As the popularity of digital downloads has increased over the years many of us were wondering if the next-gen consoles will focus less on actual discs. We keep seeing more and more content available for download and some games aren’t even shipping manuals anymore, instead they are available in a digital format.
However, the Playstation 4 will still rely on Blu-Ray as it primary game delivery medium. In a recent interview with IGN, Sony’s Jim Ryan mentions this about the format.
Clearly, and this applies not just to games but to pretty much every form of entertainment, there is a trend to increased digital consumption, and that is happening now on PS3 and will continue and will probably accelerate on PS4, but the primary delivery mechanism for the big games on the PS4 platform will continue to be Blu-Ray discs, for the foreseeable future.
I’m not surprised by this at all and actually I’m quite thrilled to hear that they are sticking with Blu-Ray. First of all, our broadband still lacks the bandwidth that’s necessary to make digital downloads attractive. With some games possibly being as large as 40 gigabytes and up, something Jim Ryan says he’s encouraging developers to do, there’s no way you can download that in a reasonable amount of time. The Blu-Ray disc is still reaching it’s peak potential and has plenty of years ahead of it.
I’m still quite fond of having the case and actual game disc. I never feel like I should have to pay full price for a digital download, it feels like I’m not getting the whole game. It’s a strange thought to imagine that one day we may not be using discs at all. Let’s not forget to mention that if we go all digital that will also be the death of the used game business.
At least for now we will be living in a hybrid world of both digital and physical content for not just our games, but movies and music as well. One thing I am wondering about now is whether or not Microsoft will be using Blu-Ray or some other type of proprietary media.
