PS4 & Xbone: No New Media?

[Scotterpop]

It seems a bit strange to me to see a new Playstation on the market and not see a new storage format being ushered in by Sony. Each generation of Playstation helped popularize new storage mediums for consoles: The PS1 had CD-ROM, the PS2 had DVD, and the PS3 gave us Blu-ray. Even the PSP tried valiantly to make UMDs successful. So with the new systems from Sony and Microsoft both using Blu-ray discs, do you think we may have hit a plateau for optical disc storage for consoles? It just seems odd that there's not a shiny new super-advanced game format to help us welcome the next generation. Maybe that's because we're finally at the digital-only horizon, and physical media's days are truly numbered. What do you guys think?

[Bojay1997]

It seems a bit strange to me to see a new Playstation on the market and not see a new storage format being ushered in by Sony. Each generation of Playstation helped popularize new storage mediums for consoles: The PS1 had CD-ROM, the PS2 had DVD, and the PS3 gave us Blu-ray. Even the PSP tried valiantly to make UMDs successful. So with the new systems from Sony and Microsoft both using Blu-ray discs, do you think we may have hit a plateau for optical disc storage for consoles? It just seems odd that there's not a shiny new super-advanced game format to help us welcome the next generation. Maybe that's because we're finally at the digital-only horizon, and physical media's days are truly numbered. What do you guys think?

Blu Ray still has plenty of space with multi-layer technology to contain even the largest games right now. Frankly, Sony is embracing digital media as their solution for 4K content and the PS Vita essentially uses modified versions of existing card storage, so I doubt there is some new disc technology on the horizon that they would push for home consoles.

[TG Bloody Wolf]

I'd imagine that things got a little expensive. (What with introduction, and all that.) More than enough reason to keep the current format. Not to mention that blu-rays get the job done fairly well. imo

[RP2A03]

As cool as Holographic Versatile Discs are, until 4K gaming becomes a thing there is not much of a need for something with a capacity of several terabytes.

[BlastProcessing402]

Each generation of Playstation helped popularize new storage mediums for consoles: The PS1 had CD-ROM,

Much as PS2/3 helped popularize DVD/BR, I don't think PSX actually did much at all for CD. Audio CD had been around a long time, and it's not like PSX was a cheap CD player (though apparently the first revision was a damn good one, not that it sounds any different to my peasant ears). And as for games, all it really did was take what Sega and NEC had already done as add ons and make it the default (and Sega did that too). The format was also rapidly gaining momentum on the PC at the time as well (unlike DVD which took an oddly long time to catch on for PC, and BR still hasn't).

But back to the main point, yeah, it is weird for PS4 to be using the same disc type as PS3. BR's still new for Xbone, though. But if MS had their druthers I'm sure everything would be DRM'd up digital downloads.

[bb_hood]

So with the new systems from Sony and Microsoft both using Blu-ray discs, do you think we may have hit a plateau for optical disc storage for consoles?

Maybe, in the sense that blu-ray is simply good enough. I dont foresee anyone releasing a new media format to the masses anytime soon. new media is just not needed. Unless new games (in the future) become massive in size we will probably be using blu-ray for awhile.

I think when we do see new media developed and released it will be mainly so movie companies can re-release and re-sell you movies at 15-25$ each.

[Bojay1997]

As cool as Holographic Versatile Discs are, until 4K gaming becomes a thing there is not much of a need for something with a capacity of several terabytes.

Sony is not involved in the HVD group. In fact, Panasonic and Sony only recently (July of this year) announced a 300GB Blu Ray derivative as their next disc format but they won't even publish the specs until 2015.

[camarotuner]

By the time blu-ray isn't big enough for games, we won't be buying physical copies of games anymore. Why develop technology you'll never need at a cost of (I'm assuming) hundreds of millions of dollars.

[bb_hood]

By the time blu-ray isn't big enough for games, we won't be buying physical copies of games anymore.

Well if we are going to assume that companies will stop putting out physical media, then the game system would need a pretty large hard drive to accommodate downloading many games. I think its going to be awhile before we see games that dont fit on blu ray discs.

[Rickstilwell1]

Cartridges were used for how many system generations? Just because it's a disc doesn't mean it can't do the same. CDs were used for 2 generations and Xbox used DVDs for 2 generations, so also don't forget that.

[Greg2600]

Given that these systems force the full games to be installed on the hard disc, I certainly hope they aren't using a LARGER format!!!

[camarotuner]

We also all seemed to have missed the obvious, just use more than 1 disc. Lots of 360 RPG's were multi-disc and even some "regular" games were towards the end.

[CDiablo]

BR was too big for last gen. Theres probably less than 20 multi disk games for xbox 360. Bluray was put in PS3 because Sony was trying to push a format that they invested in.

[camarotuner]

BR was too big for last gen. Theres probably less than 20 multi disk games for xbox 360. Bluray was put in PS3 because Sony was trying to push a format that they invested in.

37 to be specific. Found a list online lol.