PlayStation 4: Big Blockbuster Games Still Distributed On Discs, Says Sony's Yoshida

Will digital distribution also become appropriate for home consoles, like the unannounced PS4? According to Shuhei Yoshida, Senior Vice President of Product Development at Sony Computer Entertainment America, upcoming blockbuster games will be still distributed on Discs. "I think, that digital content is easier to distribute on portable devices like PSP or iPod. It's faster, easier and more convenient than on CD", he said. "But the big blockbuster games will continue to appear on discs", Yoshida added.

[presto717]

I never really liked the whole digital distribution thing anyways. No internet, no buy?? WTF!!

@Jamescagney. Exactly.

" File size : 50GB
ETA: 150hrs"

*10hrs Later*

"An fatal error has occured. Would you like to send an error report? Please restart your computer. DOWNLOAD FAILED."

[Jamescagney]

Plus the games are getting huge now. Who would want to download 25-50 gigs or more? And how would the networks cope?

[Lifendz]

but I'm not sure I'd ever really use it for a big AAA game. Not just because of the reasons you guys gave, but also because if something happens to my HDD all those games are gone and I have to re-download them. Also, there's something to be said for being able to let a bud borrow a game w/o giving him your username and pw. Plus I do like being able to sell my game(s) used if I want to. And Digital Distribution isn't any cheaper.

[viperman240]

For the handheld yes, not for consoles.

Oh how I remember certain people saying Blu-Ray is fail its not needed digital download is the future.

*PSPGo comes out* FAIL!!!! you cant play dics its just downloads...

*facepalm*

[TANUKI]

@ viperman

That is so true man...!

[sikbeta]

Games are getting bigger, next gen is going to be the same, I know a bunch of guys saying, "the Digital Distribution"

Well, for digital distribution you need 2 things:

1· Powerful Broadband
2· HUGE HDD

But the 2 things don't assure anything to anyone, no matter how big HDDs will become you can fill it so easily with a dozen of games but the time you spend downloading, is just hours and hours or even weeks wasted

[SaiyanFury]

While all of you guys above me are right, there's one thing that you neglected to mention. Cable and large ISPs in large cities are now capping large amounts of bandwidth. While I don't want to think about the huge headaches the poor people in Australia are having, companies like Time-Warner, and Cox are capping downloads to a measly level every month, despite the huge speeds they offer. That effectively cuts off the appeal of digital distribution. If your DL cap is like 25-50GB/month or whatever, what's the point in having a 30mbps connection?

[Serg]

25 - 50 GB is current Gen. Either DD with a setback on quality or no DD. I have a 100 MBit connection and I don't like the idea even if I could download 50GB in 1 hour and some change. The PS4, and I'm certain of that, will start at 50GB+ for the first games and they will get bigger and bigger. We already have up to 3 versions of 1 game on a single disc, SD, HD 720p and FullHD 1080p. Movies alone have surpassed the DVD9 limit with 1080p, and that's just a flat non-interactive stream of images with sound. Internet is still not in every home and even if, the speed is rarely enough to get 50 GB in a day and even if they are there is this tiny problem called bandwidth limitation, and I am also lucky in this regard as I don't have any restrictions.

As long as net speeds don't skyrocket around the globe a digital distribution only system is still scifi stuff.

So let's recap:

- Internet is still not in everybodies home
- Connection speeds are still below 10 Mbit for the vast majority
- Bandwith limitations plague many people with high speed internet
- As internet speeds become faster, games grow even bigger
- Disk space has to be ginormous for it to work
- The upload speed of servers is very low in comparison, high user count equals low download speed
- People like to touch their belongings, discs, manuals
- Collecting is also a factor
- Resell value of games vanishes with almost every currently working DD system
- Trading games with friends, no option anymore

[randomwiz]

my AWESOME(sarcasm) ISP, Comcast caps at 250gb, and slows down download speeds if you are downloading torrents/downloading too much too fast

I cant even play a game of modern warfare 2 with a torrent download running because of these idiotic rules in America.

Maybe for Japan, digital distribution is possible with their extreme speeds, but not here in America... atleast not for a few years

[Kevin ButIer]

F*** my life :P

[Madis007]

I dont like digital distribution on consoles
ONLY STEAM WORKS FINE (PC) But no CONSOLE

Trust me. Nobody would not buy digital distribution console without discs.

