Look at the music biz, the PS3 store, The Wii's virtual console and the X-Box 360 store. All these devices have hard drives, and imagine the savings by eliminating retailers and physical discs as delivery systems.

Someone should employ you. get a copyright on that idea pronto!

imagine the wreck that would cause, by eliminating the retailers from the loop and physical discs, you're killing alot of businesses such as gamestop.

I doubt it'll go digital anytime before the generation after next if it does.

digital is ok, but I prefer to have something physical to claim.

Processing power might but that doesn't mean that game data will. I don't think developers will actually need that much space for a game. It wouldn't be financially smart because think of how long the development would be for the game. If it takes a year or so for a 10-40 gig game today, how long will it take if they are trying to fill even 250-300 gigs? Not to mention how much the games would cost to the consumers, like $150 bucks. Even with all the "extra features", I wouldn't want to be stuck in a game for months on end.

For movie wise, anything over 1080p isn't really necessary for things smaller than 40 inches. There would be no point in 2160p because the human eye couldn't tell the difference on a screen that is only 40 or smaller inches.

the point isn't TO make a game that big, it's just nice knowing that if a developer just happened to be making a kick-ass game, that the space is there if necessary.

true but a scientist in Japan made a display that is currently over 60 times better than current 1080p. It's true nothing like that will be commercially available ANYtime soon, but it's been done, it's just the feeling of accomplishment.

Yes but that doesn't mean hard copies of games still won't be available?

Look at unreliability of storage systems, website crashes and product failures to name but a few problems.

These negatives will never be eliminated because if they were, the consoles would have to be almost militaristic in their efficiency and reliability.
As it stands, most consoles are cutting edge and pushing boundaries at every release date. It is unrealistic to assume that somehow the economy will improve so much that making an 'indestructible console' would be viable.

So no, I don't think digital distribution is that close to becoming a reality.

But look at the music business. You can say the exact same thing about CDs. And when I buy a game from my 360 Wii or PS3 a record is kept of that, so if I lose my hard drive, I can redownload for free.

400GB wont be nessesary because games developers of today are too lazy to make anything decent. Most people are just throwing any old crap together cuz they know it will sell. Any FPS will sell on the PS3/360 same as any *waggle* cutsie game on the wii so why would they bother?

If you gonna argue about the FPS comment, look at your games library for the current gen.. what genre of game do you have the most of? Exactly.

All you gotta do is look at Pokemon Battle Revolution and you know they aint gonna bother making a game like that. While im on the topic, to say Pokemon is one of nintendo's biggest franchises, why dont they put the effort in?

even with today's download speeds and the growing size of games, would you rather have a hard copy of LittleBigPlanet and pop in the disc, or re-download a 40gb file?

Hard copies will be around for a while..

and the comparison to music is completely different. plus think about bandwidth limits from certain ISP's...

I have never had to redownload a game, and reading from a hard drive will always be faster than reading off a disc.

I am not saying hard copies will be completely eliminated, but digital delivery is the way of the future, and the foundations are already being laid down.