP.
A cartridge that just has a key on it still isn't going to be cheaper than a disc with a key on it. What is the point for them to go down that route?
 
you know what is cheaper for companies ?

Full Digital, it ll drive the costs of distribution to ZERO and they can still charge full price like as it was a physical copy.
 
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SuperC said:
Not for storing the entire game, but simply as keys to unlock it.
Click to expand...
I have a question: how is the data cap situation in the US right now? Because one of the main pushbacks regarding XBONE was that people simply do not have enough monthly bandwidth to download full games. Now a few years later new AAA games are easily 70-100GB at launch.
Last time I had a data cap in Europe was in early 2000s, so the problem doesn't exist for me.
 
SuperC said:
The solution? Cartridge-style game key cards
Not for storing the entire game, but simply as keys to unlock it. Cartridge readers are cheap, compact, and adding one to a console wouldn't increase costs much. And since these cartridges only act as keys, they wouldn't need to be large or expensive.
Click to expand...
Wow, why did nobody think about this before
 
Sakura said:
That doesn't really make sense OP.
A cartridge that just has a key on it still isn't going to be cheaper than a disc with a key on it. What is the point for them to go down that route?
Click to expand...

A 1GB cartridge would be cheaper than a Blu-ray disc. On top of that, Blu-ray drives are bulky and expensive, unlike cartridge readers
 
SuperC said:
A 1GB cartridge would be cheaper than a Blu-ray disc. On top of that, Blu-ray drives are bulky and expensive, unlike cartridge readers
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A disc drive isn't expensive. The BOM for a disc drive on the PS5 is maybe 20 to 30 bucks. They can sell you a digital only PS6 for 600 dollars and one with a disc drive for 700 dollars. They aren't really losing money from the disc drive, if anything they make money off it.
And if all they cared about doing was putting a key on a disc they don't need 100GB capacity ultra bluray discs or whatever, they could just use whatever cheapest disc type they want and throw it on there. A 1GB cartridge would not be cheaper.
 
Dongles are considered bad because they add expense for very little added value to copy protection and they are just a pain as people lose them and don't want to be bothered with them when they are obviously not needed.
 
That's still digital distribution with extra steps. Going full digital removes a lot of useless fat for the publisher & user. Besides, the discs are already cheaper and they can still contain data to reduce download times for people living in developing countries with data caps.
 
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Cyberpunkd said:
I have a question: how is the data cap situation in the US right now? Because one of the main pushbacks regarding XBONE was that people simply do not have enough monthly bandwidth to download full games. Now a few years later new AAA games are easily 70-100GB at launch.
Last time I had a data cap in Europe was in early 2000s, so the problem doesn't exist for me.
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There are an estimated 325,000 people in the US that are affected by AOL shutting down their dial-up internet service. A lot of people rely on 5G or cellular service for their home internet, which usually doesn't have data caps but will start slowing down to 4G or 3G speeds after you hit a certain amount.

SuperC said:
A 1GB cartridge would be cheaper than a Blu-ray disc. On top of that, Blu-ray drives are bulky and expensive, unlike cartridge readers
Click to expand...
What's seemingly extra silly with these key cards is that Nintendo is now obligated to host these digital games for seemingly forever. Every time someone pops in their Yakuza 0 cartridge to download the game, Nintendo has to pay for 50 GB of bandwidth delivery to the end user, until the end of time. At some point, there is a break-even point for Nintendo where it would have been cheaper to shell out the $16 or whatever material costs.
 
Or keep the drive.
I dont care if the full game is on the disc to be honest. I own the key in my hand- i can sell the key, borrow, share it around the multiple consoles in my home.

Im not here for discless convenience because i dont wanna swap a disc.
 
jshackles said:
What's seemingly extra silly with these key cards is that Nintendo is now obligated to host these digital games for seemingly forever. Every time someone pops in their Yakuza 0 cartridge to download the game, Nintendo has to pay for 50 GB of bandwidth delivery to the end user, until the end of time.
Click to expand...
Until the end of time seems optimistic. I hope you're right, but I'm more inclined to believe that by 2050 Nintendo will have dropped support for this.
 
