PS4: Sony Sees a Disc-Based Future


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"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," he told IGN. "But the primary delivery mechanism for the big games on the PS4 platform will continue to be Blu-Ray discs, for the foreseeable future."

What counts as the forseeable future? Five years? "That sort of horizon, yes," Ryan agrees. The reasoning behind this is that PS4 games will take up so much space that in many parts of the world, downloading them just won't be realistic. "For our big first-party games, we?ve encouraged the studios to make as much use of the BD50 [50-gigabyte Blu-Ray drive] as they possibly can ? some of these things run to like 45 gigs," he says.

Source: http://www.ign.com/a...sc-based-future

Short and sweet but true!

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Agreed. The arguments for a digital-only model are flawed. Take a look at Canada and the US, for example. Most, if not all, Internet service providers have monthly bandwidth limits. It wouldn't make any sense to burn through that bandwidth by downloading large games. It's better to just use physical media. Another issue is speed. Not all countries have the infrastructure for high-speed Internet access. It may not be bad for downloading a game or two but for those that want to consume a lot, the gigabytes will pile up.

A more realistic scenario is a digital model coexisting with a physical one. Even with my relatively high monthly bandwidth limit of 300 GB, I'd still prefer physical media for the PS4. I wouldn't download 45 GB for a game that I could buy from a store nearby in 15 minutes or less.

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Not only that but with the 360 only having dual layer DVD multiplatform games were only around 7-8Gb for PS3 version, now both machines have Blu-ray drives expect to see games 20GB+. It's just not feasible, took me 6 hours to get Ni No Kuni at 15Gb, there is no WAY I'm doing games that could end up near 50Gb digitally.

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For games that are going to run on a TV, 50 gbs should be plenty, and I agree that it's the most reasonable way to distribute them. It's actually going to be a much more painful future for PC users, who can look forward to 20 - 50gb downloads for all of their games with limited options for physical media.

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A more realistic scenario is a digital model coexisting with a physical one. Even with my relatively high monthly bandwidth limit of 300 GB, I'd still prefer physical media for the PS4. I wouldn't download 45 GB for a game that I could buy from a store nearby in 15 minutes or less.

While true, some of us don't live in a city...it costs me gas money to go to a store. The ISP is fixed rate.

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Agreed. The arguments for a digital-only model are flawed. Take a look at Canada and the US, for example. Most, if not all, Internet service providers have monthly bandwidth limits.

It depends on the territory. In the UK you can get unlimited broadband from ?10 / $15 a month (cheaper if you get TV as well) and there is no fair usage policy (i.e. it really is unlimited). I have a 40Mbps connection and regularly download over 1TB a month (I checked my stats and I download 122GB just today). The biggest issue with digital distribution is that consoles have limited storage capacity and unless they include a 2TB drive as standard you're going to be constantly juggling games, especially if you're looking at 30GB+ games. That's why I was very surprised that Nintendo included barely any storage with the Wii U (just 8GB for the base model, with only 3GB available to the user) - it pretty much rules them out as a serious contender.

Physical media still has a place but I expect by the end of the next generation that digital distribution - like with the PC - will be the standard, provided Microsoft and Sony don't skimp on the storage.

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They could however as a thought to go on with,load 90-99% of the game on the DVD and have the rest say an actuator as downloadable encrypted content thus covering all angles.

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While true, some of us don't live in a city...it costs me gas money to go to a store. The ISP is fixed rate.

You can order games online. I guess it wouldn't be too bad to do that for some games, and to download others.

It depends on the territory. In the UK you can get unlimited broadband from ?10 / $15 a month (cheaper if you get TV as well) and there is no fair usage policy (i.e. it really is unlimited). I have a 40Mbps connection and regularly download over 1TB a month (I checked my stats and I download 122GB just today). The biggest issue with digital distribution is that consoles have limited storage capacity and unless they include a 2TB drive as standard you're going to be constantly juggling games, especially if you're looking at 30GB+ games. That's why I was very surprised that Nintendo included barely any storage with the Wii U (just 8GB for the base model, with only 3GB available to the user) - it pretty much rules them out as a serious contender.

Physical media still has a place but I expect by the end of the next generation that digital distribution - like with the PC - will be the standard, provided Microsoft and Sony don't skimp on the storage.

That too. Digital distribution is the norm for PC because console gaming just dominated the physical game market. Also, most PC games are 8 GB or less so size isn't an issue. You can download 8 GB in under 2 hours with a 10 Mbps connection. Hard drive space is less of an issue with PC gaming though. Most gamers have large hard drives and if they need more, they'd simply throw in another drive. I really hope the next generation doesn't inflate the size of PC games.

