PS5 spec leak shows 8 core CPU and 24GB of RAM.

Truthfully it flabbergasts me that console gamers are so steadfast in their need for an optical drive. On PC, most of us gave them up 10 years ago, and the world didn't end. People bitch that inferior consoles hold back what PC's are capable of, but then also bitch when consoles try to adopt some of the ideas that make PCs superior. I stand by it, I'd much rather see a sleeker, cooler, more reliable game system that isn't held back by decades old technology.

A. Console gamers don't get an equivalent of "Steam sales". MS or Sony will "discount" digital games on their respective stores here and there or limited times, but used disc games are, on the whole way cheaper. As much as I HATE GameStop, they are one of the few forces keeping console game costs down at all. Remove discs altogether, and you'll likely be charged the full 60 (which, for digital, makes no sense in the 1st place) on 5 year old games, because, whatcha gonna do about it?

B. Media playback.

C. Places, as few and far between, where reliable broadband isn't available. This is less and less the case, but is still a reality.
 
A. Console gamers don't get an equivalent of "Steam sales". MS or Sony will "discount" digital games on their respective stores here and there or limited times, but used disc games are, on the whole way cheaper. As much as I HATE GameStop, they are one of the few forces keeping console game costs down at all. Remove discs altogether, and you'll likely be charged the full 60 (which, for digital, makes no sense in the 1st place) on 5 year old games, because, whatcha gonna do about it?

B. Media playback.

C. Places, as few and far between, where reliable broadband isn't available. This is less and less the case, but is still a reality.


It isn't just used games at Gamestop here. Amazon will consistently offer NEW game discs at half the price of online, a month or more after launch. Gamestop doesn't even try to match that.

You have to wait a couple years before entering a Ganestop makes any sense at all, but once the original merchandise is sold -out, it becomes your best place to go.

It usually takes several years for game prices to drop on first-party games on console online stores, and the they never drop much below 1/2 the launch price.
 
No, the original GPU in the launch PS4 was basically an HD7790 equivalent, so nowhere near close to that level of performance.
Xbone is basically a 7790, with 128mb of EDram in an APU setup, with DDR3 as the memory pool.

PS4 is like 7850 clock speeds with 7870 shaders and 7970 compute architecture. Plus some extra sauce for the APU setup. Such as an additional bus allowing CPU and GPU separate, simultaneous access to the GDDR5 memory pool.

As a rough Idea for cost, brand new 7870 were about $220, a year before PS4 came out.
 
A. Console gamers don't get an equivalent of "Steam sales". MS or Sony will "discount" digital games on their respective stores here and there or limited times, but used disc games are, on the whole way cheaper. As much as I HATE GameStop, they are one of the few forces keeping console game costs down at all. Remove discs altogether, and you'll likely be charged the full 60 (which, for digital, makes no sense in the 1st place) on 5 year old games, because, whatcha gonna do about it?

B. Media playback.

C. Places, as few and far between, where reliable broadband isn't available. This is less and less the case, but is still a reality.

I agree that digital sales on consoles are not as frequent or usually as lucrative as Steam sales, but they do exist. And discounts can be had third party (although Sony announced today they are doing away with third-party digital sales, I think that will hurt them). As an example I pre-ordered Kingdom Heats 3 digitally from Amazon (for Xbox). Amazon was offering a $10 credit on the purchase, plus I had a 20% off any digital purchase, effectively meaning I paid $38 for a digital console pre-order of a AAA game, far surpassing any deal you'd find from places like GMG for a new PC release. I know that's not the norm, but my point is if you shop around or hit the right timing, deals can be had for digital console games. Ultimately, the convenience of digital still wins out over the ability to buy cheap used games, for me anyway.

Media playback I also consider a moot point. What percentage of viewers are still buying physical movies? I'd bet it's a pretty small number. These days I think your causal at home movie watcher is renting digital copies via their cable/itunes/google/etc. Ironically, despite having given up physical games many years ago, I still buy hard copies of all my movies. But it has absolutely nothing to do with being able to buy or sell used copies, or because I don't trust DRM, or my internet connect. The ONLY reason I buy physical movies is because the quality is vastly superior to the digital alternatives. If a platform ever started selling bit-for-bit digital copies of their physical counterparts, that'd be the day I stop buying discs. As that doesn't (and likely never will) exist, I'm stuck with a medium I'd really prefer to eliminate. And all that being said, consoles are generally sub-par media players for physical discs anyway. I own and Xbox One X and I also own a dedicated 4K BR player, because it's a superior media player. Ultimately I think this matters to very few people.

