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Which storage medium is better for gaming - BluRay or flash?

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I have games that say you are wrong. Nintendo games for example. There will be internet available emulators by the time ROM dies, I have all my old game systems, and yet play ROM's on emulators that use a whole 10% of one core of my CPU and 2% of the low power state of my GPU.

Isn't the virtual console on the Wii and WiiU a stunning testament to the fact that emulation has a market?
 
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Mussels

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I didn't say I liked the idea of a 100% digital distribution model. In fact, I think the idea will contribute to a severe recession in the gaming industry.

EA has paved the way for "pay me money, and you have the rights to utilize my software service unless I see fit to take it away from you" model. Don't believe me, then you should seriously consider reading that EULA you click through. The first company to go belly-up in digital distribution will have to settle some dangerous questions. Do consumers get the rights to their digital content, as if it was physical? Do any of the consumer purchases travel when hardware is changed? What becomes of games when server support is pulled? None of these issues have an easy solution, and more importantly the precedent will determine how the industry responds in the future.

Whether we like it or not, the age of physical media is passing. We already know that discs can't last anywhere near as long as carts. We know that more money can be made by removing the physical retailers from the distribution equation. Our only real question is when will most people have cheap and reliable high speed internet. That will determine when the always online console is the "only" solution. Until that day, consumers have the reasonable assumption that their consoles will be useable anywhere, which currently requires physical media.

when gas powered games/relic went offline, they released one final patch and moved their games over to steam, and steams matchmaking service. thats a good example of a game powerhouse going under, and 'saving' their games.
 
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when gas powered games/relic went offline, they released one final patch and moved their games over to steam, and steams matchmaking service. thats a good example of a game powerhouse going under, and 'saving' their games.

This I concede. What I have problems with is a 100% digital distribution platform going under.

Relic sold physical media. They made an awesome choice to go over to Steam, but even if they dissolved physical media would still exist. Thousands of games on Steam and Origin have never had a physical release. If your Steam or Origin account was suspended, the EULA basically gives you the finger and a smile. You've technically paid for a service, and not a media product.

Now, Steam has indicated that if their service dissolves they'll announce it and allow people a means for downloading their games prior to shutdown. EA has indicated that if their service dissolves tomorrow it's not their problem, because you don't own anything by their terms. I fear other digital distribution platforms will take EA's cues, and make their sales functionally a lease to use software.

Gaming on consoles shouldn't be about how long a console is supported by the manufacturer. My SNES still works. My ancient Gameboy still works. If I bought a GBA tomorrow I could use any of the games I could find with it. Losing physical media means that this is effectively gone. Doubt this conclusion? Fire up your Xbox and see if all of that online content is still there. When our modern games require connectivity just to function (DRM, mandatory check-ins, and "required" connection for functionality) then we lose the game the second they lose connectivity. This sucks for PC games, and it does happen to them. At the same time I've still got my Tiberian Sun discs, and occasionally play LAN sessions. Consoles being more like computers with planned obsolescence and no backward compatibility is what concerns me most with the death of physical media. Consoles are generally not hardware compatible from one generation to the next, so completely losing physical media means games can't just run a decade later.

The world is a better place with Psychonauts and Beyond Good and Evil. Both games are still playable a decade later, can be found, and aren't on any consoles in this generation. They both play well on my PC. When a console store can at least match Steam, then I'll be more accepting of them. As they are, they are a sure path to failure. Ask the Wii how it has a virtual console, in a virtual console, and a Wii emulated console. That kind of poor service, and mixed signals, is the death knell of an online market.
 
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All media disks including BR are going the way of VHS. Everything will be cloud based. You wont even be downloading. I give it 10 years
 
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Everything will be cloud based. You wont even be downloading.
This is contradictory... If everything will be cloud based then you will be downloading (A LOT)...
 

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This is contradictory... If everything will be cloud based then you will be downloading (A LOT)...

he meant that it wont be locally stored, just streamed.

yes, technically its still downloading.
 
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All media disks including BR are going the way of VHS. Everything will be cloud based. You wont even be downloading. I give it 10 years

Don't like the sound of that.
 

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Don't like the sound of that.

we're already there. buy a game, bring it home - patch away. what difference does it make to most people if the whole game takes a few hours longer, but no one has to leave the house or wait for shipping?
 
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we're already there. buy a game, bring it home - patch away. what difference does it make to most people if the whole game takes a few hours longer, but no one has to leave the house or wait for shipping?

I wouldn't say were already there, downloading patches or DLC's isn't exactly a game being cloud based.

I can understand why most people would rather just stream than actually go outside, even if I don't agree.
 

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I wouldn't say were already there, downloading patches or DLC's isn't exactly a game being cloud based.

I can understand why most people would rather just stream than actually go outside, even if I don't agree.

we're already there for online content, just not the streaming. due to latency streaming will never happen.
 
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That's more than flash memory...
Wrong; if you read my post, flash memory has as much as 50 million years life span or more and this is increasing exponentially every year.
Whereas BluRay discs will always be stuck at 10-15 years.

See my previous post:

...

Actually, discs do have a life span, and it is very short compared to flash memory. According to the official BluRay website, BluRay discs have a 10-15 year life span.
http://www.blu-raydisc.com/en/aboutblu-ray/whatisblu-raydisc/bdkeycharacteristics.aspx

Compare this to flash memory, which is only getting longer and longer.
In 2009, a record was achieved with 1 million write cycles. (link)
Only 3 years later, in 2012, 100 million write cycles was achieved. This is 100 times the life span in only 3 years. (link)

For reference, 1 million cycles, on the low end, will last approximately 27 years according to this article. For moderate use, that could multiple by as much as 10 times or more. Assume moderate use at 10 times 27 years, 1 million write cycles will last 270 years, whereas 100 million will last 27,000 years. For high use, current technology puts it at 2,700 years. (27 years was only for 1 million which was years ago, because it's now more than 100 million write cycles). Also keep in mind that 100 million cycles was a couple years ago. We might be at 10 billion cycles by next year, which for moderate use will be 2,700,000 (2.7 MILLION) years.

