PS3 MMO's will be.

If you mean PC games, then perhaps eventually.  PC games that require a blu ray drive in order to play the game are at least several years away, though, as hardly any computers have a blu ray drive.  That won't change until most computers have blu ray drives, and that won't happen until you can build a blu ray/DVD/CD combo drive for about the same price as a DVD/CD combo drive.

If the question is whether you should get a blu ray drive in a new computer, the answer is no, unless you want to watch blu ray movies on your computer.

Yeah I'd give it a few years and games will probably still be on dvd and blu-ray.

The average Compaq or HP will have to ship with them as default drives before they bother, I'd say.

Doubtful, Sony still has tight reins on the technology and there's not much demand. As soon as we get better internet technology in a few years, we won't be using optical disks of any kind.

I think they will in a couple of years. Game companies will probably ease into bluray like they did with DVDs, i still remember having the option to by a box with 4 CDs in or the option to buy the game with just 1 dvd disc. They might do the same with bluray. Have boxes with 4 DVDs or a box with just 1 bluray disc

in 3-5 years ... Yes

Once it becomes the standard media then it should become the primary media for everything

Blu-ray players are supposed to drop below 100 dollars this christmas .... so that should help alot.

Blu-Ray is the next generation of disk media, unless solid state drive based technology takes over. There are already many programs (CA antivirus) that can be purchased on a jump drive. At this point it is significantly cheaper to produce disk based tech than to produce solid state tech.

Sony won the Blu-Ray vs HD battle...... so it shouldn't be long.   

Originally posted by Harabeck

Doubtful, Sony still has tight reins on the technology and there's not much demand. As soon as we get better internet technology in a few years, we won't be using optical disks of any kind.

It certainly seems to me that Sony is dropping the ball on blu ray. It should have been much bigger by now. I am doubtful about PC games going blu-ray as it seems easier to download it digitally. But I don't agree that we won't ever use optical disks - or rather at least there will always be some need for physical storage that you can bring with you, especially considering the policing of the Internet and the fight against downloading. If the music/film industry succeeds in barring users who download stuff from using the Internet, then there is even more need of offline storage.

Too bad for the movie/music industry that some time in the future a complete music and film library can be stored in something of the size of a fingernail. ... Police that!

Originally posted by Harabeck

Doubtful, Sony still has tight reins on the technology and there's not much demand. As soon as we get better internet technology in a few years, we won't be using optical disks of any kind.

"As soon as we get better internet technology in a few years"

Maybie in 20 years or so. None of the major providers have any plans to change their network structure any time soon. Fiber is not coming, and wireless is in it's infancy.

OTC purchases will have to have media for awhile. for now the next step is Blu-Ray. I am pulling for it to fail since I would like to use something more permament. Disks get scratched.

Solid state is protected, requires no moving parts, and is nearly instant. Nentendo has been using cartridge technology for years. As far as consoles go I would love to see them move to solid state tech .... i'm tired of buying new media for a game every time i scratch a disk, or my X-box falls over. The drive players would be insanly small... it would be so cool. We'll see.  

Originally posted by chesiremorph

Blu-Ray is the next generation of disk media, unless solid state drive based technology takes over. There are already many programs (CA antivirus) that can be purchased on a jump drive. At this point it is significantly cheaper to produce disk based tech than to produce solid state tech.

Sony won the Blu-Ray vs HD battle...... so it shouldn't be long.   

Solid state drives have nothing to do with this.  Solid state drives are essentially replacements for hard drives, while blu ray is essentially a replacement for DVD.  Selling games on solid state drives would make about as much sense as selling them on hard drives, which is to say, none at all.  Trying to use a DVD or blu ray disk in place of a hard drive would make even less sense, as it would be way, way too slow.

Remember that it took about a year after DVDs were available at retail for them to really become standard as a way to distribute games.  We're only about three years into that process on blu ray.
 

Originally posted by Quizzical

Originally posted by chesiremorph

Blu-Ray is the next generation of disk media, unless solid state drive based technology takes over. There are already many programs (CA antivirus) that can be purchased on a jump drive. At this point it is significantly cheaper to produce disk based tech than to produce solid state tech.

Sony won the Blu-Ray vs HD battle...... so it shouldn't be long.   

 

Solid state drives have nothing to do with this.  Solid state drives are essentially replacements for hard drives, while blu ray is essentially a replacement for DVD.  Selling games on solid state drives would make about as much sense as selling them on hard drives, which is to say, none at all.  Trying to use a DVD or blu ray disk in place of a hard drive would make even less sense, as it would be way, way too slow.

