Why the PlayStation 4 won't have Blu-ray

[boricua5150]

Don Reisinger of CNET believes that the PS4 will not feature a Blu-ray player of any kind, he foresees the tech industry pushing Blu-ray aside as more capable technology becomes available and Sony's PS4 strategy will change to a focus on streaming and HD downloads.

To quote: Assuming what the analysts say is true -Sony will release a new console in three to five years and Blu-ray will be dead in five -how can the company justify putting a Blu-ray player into the Playstation 4? Does it really want to tie itself to a loser even though it spent so much money trying to make it a winner?

Given the company's financial woes in the video game space as of late, that could turn into its greatest blunder.

The technology industry is pushing Blu-ray aside as more capable offerings become available. I think Sony knows that already and will try to milk Blu-ray for as long as possible. But once the Playstation 4 is announced, the company will make its strategy known: it will forgo support for Blu-ray in the video game space and start focusing on streaming and HD downloads -the future of the industry.

[elfag]

It is too far out to make a good guess yet.

People still like the idea of having a physical object in their hands. It is the same thing with CD's versus mp3's. CD's are still around and selling strong.

Also you would have to consider that if the game is downloaded and stored on a harddrive, you wouldnt be able to take the game with you and play it on your friends console.

You would be limited in the amount of games you could have if they must be stored locally on a harddrive as well. They are having this sort of issue on the Nintendo Wii with the virtual console. People are buying games through that and the small storage capacity of its flash storage limits how many games people can store.

In the future while there will be larger harddrives there will also be larger games. Currently the consoles have smaller harddrives to keep the costs down. Sure the PS3 could just keep its games all on a 1000gb harddrive but those cost 200 dollars alone which is why the PS3 has hardrives in the 40-100gb range, to keep the cost down. Optical medias have always been cheaper than harddrives in the past and with flash even more expensive than harddrives it is likely that the next consoles will still use some type of optical media. By the time PS4 comes around blue ray will be more common and I expect it to have a drive that is backwards compatible with the current blue ray.

[elfag]

I understand what the guy is getting at, I just dont think current broadband internet is fast enough for that. Maybe at PS5 it will be more common to stream HD movies and gamse over the net but today the capacity just isnt there and PS4 is only a few years away so I dont expect it to change that much by then.

I also dont think blueray will be dead in 5 years. It is gaining acceptance now because it has no other competition. People are still not buying it now because its too expensive but soon there will be 50 dollar blue ray players and it will become the norm.