Sony exec predicts end of the road for discs

Jamie MacDonald, VP of SCE Worldwide Studios Europe, has told GamesIndustry.biz that he believes digital distribution will overtake discs within the next five years.

Speaking after his keynote at GDC London this morning, MacDonald said the industry is currently experiencing a "paradigm shift" as the cost of games production increases and there is a move toward a "network-centric world". This, he argued, will have significant implications for the way developers make games, the revenue streams they are able to exploit and the way products are delivered.

"In five years' time, my belief is that the majority of content won't be delivered on disc. That has many implications for developers and the way we organise our industry," MacDonald said.

"It also brings with it great opportunities because it means you can touch your consumer in many different ways and at different times - it's not just a one-off relationship where a consumer buys a disc from the store.

"In terms of object sales, episodic content, in-game advertising and merchandising, there are many, many opportunities to have a relationship with the consumer - which is a great challenge to us as developers because that's not what we're used to."

This is not the first time a Sony executive has predicted the end of the road for disc formats. Back in August, Worldwide Studios president Phil Harrison said he would be "amazed" if the PlayStation 4 featured a disc drive - causing some observers to question the validity of launching the new Blu-ray format with PlayStation 3.

But according to MacDonald, "The thing about Blu-ray discs - and this is the crucial thing - is that not any time soon will you be able to download the amount of content you need for a big triple-A title down a typical 2, 4 meg broadband connection. That's not going to happen now or in the next year.

"So Blu-ray is absolutely needed for the high definition content in the games that we'll be producing. The network-enabled world, for the initial period, is much more about updated content, object sales, but also titles which are not these blockbuster titles."

The full interview with Jamie MacDonald will be published on GamesIndustry.biz later this week.

To be honest, I would never trust digital content distribution over the Interweb. Nothing beats getting a Disc, knowing that you always have a physical backup and I can't see an end to them anytime soon. There are so many things that can go wrong with computers, and not everyone wants all their information on the computers.

Cloudy

Not only are we moving towards a network centric world,we are also moving toward an open source one.

Digital distribution is just a way to control more of the information. It may save developers and producers money and effort because they don't need to ship cds and manuals to the stores, but it increases the incentive of hackers.

The more and more people who put their credit information online for such digital distribution the incentive for hackers to hack and gain this information will skyrocket. The use of keyloggers, trojans and malware will increase exponentially.

When the world is graced with an internet and computer system that is completely hole free and unhackable, will such a system be worth it.

But in the mean time, give me my damn discs.

This may bring forth download stations at your local game stores.Where you just download the latest game to you memcard or whatever after you've paid for it.

Well I for one, hope it doesn't happen. It's nothing new of course, but it worries me.

Well it is the way the world is moving,lets just hope the free and open source software movement surpasses the proprietary market

We can hope, but I don't think it will. All of this is done with money in mind. Open Source just isn't a money maker. If anything this will further the capitalist stranglehold on the games industry.