Remember that it took about a year after DVDs were available at retail for them to really become standard as a way to distribute games.  We're only about three years into that process on blu ray.
 

nentendo has been using solid state technology for years. Hell Atari used solid state technology. Solid state tech is not just for hard drive tech.... it is hopefully the next step in the evolution. AS I SAID.... you can already buy software on jump drives.... there already using it .....dont be afraid of the word solid state... it does not mean hard drive.... it's a memory technology.... just like disks...

Personally.  I am leaning to games utilizing downloads or USB disks before support of blu-ray.  USB disks transfer data faster, can be n-sized, portable, easy to store, and harder to break.

And they're also a lot more expensive.  If a game takes 50 GB (the capacity of a blu ray disk) and you want a USB flash drive that can hold that 50 GB, you're looking at well over $100.  Try to sell a game on that and you're well over $100 before the company that makes the game gets a dime.  The reason optical media are used in the first place is that they are cheap ways to store large amounts of data. 

Will those prices come down with time?  Sure.  But if ten years from now, the choice is between a $10 USB flash drive and a $1 blu ray disk, games still aren't going to come on the USB flash drive.

Maybe 4 years ago.  Right now a 250 gig USB Disk costs $75 for a consumer, even less for an OEM, and much less if mass produced.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010170522%201309439130&bop=And&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

You find them cheaper somewhere else, I take it?
 

Yes PC games will indeed be blu-Ray eventually. This question is like asking if games would ever leave the 3 1/2 floppy drive to go to cd/dvd drives, and how did that turn out? Blu-Ray drives are going to have to come down in price some more and its going to have to be a standard dill on peoples computer. Its hard to say how long its going to take Id guess were at least 3 years from it even slightly starting.

I didnt spend a whole lot on my PC's blu ray drive. I probably jumped the gun on it, dont really need it yet. 3 years down the road for an avid PC gamer building a PC Id recomend including the Blu-ray then for sure.

EDIT: And you wont see games sold on a USB stick, it'll be digital DL only before that happens. Which is probably what will eventually happing anyways, then you can burn a copy of it to ur blu-ray disc if you choose.

Quizzical, I didn't say a Flash USB Disk.  I said a USB Disk which can pretty much be any external hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136227

Considering you can buy these retail for about $70.  You can mass produce them cheaper.

 I think solid state is the way to do, prices are dropping down fast and to me its a much smarter way to go. I work in a cinema as a projectionist and we are starting to see digital films being delivered on solid state technology and for me its much more streamlined and easier to put encryption tech on it.

 you  go more chance of playing ff14 on blue ray lol

by the way how fast is a max read speed of blue ray vs a hard drive

ps used to have no hard drive a the disk was the reader instead of hdd 

is it faster read on blue ray then say 7200 rpm hdd

mine only read around 35 to 40 mb/sec ,my hard drive

Originally posted by Cleffy

Quizzical, I didn't say a Flash USB Disk.  I said a USB Disk which can pretty much be any external hard drive.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136227

Considering you can buy these retail for about $70.  You can mass produce them cheaper.

Now you're going to use traditional rotating platter hard drives?  That's spectacularly worse than using a USB flash drive, even.  Try to find a new rotating platter hard drive for $30 or less.  Any hard drive, desktop or notebook or server, internal or external, SATA or USB or eSATA or SCSI, any capacity, whatever.  If there were demand for enormous numbers of 1 GB hard drives at retail for $30, it's likely that no one would bother to produce them because it wouldn't be profitable; even if someone did, the threshold below which they wouldn't is surely not far below $30.  Hard drives have been around for decades, so I don't see that changing in the near future.

The problem is that hard drives don't scale down very well to make a very small one for very cheap.  Too many of the components are fixed materials that don't scale by anything analogous to Moore's Law.  Capacity does, but there are too high of fixed costs in other parts that would make even a theoretical 0 GB hard drive vastly too expensive to ship one with every copy of a game.  It's about the same reason that power supplies and computer cases don't become exponentially cheaper as time passes--or, for that matter, bananas and cucumbers.

There's also the problem that rotating platter hard drives are fragile.  Western Digital will sell you a much larger and much faster internal hard drive than the one you linked at a much lower price.  Any external hard drive has to be designed to withstand a lot of jostling, and that increases the costs considerably.  This is one of the reasons why USB flash drives are commonly used to transport data and external hard drives are not:  you can shake a USB flash drive, drop it, or whatever, and it will be fine, unlike a rotating platter hard drive.  Indeed, a DVD is a lot more durable than a hard drive, too.

A DVD avoids this.  Instead of having to spend $30 or more for every copy of a game you make, the costs of burning a DVD are probably under $1.  I don't know what the costs of burning a blu ray disk are, and while I'd expect them to be higher than a DVD, it's still vastly cheaper than the cheapest rotating platter hard drive.  That's why optical media is used:  it's dramatically cheaper, and the performance is good enough.