Pretty sure sony and microsoft already deploy with current blu-ray drives a smart install solution, where the game gets installed along the way of playing it. So honestly the speed is probably not that important as the game will be completely ran of the SSD anyway. both microsd and blu-ray only carry installers anyway.
Yes I'm aware current systems already do this with Blu-Ray discs. However, in terms of data delivery in the memory hierarchy the disc is still the slowest point; even half-gigabit internet will be faster for certain users in just downloading and transferring/installing data. The overall QoL experience is still limited somewhat by the slowest point in the memory hierarchy chain, which would be the Blu-Ray disc.
The question really is, do people still watch blu-ray/dvd on those boxes, we don't know sony does, and does 20 bucks or something for a blu-ray player really become a issue? will devs care for higher costs microsd cards solutions over cheaper blu-ray discs or will sony have to eat the cost as result or will blu-ray discs get more expensive then microsd cards in the future, and will a disc based bc solution be something to target for.
Right now a decent 80 MB/s, 128 GB microSD costs more in pure manufacturing costs than a UHD Blu-Ray disc, this is true. But we're talking by 10th-gen time here, and IMO 10th-gen won't come until sometime in 2028. By then, manufacturing costs on that type of microSD will have come down significantly, and they likely will not cost much more than a UHD Blu-Ray ROM disc does currently.
So Sony, Microsoft etc. won't have to 'eat the costs' because the costs will be a lot lower especially if they assume control over card manufacture process and get millions upon millions of them in bulk to allocate towards 1P and 3P retail releases. And the card reader would be both a lot cheaper and use less power, than a Blu-Ray drive ever could.
Ubiquity of media formats like microSD and the continued diminishing presence of Blu-Ray in customer market as people move towards streaming and digital delivery systems, will favor increasing price reductions for flash memories including microSD ones, and stagnate or even increase production costs for Blu-Ray discs and drives as their totality in mainstream consumer markets diminishes.
Also how the world look like in 5 years from now, will games balloon to 300-400gb solutions or will they stay small rather around the 100gb or will we see huge reductions in the future on assets that basically get generated through ai code that builds them on the spot which takes no space at all.
That's an interesting question; best to say for now that it'll probably be a mixture of all three. Even so, it doesn't leave a favorable position for Blu-Ray or other optical media to be included as a default in next-generation gaming consoles; microSD will benefit from reduction in flash memory prices and increased market saturation of flash memory technologies. Blu-Ray won't have those benefits, and any future optical media (glass-based optical media for example), if they ever go mainstream, won't be able to provide the data bandwidth advantages of flash memories.
Where, if we're talking about game file sizes potentially not increasing THAT much, negates the only other potential benefit of future optical media: capacity of storage. Which technically can be negated somewhat through microSD via data decompression I/O. Optical media or technologies that utilize optical like platter-based HDDs will have purpose as massive archival cold storage solutions, but you won't need that for a games console, so why take on those costs?
It all depends on how the market is going to move forwards and what demands people will have.
I am curious how much of a progression we will be seeing in the AI space, this could influence gaming far more drastically in the upcoming years.
So we will see tho.
Yeah AI will have a big impact on games. However, if it's a question about whether trends will influence 10th-gen consoles to go with Blu-Ray or another optical media included by default, I don't think there's a single trend benefiting that outcome as happening. Everything is moving towards integrating the memory hierarchies closer to each other WRT bandwidth and latency. That means, among other things, relegating any data delivery systems relying on seek times, further into cold storage territory.
With flash NAND memory costs becoming cheaper, and card interfaces for microSD already very cheap (especially compared to a decent Blu-Ray drive), I can't see any future where using Blu-Ray or other optical media built into a 10th-gen console by default, makes any sense compared to replacing that link in the data pipeline with microSD. You'll get roughly the same costs in terms of the media format itself, cheaper costs in terms of the drive/device to read/write the data, higher peak bandwidth transfers with decompression I/O, no moving parts, less power requirements, less heat output, and a smaller footprint on the motherboard.
It's a decisive win-win all around to make that change, and I think that's what Sony and Microsoft are going to do, 100%.
