so why put an optical disk drive in the console at all? does not make any sense when digital and streaming is the future.
welcome to have the worst of both worlds.
not the newest physical technology and still a big bulky disk drive in the console
from a consumer perspective, there is zero benefit. just downsides
I will not jump on the hyperbole bus of physical media is dead etc etc but it is obvious from the limited numbers available that people are increasingly ditching physical media for streaming. The drive is required for games you might as well repurpose it for media as well.
Not including the UHD drive seems to have simply been a cost cutting measure, if it helped them control costs I dont think its a bad thing. I do however think it was a mistake not putting it on the PRO. The PROs higher price means that the increased cost would have eaten into margins but you will ship so few of these things that its not that big of a deal.
Bluray and DVD have been having a tough time for the last several years from the stats I have seen declining at least 10% in revenue for the last 2, Bluray will not reach DVD numbers and UHD in turn will likely not reach Bluray numbers but in the future UHD will replace Bluray as the dominant new format (Bluray has still not replaced DVD as format with highest revenue).
stats from here:
Digital Digest NPD numbers
never knew NPD did video format numbers