Dan Frommer:

Regarding bandwidth, Kotaku notes that Blu-ray discs can contain 25-50 GB worth of data, versus 9 GB for DVDs. Over the average U.S. home Internet connection, that could take several hours, or even days, to download. At that point, running out to the local game store is actually faster than downloading the game, especially if it’s a brand new game and you want to play it soon after it’s released.

He continues:

Then there’s the storage issue. If you have 5 or 10 games sitting around, taking up 25-50 GB each, that’s a pretty big hard drive you’d need to include in the standard Xbox 720, or whatever they’ll call it. Storage is getting cheaper, but it’s still a cost to figure into the pricing equation.

First off, I hate that they call it the 720. There’s no way that even Microsoft is crazy enough to try naming it that. The argument that each game could be 25-50 GB is valid, but even 20 games at 50 GB is only 1 TB. Although, some recent issues have caused storage prices to increase, but even still, wholesale prices for 1 TB of storage space should be around $50 by the time this thing launches. Very few people will need room for more than 20 games at once, so I don’t see total storage being an issue.

As for bandwidth and time needed for download, this is valid, but solvable. First off, there could be a way to get games from a store. Some sort of portable drive or USB device could help with this issue. Regardless though, this should not be a roadblock in 2012.

(via Ben Brooks)