Sony Sees the End of the Disc

Another Sony man is talking up the death of games on discs, with digital distribution holding the knife.

Picture this: It's 4 October 2011, and you're sitting at home, when you think to yourself, "I feel like playing a game." So you turn on your console - but you don't reach for a disc. Instead, you go log on to the network and download Gran Turismo 2011. Discs? They're not big in Sony's future.

"In five years' time, my belief is that the majority of content won't be delivered on disc," Sony's Jamie McDonald told GamesIndustry.biz.

He's not the first Sony man to say it, and he won't be the last. As McDonald explained, this is going to change the way publishers and developers approach the challenge of making games.

"It also brings with it great opportunities," he said, "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."

Here again is the idea of a relationship with users. Just this week, Sony's Michael Denny told Next Generation that by using microtransactions, companies would be able to keep a relationship (of the monetary kind) with their customers.

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

McDonald noted that the arrival of digital distribution proper doesn't mean the exit of Sony's new disc format:

"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."

Alex Wollenschlaeger
Editor, Kikizo