Empirical evidence says that it's only a matter of time before disc drives go away. It may take another generation, but it will happen. They have been completely removed from PCs for ages, but somehow the PC gaming market is thriving.
Console manufacturers could get away with ditching the drive if they supported USB external disc drives. Everyone would gripe, the gladly shell out the money for that Playstation themed external Blu-ray drive that looks so nice sitting next to the 4tb external drive that matches it.
PC gaming is an entirely different customer base. It took 25 years for mandatory hard drive installs past PC. Youre dealing eith lowest common denominator, and internet sucks in giant swaths of many nations. Plus console versions outsell PC as much as 10-1.
USB drive support is a massive DRM security issue. Valve doesnt care about it, since PC gaming is awash in piracy and everything on their DRM is cracked in minutes. Any sort of USB drive based solution requires massive infrastructure investment in download kiosks in major stores, training, all kinds of odds and ends. Hundreds of millions of dollars, ehich would then still require online validation.
BTW XB1 originally basically did what you ask. Discs were install media with no drm with online validation, which also allowed the buying, selling, trading and lending of digital games, as well as retailers being able to deposit games and credit directly to your accout, , but paranoids and Sony fanboys screamed and cried without knowing or understanding and killed it.
So until 25mpbs unlimited internet is a right, ehich is should be, for a reasonable price nation, and yes, world wide, its simply not practical. Just because you have uncapped internet and decent speeds doesnt mean anywhere close to the universality needed for consoles is present. Diskless was all in the plans for PS4 and XB1, both dumped it real fast when reality set in.
