Sony’s gaming division has built their games platform on Blu-ray disks and by God and by Jaysus they’re not going to turn back now. Said Sony PS3 Marketing Manager Kim Nguyen:
“That would pretty much destroy the PS3’s backbone, our games were built on Blu-ray.” Kim told us. “Quote that: Blu-ray will always be part of PS3.”
Well, duh. It’s right there inside the console. To ignore it would be like saying “From now on, the ‘off’ button doesn’t work.” It’s not like they’re ever going to give up UMD on the PSP either, even in future generations… oh, wait.
So there’s our question. Will the PS4 have Blu-ray? Will Sony still be around to think about it come the next wave of console updates? I love softball as much as the next guy, but Blu-ray will last another decade at best and forward thinking right now might give Sony the win it’s looking for in the next stage of Playstation development. While XBL is allowing the download of full and very popular games and services like Steam are teaching a new audience that downloading can be cool, PS3 will stick to its Blu-ray guns and release only fluff like Flower online, at least in the near future.
Not much else to report except there will be not price decrease, no PSP phone, and no “low-end” PS3 for non-online gamers.
With the level of detail in current games anything more powerful and more detailed will need more space. Downloading a 40gb game is not a viable option. They will need some form of distributable media, flash memory is getting cheaper all the time so who knows but I think Blu-Ray will live on for a while longer.
I think a lot of the material on these console discs are actually just fluff. Most of these games are likely within the 8gb range and not 40. Detail doesn’t always necessarily translate into size.
I see what you’re saying but I still wouldn’t want 8 GB games sitting on a hard disk. You buy enough games, or put too many movies, or too much music, or too many pictures, on one hard drive and you’ll have to upgrade to a bigger one. That would suck – I would much rather have my games on a physical media. Plus you can lend them to friends, or conversely borrow them a lot easier.
Mike Hickey’s suggestion (few weeks ago) that the Blu-ray component can be removed from the PS3 (to lower its price) was a pretty stupid remark.
The thing is practically built around Blu-ray!
in 2, 3 years, Bluray will be a comodity… like DVD costs now.
Even Xbox 720 need a Bluray drive…
Duuuuude, havnt we been through this before? Blue Ray will be around for ages and will be a healthy dietary supplement to downloaded media.
The developing world needs high capacity optical disks. When you live in a country where copper cable is regularly stolen by armed gangs and fiber optic cable gets mistakenly stolen because its still a cable these sorts of data transferring plastic circles are needed.
jriquelme is right, the next xbox will have blueray. It may be low tech to some but its useful none the less!
Mr. Biggs writes: “While XBL is allowing the download of full and very popular games and services like Steam are teaching a new audience that downloading can be cool, PS3 will stick to its Blu-ray guns and release only fluff like Flower online, at least in the near future. “
He seems to be unaware that you can download a full copy of “Burnout Paradise Ultimate” from the Playstation Network for $30. There’s also the “Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty” game which is available only through PSN as well.
To suggest that Sony is only releasing “fluff” like “Flower” on the PSN while ignoring full sized games is ignorant at best. Not to mention the fact that “Flower” is easily one of the more enjoyable and innovative games released in some time. If it’s a choice between “fluff” like “Flower” and the latest iteration of “Madden NFL” then I’ll take fluff any day.
Wow this is the most stupid pointless article I’ve ever had the misfortune to take time out to read… Ill informed and biased and Oh look its from America, keep trying to damage those PS3 sales.
There are plenty of us here in America who love PlayStation and want it to succeed. We’re not all ill informed and/or biased – just like not everyone where you’re from stereotypes an entire nation of people based on what they have read on the internet.
I don’t understand this article.
And it seems you like the xbox? Yet I thought we hated microsoft too….?
Lets just solve this problem and have Apple make a game console then we can properly hate all products of the world except Apple….