In the future everyone will have broadband, so they may just stop selling tangible games on any kind of media at all. Everything would be DLC and that would be that.

If not, we're oughtta go back to cartridges.

After a fashion, that is. Nintendo got criticized for sticking with the bricks when Sega and Sony went to discs, and we won't debate on the rightness or wrongness of that, but could there really be a profitable way and reason to go back to solid-state storage for console games? Dang right, there is.

What makes me say that? Look in your USB drive. Nothing there? Look on your keychain. Odds are you've got at least a gig in either one of those places. Granted, most games are more than that, but bear with me. A DVD has about 17 gigs of space, max, and a Blu-Ray disc currently offers 25 gigs but could even get up to 200 gigs by the time the next next-gen consoles are out. Seems like a no-brainer which console-makers would choose, right?

Wrong.

Flash memory is going to get even smaller and cheaper. Sure, a BluDisc will hold a whole lot, but unless writing technology advances you'd have to erase the whole thing to rerecord new data on it. Flash memory works like a hard drive. How does this affect gaming? Imagine a console with several hundred gigs of built-in storage, let's call it PS4 because it's a shorter acronym than Twii or XBOX 720. Now imagine a flash memory-type device with encryption built into it (obviously) which only allows it to be played in the PS4. Not only is the entire game on it, running at the same speed as it would if it were on the hard drive (shorter or no loading, compared to an optical disc), but there's extra space for DLC -- map packs, patches, save files and so forth. It goes with the game, so even if you take it to a friend's console, you've got all your data. Forget futzing around on your hard drive making room. It's only for the occasional overflow, or more likely online "virtual console" games you downloaded.

Also available would be a blank cartridge with encryption, which you can copy those downloaded games onto and play on someone else's console, or a computer with an emulator. Yes, they would make and sell their own PS4 emulator for PC use, since the download-only games would likely be performance-light enough for an average PC to run. Thus, they would cut into the PC gaming market. You could only get the PS4 downloadables on PC, not the major PS4 titles (unless the developer ports them), and you'd still have to pay for the emulator and all the games, so really it's expanding their market, not cannibalizing console sales.

Of course, this future hinges on really cheap flash memory to compete with the staggering capacity and rock-bottom cost of BluDVDs. Flash memory may not go down in price and up in capacity enough by the next generation, and by the time we get to the generation after that everyone will be downloading. Meanwhile, with a couple hundred gigs costing only a few bucks, the incentive to stick with vulnerable, scratch-prone (especially in an XBOX) optical discs is strong. Hopefully, one console will go the way I've proscribed, and one or more of the others will stick to discs, and we'll see who wins. Piracy will be a greater danger with flash memory (unless they use a non-PC-compatible plug), but such is the danger of uncharted waters. After all, it's not like you can't put a disc in a computer already.