In regards to the limited availability of broadband, I think that's becoming moot anyways. Not only is that is a shrinking market, but I think it's pretty much standard now that new releases come with double digit GB patches... and if you're shopping for used games where you're several months into a patch cycle, it gets even worse. IMO, if you have a poor internet connection, you're kinda fucked either way unless you chose to play offline to avoid patches. Again, I think this is a very small amount of people affected.

At the end of the day, I still don't think the world is ready for an entirely digital-only game console. I don't necessarily agree with the reasons, but I accept that the reaction would be negative. That said, I really hope in the next console generation we see it as an option. If I can get a smaller and/or less expensive console because they've omitted a disc drive, I wouldn't think twice about which one belongs under my TV.
 
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I agree that digital sales on consoles are not as frequent or usually as lucrative as Steam sales, but they do exist. And discounts can be had third party (although Sony announced today they are doing away with third-party digital sales, I think that will hurt them). As an example I pre-ordered Kingdom Heats 3 digitally from Amazon (for Xbox). Amazon was offering a $10 credit on the purchase, plus I had a 20% off any digital purchase, effectively meaning I paid $38 for a digital console pre-order of a AAA game, far surpassing any deal you'd find from places like GMG for a new PC release. I know that's not the norm, but my point is if you shop around or hit the right timing, deals can be had for digital console games. Ultimately, the convenience of digital still wins out over the ability to buy cheap used games, for me anyway.

Media playback I also consider a moot point. What percentage of viewers are still buying physical movies? I'd bet it's a pretty small number. These days I think your causal at home movie watcher is renting digital copies via their cable/itunes/google/etc. Ironically, despite having given up physical games many years ago, I still buy hard copies of all my movies. But it has absolutely nothing to do with being able to buy or sell used copies, or because I don't trust DRM, or my internet connect. The ONLY reason I buy physical movies is because the quality is vastly superior to the digital alternatives. If a platform ever started selling bit-for-bit digital copies of their physical counterparts, that'd be the day I stop buying discs. As that doesn't (and likely never will) exist, I'm stuck with a medium I'd really prefer to eliminate. And all that being said, consoles are generally sub-par media players for physical discs anyway. I own and Xbox One X and I also own a dedicated 4K BR player, because it's a superior media player. Ultimately I think this matters to very few people.

In regards to the limited availability of broadband, I think that's becoming moot anyways. Not only is that is a shrinking market, but I think it's pretty much standard now that new releases come with double digit GB patches... and if you're shopping for used games where you're several months into a patch cycle, it gets even worse. IMO, if you have a poor internet connection, you're kinda fucked either way unless you chose to play offline to avoid patches. Again, I think this is a very small amount of people affected.

At the end of the day, I still don't think the world is ready for an entirely digital-only game console. I don't necessarily agree with the reasons, but I accept that the reaction would be negative. That said, I really hope in the next console generation we see it as an option. If I can get a smaller and/or less expensive console because they've omitted a disc drive, I wouldn't think twice about which one belongs under my TV.

Pretty much agree with all of this. But to add to digital game sales; I've got most of my PS4 games on sale in the PSN store through some pretty good sales they routinely have on there. Granted most of them are console exclusives that you can't buy on PC/Steam anyways, there are a few cross-platform games I got on PSN that were on sale for about as cheap they had ever been on Steam or other digital store. But I also much prefer the convenience of the digital library too since I have very fast internet (300/30) and don't care to constantly swap discs out or to resell games. But I am glad the optical drive is there too for the few times I do borrow or rent games (yes, I still have a rental place nearby as well as a Redbox).
 
But I am glad the optical drive is there too for the few times I do borrow or rent games (yes, I still have a rental place nearby as well as a Redbox).