Anyway, we better have affordable Internet plans with unlimited bandwidth by the end of the next generation. Just imagine something like Google Fiber. Unlimited Internet at gigabit speeds (1,000 Gbps [125 MB/s]).

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In my entire gaming life, I have never been into sony. I only owned a ps1 for final fantasy 7,8 and spyro. But I am so happy with what sony is saying and where they say they will be going. rumors about the next xbox scares me

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Not only that but with the 360 only having dual layer DVD multiplatform games were only around 7-8Gb for PS3 version, now both machines have Blu-ray drives expect to see games 20GB+. It's just not feasible, took me 6 hours to get Ni No Kuni at 15Gb, there is no WAY I'm doing games that could end up near 50Gb digitally.

Dude. Your Internet is fast! :o

Mine, (if nobody is streaming) can grab it in around 15 hours.

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That too. Digital distribution is the norm for PC because console gaming just dominated the physical game market. Also, most PC games are 8 GB or less so size isn't an issue.

Games are only that size in order to accommodate console versions and the minority of sales made up by physical media. Some developers are starting to push that limit, as we saw with RAGE (21GB), Arkham City (17GB), Star Wars: Force Unleashed (29GB), Total War: Shotgun 2 (19GB) The Witcher 2 (28GB) and Max Payne 3 (30GB). A lot of modern games are around 12GB (XCOM: Enemy Unknown, Far Cry 3, Crysis 2, Portal 2, DiRT 3, LA Noire, Left 4 Dead 2) and as soon as the X360 stops bottlenecking multiplatform development we're likely to see that rise significantly, while broadband speeds will increase and become cheaper (even in markets like the US and Canada, where the lack of competition is keeping prices artificially high).

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I do this already. On my PS3, I only buy digital versions of the game. Games take too long to load off the store-bought discs. With a 256GB SSD, games load much faster.

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Dude. Your Internet is fast! :o

Mine, (if nobody is streaming) can grab it in around 15 hours.

Slow for me, only 6mbps, I used to have a 50mbps connection but had to move home and couldn't get cable internet where I live now. :(

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Digital only will come but not this gen, at the very least we can expect it to be an extremely high possibility for next gen. Will really depend on how internet speeds, bandwidth and average download caps progress over the next 6-8 years. Only places that you could successfully implement that model in atm would be Korea and Japan.

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rumors about the PS4 scared a lot of people too. Big shock, they were full of crap.

Wouldn't say that's true as most sites were actually quite close to what the actual specs turned out to be, many only being off on the memory size.

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Not really surprised. If they want to make money then discs are another huge revenue stream that they'd be missing out on. Sure launch day digital downloads are great but smelling that petroleum induced newly cracked open case smell can't be replaced! :p

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They will be replaced the same way Vinyl records were and more than likely, if its to be a physical piece of hardware rather than a full download it will be an encrypted chip of some form.

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Wouldn't say that's true as most sites were actually quite close to what the actual specs turned out to be, many only being off on the memory size.

Apparently you're forgetting or selectively ignoring the 'PS4 won't play used games' rumors.

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There will always be a place for physical media, just as music CD's are still being sold alongside digital downloads.

I have fast internet, and unlimited off-peak usage, so downloading, say, 25gb over night is no big deal for me.

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Sony patented the idea, doesn't mean they were going to use it, just preparing themselves.

Never said they were, that didn't stop people from going all paranoid.

As I said, big shock, they were full of crap.

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Agreed. The arguments for a digital-only model are flawed. Take a look at Canada and the US, for example. Most, if not all, Internet service providers have monthly bandwidth limits. It wouldn't make any sense to burn through that bandwidth by downloading large games. It's better to just use physical media. Another issue is speed. Not all countries have the infrastructure for high-speed Internet access. It may not be bad for downloading a game or two but for those that want to consume a lot, the gigabytes will pile up.

A more realistic scenario is a digital model coexisting with a physical one. Even with my relatively high monthly bandwidth limit of 300 GB, I'd still prefer physical media for the PS4. I wouldn't download 45 GB for a game that I could buy from a store nearby in 15 minutes or less.

This...

I dont have a b/w limit or slow internet, but i still wanna own a nice box and maybe collectors edition for some games...like starcraft. I cracked open my Sc2 content recently and went through it in anticipation of the expansion next month.

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