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.
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I absolutely agree, bigger hard drives for the consoles will be the wave of the future.
And that's why sony is trying to push blue-ray. So they can get the last bits of money from discs before all goes downloading
Broadband internet connection will be fast enuff in five years to download games that are 10Gb+,at the moment internet connection are expensive and not nearly fast enuff,so that's why PS3/Blu-ray is the way to go.25/50Gb Blu-ray discs will be enuff storage for PS3 this gen.
Beatmax and UMD were the waves of the future.
And another thing, why would they come out and say this?
I thought Blu-Ray was the wave of the future for gaming (according to Sony)! Now they say that digital downloads are? So do they still think its a good idea to implement Blu-Ray into gaming when it really won't matter in 5 years?
I think these guys need to just keep their mouths shut and just sit back and wait for the PS3 launch.
Sony need to stop shooting themselves on the foot. Their arguments are never consistant. If you are going to lie to your fans and say that blu-ray is the future for digital distribution which happen to be on a disc form; why would you say "content won't be delivered on disc"? it took 6-7 years for the mainstream user to transfer over to DVD from VHS. It was a huge improvement from VHS to DVD compare to blu-ray and dvd. This is why expert believe it will take even longer for blu-ray or hd-dvd to become mainstream. So, please explain to me. Why oh why it's this guy saying this? It seems to me that if what he says is true, blu-ray will not even have the chance to become mainstream! It seems to me sony is just trying to get some invested money back before it let go this dead format.