Games on Flash Drives. Discuss.

[Futzy]

I agree the flash drives are a good idea, but would they raise costs of games? New games are already ridiculously expensive, and we can all agree flash drives are much more expensive than dvds. Also, the loading would be pretty slow, considering hard drives are much faster.

If faster flash drives are developed, you know with USB 3.0 around the corner, it would be the perfect medium. Thing is, you would then have a drawer full of flash drives!

Digital distribution is the next step. I don't see a new physical distribution becoming dominate. If ssds were to become the new thing, you would probably download the game to a local hdd or sdd and then sell back or return the flash drive.

e: wait why is this in pictures

[flibitijibibo]

Not anymore it isn't!

I'd love to have USB drives for games. A whole lot less to carry when moving between states.

[Yoko]

I'd love to have USB drives for games. A whole lot less to carry when moving between states.

And a whole lot easier to lose and leave a couple states away.

The only way piracy will stop is if they can lock the game files on the drive. But then again, that'll just make pirates work harder to crack into it and get the files off.

[Cortexian]

What prevents them from having the game pre-installed on the USB device? I'm sure they could come up with something that has everything you need on the device, and also requires the device to be plugged in for you to play.

[ThePlague]

I'd love to have USB drives instead of dvd's. I could make a necklace or something with all of my games.

[=sw=warlord]

What prevents them from having the game pre-installed on the USB device? I'm sure they could come up with something that has everything you need on the device, and also requires the device to be plugged in for you to play.

Plus, you wouldnt need to worry about your DVD drive fucking up and chewing your DVD's, plug n play.

Pro's for DVD ROM:
Fast transfer speeds
stable and safe from viruses
Easy to stack and transfer to different places
Relatively cheap to manufacture.

Con's:
Damaged surface on disc can cause software errors and even leave the disc unable to read entirely.
Easy to break.
Bulky and are slowly becoming outdated in terms of media transfer speed.
Prone to weather conditions, IE: slight bit of cold air and any condensation formed on disk will cause errors and can even damage the disk.
Easy to copy and pirate
Limited file sotrage space

Pro's for Flash drive ROM:
Fast speed, USB2.0 can support upto 300Mbps which is faster than a conventional HDD[currently alot slower but there is alot of room for improvement]
Stable, provided drive is hardware locked the drive would be versatile against viruses
New possible medium for DRM which actualy works.[Only need a chip on the PCB which the software checks for before loading the application IE: no more Securom shit]
Small and portable so easy to carry about.
Plug n play ability no need to pre-install game just load straight off the drive.
Much large potential storage capacity[ we are now seeing 64Gb drives being sold for $20 compared to 7.4Gb DVD roms priced at $10 per pack of 6¬]

Con's
Currently low consistant speed ratios, lower than HDD but still faster than DVD
Increase in maufacturing costs for software developers would likely be passed on to consumers.
Possibility that it would eradicate unauthorized modding [unlikely but still]
Prone to occational chip faults causing software errors.
Easy to lose due to size IE lost behind seat cusion or what ever

I think thats about it for all i can think off, il add more to this if anyone can think of anything else i should add to list.

[Limited]

Your/Photo-taker box making skills are lacking...

[Rook]

This would definitely be an option for USB 3.0, but that doesn't mean I still much prefer the files on my drive!

[Llama Juice]

Flash drives aren't all that strong either ye know. I've gone through two of em where something'll hit them just wrong while plugged into the computer and it'll break a connection on the inside of the device. Not so cool :/

They'd still have to install some stuff to your HDD, it couldn't all be portable.

At any rate, this stuff is interesting, I'm curious to see how it all pans out.

[Cortexian]

They'd still have to install some stuff to your HDD, it couldn't all be portable.

All you'd need on your drive is registry information and possibly some files relating to modding or community content creation (such as a "mods" directory or something).