...
 
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if you read my post, flash memory has as much as 50 million years life span or more and this is increasing exponentially every year.
Maybe in theory, my flash memory devices are dying in 1-2 years in practice... Blu-ray is 10-15, so it wins!
 
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50 million years+ is the life span for flash.
OK, so what should I do with my dead devices? Pick their flash memory and implement in a new hardware to be read again?

Unfortunately, I do not have resources for this... Or they make the whole thing more durable or I'm not going to throw my money in the garbage anymore.
 
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OK, so what should I do with my dead devices? Pick their flash memory and implement in a new hardware to be read again?

Unfortunately, I do not have resources for this... Or they make the whole thing more durable or I'm not going to throw my money in the garbage anymore.

Your dead devices are cheap crap. They won't use that cheap crap for video games.
 
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Cheap as in quality.
No, they were all from "famous" brands awarded with this and that... And bla-bla-bla.

The really cheap/low quality ones died within few months, not even close to 1 year.
 

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Pull out your popcorn, everyone! The battle of the trolls is at hand! Why argue with them when they argue amongst themselves. Oh wait, because they're both wrong. :laugh:

How long flash lives depends on what you're doing with it. If you're reading all day long from it and not writing anything, it very well could out-last a Blu-ray disc. HOWEVER, that entirely depends on the ambient conditions in which optical discs are stored. The optical disc will degrade more quickly when exposed to heat, humidity, uv radiation, etc. where flash is more resilient and won't degrade as quickly.

Both Blu-ray and flash will probably last 15 years if they're used properly and not abused.

The real issue comes down to cost, not longevity. Flash storage is significantly more expensive to produce than optical media. The industry (as Ford said,) already has the hardware to implement physical DRM to discs which would be costly (if economically viable in the first place) to do with Flash.
 
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Both Blu-ray and flash will probably last 15 years if they're used properly and not abused.
Blu-ray could last much more under my cares... But flash, never (it destroys itself).
 
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Pull out your popcorn, everyone! The battle of the trolls is at hand! Why argue with them when they argue amongst themselves. Oh wait, because they're both wrong. :laugh:

How long flash lives depends on what you're doing with it. If you're reading all day long from it and not writing anything, it very well could out-last a Blu-ray disc. HOWEVER, that entirely depends on the ambient conditions in which optical discs are stored. The optical disc will degrade more quickly when exposed to heat, humidity, uv radiation, etc. where flash is more resilient and won't degrade as quickly.

Both Blu-ray and flash will probably last 15 years if they're used properly and not abused.

The real issue comes down to cost, not longevity. Flash storage is significantly more expensive to produce than optical media. The industry (as Ford said,) already has the hardware to implement physical DRM to discs which would be costly (if economically viable in the first place) to do with Flash.


I tend to agree with some of your points, but not others. The reason that DRM is easier to implement on optical media is because the reader has to be something that people can access. I can buy a Blu-Ray today, and play it on my 3 year old player. My region locked and copy protected DVDs from 2001 still play on my current hardware. The second that people get the disc, they begin trying to crack the encryption. This battle always ends with the "pirate" winning, and the DRM in shambles. This is what happens when you allow people with immense reserves of talent and computational brute force to have physical media.

Flash is much harder to crack. Well designed hardware, built with several layers of security, will beat the crap out of any DRM they can put on an optical disk. If you don't believe this, then I challenge you to explain the point of a dongle or why anyone has hardware encryption on HDDs. Well designed hardware is still capable of being hacked, but the barrier to entry is huge. No home hacker has the means to get nitric acid (to burn off the shells of chips), has a microscope to view the layout, and has the knowledge to revers engineer protocols.


Where we tend to agree is the price. Software developers, or at least those people in charge of "protecting" software, are idiots. They pay DRM peddlers millions of dollars for their "protection," which always amounts to theoretical prevention from hackers. No results are actually guaranteed, and the budget is deflated. They justify this expense by saying that they are spending a pittance compared to what they could be on other forms of DRM, without compromising a substantial amount of protection. Investors believe they are protected, and the cycle repeats with a new form of DRM. If 100% protection was important every single game would have a hardware dongle that came with it. The dongle would be required to play the game, and it would cost more to reproduce than simply buying the game new. The problem is consumers would be angry at the inconvenience, and the cost would be astronomical. That $60 game would have a $10 investment into materials, so a AAA title at $60 would buy you a cheap COD rip-off. Anything requiring more effort would mean the games might hit the $100 mark each.

Like it or not, this is why physical media is dying. Piracy has a much harder time existing when random checks from a server are present. When a library of media can only be played on one device you've effectively made it so consumers can't resell the games (so developers and publishers don't have to deal with the 0 profit reselling market). You've removed all of the bad parts of physical media (requiring shelf space, having manufacturing requirements, and reselling), while making DRM something more palatable and transparent to the customer. This is great as long as they can get a good internet connection, but it's only possible where the price of infrastructure has already been paid for, and you can leech off of their efforts. As this isn't yet possible outside of 1st world countries (and not even in some of them), physical media still exists. A decade hence, our interconnected world will kill physical by doing more for publishers and developers than a million storefronts ever could.
 
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