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Microsoft has been telling developers that it plans not to include a disc drive in the next generation Xbox 720 ‘Durango' console.

Apparently, this news was issued with one of the strictest NDA clauses Microsoft has ever used, so if the news does turn out to be true, someone is in serious trouble.
The only comment from the software giant to the original news breakers at MCVUK is that it doesn't comment on rumours - nothing new there. However, it did also expand upon this by saying that the Xbox 360 had its life cycle extended by technologies, like Kinect and advanced dashboard features. Perhaps this suggests that future consoles could innovate in other areas?

Other news that's debuted alongside the disc drive rumour is that there will be some sort of interchangeable solid-state storage option with the Xbox 720. There is however, no word on whether this will be based around something in-house developed, such as Sony's UMD technology, or a more common platform like SD cards.
2013 has also now been confirmed as the release year for the Durango console, but no one knows on what part of it. The original Xbox was released in North America in November 2001, followed by other regions, in the ensuing months. The Xbox 360 had a similar end of year schedule, so it seems likely that the 720 would show up in the close of 2013 rather than at the opening.

If the no disc drive news does turn out to be true, Microsoft better hope that fibre optic connections are common place in 2013, as next-generation game download sizes are likely to be pretty hefty.


Source

Compression will take care of game download size and you can already download pirated games directly to jtagged xboxes so nothing will change there.

This is just M$'s way of killing the second hand game market.

and here we are discussing it on a public forum

Not good news for games and dvds shops

"interchangeable solid-state storage option with the Xbox 720" I am guessing that means you will be able to buy games on some form of memory stick like the PS Vita, seems a pretty obvious way to go as they can pull data far quicker than disk. And it's almost certain it will be made in house otherwise piracy will be rampant, unless however they use some really good encryption with a constantly changing random key (like what sony wanted to do with the ps3 but failed).

The end of 2013 is what i have been thinking for a while to be honest too.

All in all this is all pretty obvious speculation that is only not official because microsoft have not confirmed it, but you may as well take it as fact in my opinion.