Back in the dark ages, computers came with a removable storage medium known as floppy disks. They were, essentially, really small hard drives (the early ones were actually floppy, the later ones had a hard plastic shell). Today, modern computers come with optical drives - also known as CD, DVD, and Blu-Ray drives.

DVD drives have become the standard optical drive for almost every computer sold today, but it is slowly being phased out in favor of Blu-Ray drives. Still there are advantages and disadvantages to having a DVD drives versus a CD or Blu-Ray drive.

Cost - CD drives are dirt cheap in today's world, and Blu-Ray drives are expensive as hell. DVD drives strike a nice balance of performance and price. Plus, DVD drives are so cheap that there's really no reason to even consider getting a CD drive.

Performance - The CD-ROM drive was a huge leap forward in portable computer storage, but DVDs were only an evolutionary step. Still, you can hold several CDs worth of data on a double sided DVD disk. In that same light, Blu-Ray is only an evolutionary step forward, allowing you to hold even more data on one optical disk.

Future - CDs in gaming are usually a thing of the past, unless it's a really small game on a really tight budget. DVDs are just starting to show their age and will be around for a few years yet - especially in the computer gaming world, but will eventually be displaced by Blu-Ray as computer games storage demands increase.

To sum it all up: DVDs are the de facto standard. Sure, they'll be phased out as time moves on, but until then, their only effect is on your budget.

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