As someone who primarily uses digital, but occasionally uses the optical drive... what would you do if a less expensive, disc-less console were offered? Say you could save $50, and nothing else was different... would you give up the ability to borrow and rent games to save $50, or could you justify paying more to keep that as an option? To an occasional user, I wonder what the value of an optical drive really is.
 
As someone who primarily uses digital, but occasionally uses the optical drive... what would you do if a less expensive, disc-less console were offered? Say you could save $50, and nothing else was different... would you give up the ability to borrow and rent games to save $50, or could you justify paying more to keep that as an option? To an occasional user, I wonder what the value of an optical drive really is.

If I had a choice between a disc less PS5 I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I never buy discs because I’m a lazy bastard.

I will also buy a SSD (2.5” or M.2) leaving the only moving part the fan.
 
As someone who primarily uses digital, but occasionally uses the optical drive... what would you do if a less expensive, disc-less console were offered? Say you could save $50, and nothing else was different... would you give up the ability to borrow and rent games to save $50, or could you justify paying more to keep that as an option? To an occasional user, I wonder what the value of an optical drive really is.

Yeah, it's a tough call for me personally, but I would probably just go ahead and pony up the extra cash for the optical drive just because I can easily afford it and I like to have all the options I can get. Just from what I've observed with the general public though, physical media is still king, as pretty much anyone I know with a PS4 that still plays it buys all their games on discs either because their internet sucks or what I assume is just out of habit. But an all-digital console for me wouldn't be the end of the world as long as I have pretty good/fast internet, which I do now, but I may not in a couple months when I move to the opposite side of the world in Italy for the next few years.
 
I agree that digital sales on consoles are not as frequent or usually as lucrative as Steam sales, but they do exist. And discounts can be had third party (although Sony announced today they are doing away with third-party digital sales, I think that will hurt them). As an example I pre-ordered Kingdom Heats 3 digitally from Amazon (for Xbox). Amazon was offering a $10 credit on the purchase, plus I had a 20% off any digital purchase, effectively meaning I paid $38 for a digital console pre-order of a AAA game, far surpassing any deal you'd find from places like GMG for a new PC release. I know that's not the norm, but my point is if you shop around or hit the right timing, deals can be had for digital console games. Ultimately, the convenience of digital still wins out over the ability to buy cheap used games, for me anyway.

Media playback I also consider a moot point. What percentage of viewers are still buying physical movies? I'd bet it's a pretty small number. These days I think your causal at home movie watcher is renting digital copies via their cable/itunes/google/etc. Ironically, despite having given up physical games many years ago, I still buy hard copies of all my movies. But it has absolutely nothing to do with being able to buy or sell used copies, or because I don't trust DRM, or my internet connect. The ONLY reason I buy physical movies is because the quality is vastly superior to the digital alternatives. If a platform ever started selling bit-for-bit digital copies of their physical counterparts, that'd be the day I stop buying discs. As that doesn't (and likely never will) exist, I'm stuck with a medium I'd really prefer to eliminate. And all that being said, consoles are generally sub-par media players for physical discs anyway. I own and Xbox One X and I also own a dedicated 4K BR player, because it's a superior media player. Ultimately I think this matters to very few people.

In regards to the limited availability of broadband, I think that's becoming moot anyways. Not only is that is a shrinking market, but I think it's pretty much standard now that new releases come with double digit GB patches... and if you're shopping for used games where you're several months into a patch cycle, it gets even worse. IMO, if you have a poor internet connection, you're kinda fucked either way unless you chose to play offline to avoid patches. Again, I think this is a very small amount of people affected.

At the end of the day, I still don't think the world is ready for an entirely digital-only game console. I don't necessarily agree with the reasons, but I accept that the reaction would be negative. That said, I really hope in the next console generation we see it as an option. If I can get a smaller and/or less expensive console because they've omitted a disc drive, I wouldn't think twice about which one belongs under my TV.
The amount of people with slow internet access and/or data caps which basically don't allow them much flexibility with gaming: is not small. The U.S. population is huge. So through sheer brute force of population numbers, we have both enough people with faster internet, to support the gaming industry: But, ALSO a lot of people with slow or capped internet. I bet the gaming industry in the U.S. could be 25% larger, if everyone had affordable access to fast, uncapped internet.
 
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