PC = digital distribution
Console = discs

[Ju]

Consoles = BD drive standard (or bigger, future XBox + Ninti, too)
PC = DVD standard (cannot see BD or something else replacing it soon)

If PC games will ever grow to about 20-50G at some point, Steam will be having a hard time to keep up. My biggest Steam game is The Last Remnant so far, with 12GB which is a pain to download.

[sikbeta]

This is a little example about something that can happen in the FUTURE [OHHH..]:

1 BR Disc of 4 layers, equal to 200gigs of game become an standard, so:
5 BR Games = 1Terabyte
10BR Games = 2TB
15BR Games = 3TB
20BR Games = 4TB
And so on

PC with a 2TB of space = 10BR Games and HOW MUCH TIME SPEND DOWNLOADING IT?
PC with a 4TB of space = 20BR Games and HOW MUCH TIME SPEND DOWNLOADING IT?²
And so on²

[Letros]

Can't see it happening for consoles, BD seems like a great format.

PC took years just to adopt DVD as the media standard, I want to say 2007ish, but I could be off.

DD for PC is working very good, Steam is raking in cash from it, personally, I love it, games travel where ever you go, if its in the cloud all your settings and save data goes too. Download speeds of Steam and Impulse are at 900-1000 KB/s. Pre-loading games before release is nice too, although you cannot play them before a store bought game (typically unlock 12-1pm same day)

[blue7xx7]

I don't think anyone was expecting any of the "next-gen" consoles to go all Digital. Maybe one day they will when everyone has really fast internet but until then discs will still be used. I'm guessing next gen consoles will use a combination of both.

[zeeshan]

Yes, that makes more sense. We still don't have internet connection worldwide that could download 50GB+ easily. That's a lot of data to download. Storing multiple games and other data on a single hard drive is also going to be an issue. Secondly and more importantly, I love keeping disks than digital content.

[PlayStation X]

just imagine how much fun it would be downloading something like ff13 lol

ill stick to my disks

[Silly Mammo]

So you buy a real stinker. Would love to sell it and get some credit toward another game. No such luck, you're stuck with it!

[mfwahwah]

What's arguably worse is that you just spent more time downloading it then you'll ever spend actually playing it.

[ChampIDC]

Consoles are supposed to appeal to the masses, and until broadband is more widespread, there's no way digital distribution will be the only option.

[saimcheeda]

just doesnt work, Discs are the way to go, i love the thought of a PS4 though!

[likedamaster]

Improve on digital distribution and offer more distribution options? Sure. Restricted ONLY to digital distribution? Even Sony isn't THAT dumb.

As the leader in digital distribution of games, Valve themselves offer their games in packages.

[V0LT]

Unless the FCC steps in digital distribution will not be as big as it could be. More and more isp providers are wanting to do that stupid metered broadband which is a mistake. I hope they do something about it...

[NiiGhTx]

Cant wait for the 400GB Blu Ray disk

[DeadlyFire]

Move physical media moves forward the further back digital distribution gets pushed.

I can see it working for indie low-budget games, but anything over a certain size will need a disc instead. At least for another 10-20 years.

[bjornbear]

I like having PHYSICAL evidence of my investment.

[mfwahwah]

Just print the receipt then lol

[Cyb3r]

Personally I prefer to have the disc instead of a digital download I do buy games on PSN but none of them are over 10GBs and if digital distribution became the main way of buying games then what would happen to all of the gamestores?

[Hanif-876]

I'd never buy a console thats only a digital distribution one where i'd have to download everything to it and to have the inconvenience of a corrupted hard drive where i'd have to redownload terabytes of game data...THATS A HUGE HELL NO!!!!

[mfwahwah]

I'd only buy that console if it was a Dreamcast 2.

[mac4u10]

Honestly Sony nailed it by sticking with Bluray, HD & more content and quality for consumers, other consoles will have to jump ship sooner or later, its only a matter of time.

[SRuN4]

Digital distribution will never happen. Games will always outpace the capabilities of broadband internet.

The broadband penetration isnt that great, the infrastructure isnt that great and you have bandwith caps. Games will continue to get bigger as the other stuff lags behind.

