Our Second PlayStation 4 Story!

Yuh? So they'd be suprized if the ps4 has removable physical media? So (and I know I'm baiting here) what's the point in buying all my movies on bluray if you're telling me your next machine won't be able to play them?

Seriously and I was thinking I hadn't heard the Sony Execs says something stupid for a while and then their minders go and take a day off.

Well, by then there will be standalone players?

What is it with the Internets these days?

Sony: PS3 has Blu-ray
Internets: Why do I have to re-buy my DVDs, Sony sucks!

Sony: PS3 is expensive.
Internets: I don't want Blu-ray, PS3 is expensive, Sony sucks!

Sony: PS4 won't have an optical drive.
Internets: But I'll have movies on Blu-ray, Sony sucks!

You can't have it both ways. If you don't want a PS3 to play Blu-ray movie discs, you can't complain when the PS4 won't have a Blu-ray drive.

Let's face it, the PS4 will come out in 2012 at the earliest. We may all be downloading movies by that time, never mind games.


I don't see where it's a stupid thing to say. If Miamoto-san had said it aboit Wii2 would you be so incredulous? How about Peter Moore about Xbox 720? Or is it just because 2006 is the year of bashing Sony on the Internet?

Like I said, I was baiting about bluray.

If either Miamoto-san or Moore had started talking about their next generation machines now I'd be pissed off because I'd like them to focus on the here and now (or at a stretch the next year and a half) - at least until xmas. After that, fine.

Giving predicitions about the next-next-gen like that undermines my faith in a company, even if its an off the cuff remark, because its just throws up too many questions about things we shouldn't even be thinking about (and they probably haven't) and will probably bear little relation to what the ps4 turns out to be.

Speculation from execs is fine, but Sony's are making a habit of saying the most inapropriate things from a marketing pov. They shouldn't be talking about the ps4. Their marketing guys need to be hand-holding to make sure that their remarks aren't be taken out of context and they should have been doing a bloody good job controlling ps3 news. I thought they had started to until I saw this story.

I'd be surprised if there's a Sony after PlayStation3.

In general I love my Sony PS2, and I am wary of buying any Microsoft products as I can see what they will do to the gaming industry if they get to monopolise it. But Sony are going wrong left, right and centre with their pre-PS3 "hype". They're trying to sell us the idea of a future-proofed console, able to play next-gen media, at a price higher than most are happy to pay. Their latest ploy is to talk of the NEXT console already? Which won't even have the "must-have" blu-ray player?

Why, I think they talk crazy. Phil Harrison comes across as a knob that knows nothing about the heart and soul of gamers. I'm not happy forking out £450+ to that man... I just don't trust his judgement.

I will eat my words, my hat and a puke-pie if they turn this around by giving us a fully-functional vibrating controller. That's key to my decision. And they should sack Phil Harrison. The man that destroyed my faith in Sony. "Vibration is last gen"? What an arsehole.

You're missing a full-stop on the end of the final sentence in this story. ;)

Well, I can't afford a PS3, let alone a PS4. I think it would be unwise on Sony's side to dump the Blu-ray drive for PS4, after convincing consumers it is one of the merits of the PS3.

There will be a consumer expectation that PS4 will play Blu-ray movies, Blu-ray games, DVDs (and maybe even PS2 games) at the very least. If Sony don't want these consumer expectations to build, then they will need to handle this and the following generation very carefully - prehaps these comments are the start of it...

Either way, it doesn't sound like a good move to me.

One of Sony's soldiers putting his foot in mouth. Not a pretty sight.

The idea of no physical media to buy games on is very matrix nice in thought but i'm sure would be an arse biscuit to everyone in practice. I'm sure it would also put an end o the industries current ointment fly, the second hand market. They'd love that but it's never gonna happen.

Jeez, just look how much grief Valve are giving gamers with Steam and its games. Due to the cumbersome nature of PCs and getting such games online it makes gaming a chore to get what you want. I don't think such distribution will ever go any further than it currently is (for demos and such), because we like to have the game in our hand, with lovely packaging designed to look pretty etc (especially those lovely jap imports).

