Physical Media Is Better than Digital Downloads or Streaming, Sony Says

Sony’s Computer Entertainment boss, Andrew House, has talked about the future of console gaming, saying that, while digital downloads or cloud streaming might become popular, physical discs are here to stay.

Lately, we’ve been hearing a lot about the next generation of consoles, with some rumors even going so far as to say that the new devices won’t use physical media like DVDs or Blu-ray discs anymore, relying instead just on digital downloads and streaming from the cloud.

Sony’s Andrew House, however, believes that high definition gaming needs physical discs at least in the next generation of devices, as each alternative has problems that prevents it from being a viable solution.

"There are clearly a lot of opportunities [in the future] with regard to business models around games, all of which we're interested in and are exploring," House told CVG.

"Some of our group companies already have a stake in free-to-play models and so on. But in my view, for the very highest quality high-definition console gaming, I think there are still some significant barriers to streaming solutions.”

House did mention that cloud-based streaming services would be a solution for the delivery of more casual content or older games, but that there was still a long way to go before it could truly deliver quality gameplay experiences.

Until then, according to the Sony executive, physical media provides the best kind of experience, both for customers and for Sony.

"The scale of data involved and issues around latency do mean that, at least for now, the easiest consumer experience is from physical media. Although, having said that, we're starting to see some growth in the number or proportion of our consumers that want to access their content via download. But I think it's still pretty small."

Judging by House’s words, fans should expect the PlayStation 4 to continue sporting the PS3’s Blu-ray capability, although the company doesn’t even want to talk about any new home console.