Some cable companies cap your bandwith at 70 GB/month. Imagine a month where you have three games coming out that you want really bad but you can't get the third because you ran out of bandwith for the month.

Games will be on discs. Hate when games journalists say digital distribution is only a few years away. No its not. Unless there is a miracle and all the problems with high speed internet problems are solved over night, it will never happen.

[bumnut]

i have used DD on pc for years but i have no downloads caps

[ForROME]

Although some of you are right they will be capping limits, thats is because of a tier system they will create

You want to download more, you pay more, so this non sense about getting cheaper items is nice, because the companies with save on shipping and packaging however the buck gets passed to us in paying more to dled more

I suspect next gen will be a transition stage, they will still do phy medium but 40% of games will be online and 60% in the store where as of now its about 5% is online and 95% in stores

[menoyou]

Thanks to stupid ISPs keeping our internet slow as balls.

[skyfire2261]

Totally agree. The speeds available to the average home in countries like Korea are absolutely amazing. They can download 50GB is just min.

I'am all for DD but there is just too much against it. Just look at the responses in the gamer zone. Utter retards. They just can't see the potential. Only see whats in front of them today. People like them just don't have the capacity to realize it's the 0's and 1's that are important, not packaging. Disc's are nothing more then mediums, DD is another and better means.

But I suppose the most i can hope for is SOMEONE (please sony pretty please) goes with flash media at least. That way we can all but do away with loading times and hdd installs and still maintain capacity.

Sony's next MSDuo for example is following the same spec as SDXC in terms of capacity. I would love to see one day a 2TB card in my PS4 instead of some clunky slow ass blu disc.

[SkyGamer]

[SkyGamer]

He doesn't say that the ps4 will still use discs. He just says future upcoming blockbusters. Besides just because a game is like 25-50 gb on a blu ray disc, that is UNCOMPRESSED data. With proper compression you can get 7 to 12 gb. Now with Internet peaking at 54 MBS, that game would not take that long to download. The only problem is for the rich kid that can afford to buy a lot of games, there should be a way you can have multiple hdd's to store multiple games on, ie. if you fill one 250gb hdd, you should be able to swap in another 250gb hdd so you can have different games on that and your GamerTag or ID would be stored on internal flash memory.

With compression and the cell, it shouldn't be a big deal to uncompress that data.

[hard joe]

seems like DD for consoles still needs some time to realise

[djfullshred]

bah with digital only. It is a win for distributers, but not consumers, even though they try to make it seem cool. Some issues I see with download only software:

* Not everyone has good Internet bandwidth, & some have rate caps that mean you pay more if downloading too much.
* Discs are portable media. I can take it with me to play on someone else's box that doesn't own the game.
* Discs can be bought from a brick & morter stores, and returned to them (depending on store policy). Download only requires accepting a no return clause in the license.
* You can re-sell a game disc for a few bucks.
* System failures may mean having to redownload all games again. Even if you back up a huge hard drive of games, it means you had to spend more money on back up media for that purpose.

[Adolph Fitler]

This is a no brainer.....If MS and Nintendo go d/l games next gen. they will hurt themselves badly for these reasons:

1. A lot of countries like mine (Australia) do not have affordable enough internet plans to download and/or stream all games and movies..All these little Countries add up to decent amounts of hardware sales too, and I imagine a lot of places throughout Europe suffer the same over inflated isp rates.

2. Most people (myself included) still want the exercise of walking into a shop, checking out the cover of games, and buying what you want that way rather than d/l-ing a game to the hdd. Having a cover, instruction book and disc in hand is part of the excitement in all honesty. Plus there are too many variables with having to rely on getting your games off the net. And the streaming game thing that on-live wants to offer would cause soo many problems it's not funny. Imagine Activisions problems when they release COD:MW12, and 1 billion people are streaming and playing at same time....total mess.

I will be buying PS4 knowing this info alone....It looks as though Sony are the only ones being realistic about next gen. and not rushing something that is still a ways off for a helluva lot of people. I know MS has already expressed there interest in moving away from disc formats in favor of d/l content.

[dredgewalker]

I always go for disc based media because ive had hard drives fail on me with all my precious data (ahem...porn). Even if i could download it, its still aint safe for me and bluray discs are a very good investment cause none of my discs have any scratches even my older ones.