Is the world ready for a disc-free game console?

Over the weekend, news started trickling out about a recently published game console patent filed by Nintendo back in February. That's not that surprising—we've known for a while that the company is working on a new console project codenamed "NX." What's more surprising is that the "example system" described in the patent explicitly "is not provided with an optical disk drive for reading out a program and/or data from an optical disk."

Companies patent things that don't come to the market all the time, of course, and there's no specific indication this patent will even form the basis of Nintendo's NX. Still, the very existence of a patented console design without an optical disc drive got us thinking: is the console market finally ready to graduate from the CDs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs that have been the cornerstone of console game distribution for decades now? Do game consoles still need physical media at all?

A connected world

In the US, at least, quickly increasing broadband adoption has made this a question worth considering. By the end of 2013, 70 percent of all US adults had a broadband connection in the home. That number shot up to 81 percent when you look at the 18- to 29-year-olds that provide the core market for most AAA games (and 77 percent among 30- to 49-year-olds), numbers that are likely even higher two years on.