Even if physical media no longer has the actual game data on it and simply becomes a physical DRM, I don't see why we shouldn't just keep using discs. A bluray drive isn't going to add that much cost to the system, and you also get the added bonus of being able to watch bluray movies with your console.

Ideally I'd like the game content to be on the actual disc, but I think physical media still has an appeal even if it basically just works as an activation key. You can still resell it, trade it, buy it used and, maybe most importantly, get your games from different stores and vendors and take advantage of their sales and promotions instead of depending entirely on a single monopolistic digital store.
 
All platforms must stood together and buy these stores so they find deals based on their geographic locations. The point is moving our asses so they reward us for doing that.
 
Am I dreaming or is OP just trying to sell Nintendo's latest "invention" as his own idea? What is happening here? Is it sarcasm? I don't get it.
 
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Disc drives aren't ideal for portable consoles due to the mechanical nature of the drive. Physical movement of the disc is an onerous energy requirement, even if the disc only has to spin up a few times a play session. Furthermore, minidvd type spindle devices are limited in capacity due to the exponential scaling of datacapacity when the disc size itself scales up. A disc half the diameter will not old half the data. More like (120mm diameter)4.7gb to (80mm diameter)1.4gb. See how capacity takes a dive with only 1/3 reduction in size. This is simple physics. The most data can be stored in the outer bands.

With flash memory on a cartridge there are no moving parts and thus maximum energy efficiency is reached.

So cartridge is the way to go if you do physical on a handheld. I would actually recommend just SD Cards instead of cartridges but I understand this would be difficult for some people and cause choking deaths along with damaged games very frequently, so they need the proprietary nature of the switch cartridges to make them e for everyone.

Switch 2's cartridges that play the game from the cart are just more robust proprietary version of more expensive and faster MicroSD Express cards that are sprayed with bitterant to keep kids/dogs from choking/chewing them. The Switch 2 in general is a stronger machine which can handle better textures and requires higher capacity/speed to fit/play in/on the cart than Switch 1.

Publishers are loathe to spend money on physical so instead of investing in higher capacity carts, most will opt for lower capacity or slower carts that only install/license rather than run the game natively from the cart. The cost of manufacturing the higher end switch 2 cartridges with the capacity needed adds significant cost to every printing of a physical game. This creates a risk for the developer since unsold copies will now have significant costs associated with them.
 
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SuperC said:
A 1GB cartridge would be cheaper than a Blu-ray disc. On top of that, Blu-ray drives are bulky and expensive, unlike cartridge readers
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No… Blu-Ray, even 4K is like $0.50 to press in Bulk.

Edit: Overall though even this "key-card" method is preferable to pure digital. At least you could resell and shouldn't need to logon to PSN to download (if they do it correctly).

So that coupled with optional disk add-on would not be terrible. Still not particularly good.
 
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I do wonder if someone ever tried to put a mini disk and then a disk reader inside a cartridge to increase it's possible storage.
 
Unknown? said:
Why? Netflix has a shitty bitrate. 4k streaming has less detail than a 1080 blu ray.
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Exactly, many DVDs played on a player with a decent upscaler will look better than streaming "HD" versions. And as you said "4K" looks worse than a 1080p disk.

And then there's the whole Netflix's license expires and the movie goes away versus owning the disk.
 
I'd gladly go back to tanky SNES / N64 sized cartridges if it meant I'd never have to deal with the modern poorly manufactured and easy to damage game cases. Zero quality control in going on at the factories making them. My favorites are the ones where the game artwork is placed so wrong in the case or is the wrong size for it that the spine area at the top or bottom gets ripped under the shrink wrap. That defective bullshit shouldn't be allowed to be sold in stores.
 
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