Its like asking everyone to give up real food for space vacuum astronaut food, never gonna happen because you can't beat the real deal.

Didn't Bill Gates say something similar last year (or earlier)? Something like he didn't see the need for disc media in the future?Link
There is some mention in the above link.

And yet, look at the plaudits Microsoft is winning for Arcade and demo downloads.

With a fixed platform and no online registration, a digital distribution method would be able to fly. PCs have too much variation in their hardware to make digital distribution very useful, but with consoles I think it can work.


Hasn't stopped iTunes Music Store from shipping absolutely s**t loads of music. Collecting the physical album used to be part of the appeal, but more and more people are only consuming downloaded digital music.

Apart from that, why do you need the packaging or physical media at all? It takes up room, it's a hassle to get it into the machine, you have to swap discs when you change games, loading times are slower than playing games from hard drive and you never read the manual because every game has a tutorial level.

As long as you only have to buy the content once and not every time you download it, I think that digital distribution will work very well in the future. Say five to ten years down the line when we all have Internet2 to our homes.

A reliable 1 Gb/s connection could download the contents of a dual-layer Blu-ray disc (50 GB) in under 10 minutes. The current speed record for Internet 2 stands at about 7 Gb/s - a Blu-ray disc in under a minute.

Given that Sony wants the PS3 to have a ten year lifespan, its not inconceivable that they are looking at purely digital distribution for the PS4. As long as there is a way to register that you have bought PS1/2/3 games and download them to your PS4 and do the same for your movies and music, I can't see any problem with it.

The original article was a piece entitled "The Infinite Arcade" and was aimed at exploring the whole downloadable games idea. The article was aimed at getting opinions about the future.

The rest of the article shows the idea is widespread and Phil isn't the only person to say downloads are the way to go.



"Years from now" not "decades from now".

The problem is that there is no context in the quote that is attributed to Phil Harrison - of course, it sounds better without any context. He may have said "If the infrastructure is there to support digital downloads then, I'd be amazed...", but we will probably never know.

Sony want the ps3 to last at least twice the normal lifespan of a console right, but ive not read how they think this will play out.

theyve placed so much importance on the ps3 being super powerful, but it doesnt seem to beat the 360 in a way that could be called anything but marginal. and in 4 or 5 years, wont the 3602 be released?

think of the gpu and cpu technology we'll have in 4 or 5 years, the next MS console will be literally years ahead of the ps3. even more interestingly, by the time of the next nintendo console, technology might be cheap enough for them to make a console that rivals the ps3 in graphical ability, but retails at 250 dollars or less like the wii!

surely the ps3 is going to need to be fully upgradeable, cpu, memory, gpu... and ive heard nothing of the sort. plus what youve got then is a frigging pc anyway, and id rather have the pc.

the 1080p output of the ps3 is its only real piece of futureproofing i can see.

Well there's that, the upgradable hard drives and also the Blu-ray disc drive - for capacity even if you don't believe in the longevity of the format.

There's also the fact that the firmware is almost certainly going to be upgradeable like the PSP and 360 so additional features can be added to the operating system.

those things are all well and good but they will not make the console last two console-life terms.

and if they do offer essential upgrades i hope its not every couple of years because that would be 'taking the piss' id say

youll end up with an out of date machine that youve spent a fortune buying in the first place and then upgrading

then imagine the ps4 replaces your 10 year old monetary black hole known as the ps3 and the ps4 doesnt even have a drive for all your bluray movies and games, :D

obviously the no disk drive thing is speculation based on a silly throwaway comment by a sony dude, but i think it would be quite the insult if they didnt include a drive on the ps4.

The PS3 plays Bluray and all Playstation games, and you would only care about that if you had a PS3 already (because you wouldn't buy media if you didn't have the player first if you were sensible), before buying a PS4.

PS4 is a generation beyond PS3, so the games should be so much better, that you won't care about playing PS3 games anymore - basically the same reasons why backwards compatibility isn't important.

You don't know how much better the PS3 is than the X360 yet - the most complete games are ports, and the hardware hasn't even been launched yet, so imagine how much of the potential the games have reached so far.

But, if you don't buy a PS3, and keep saving your money, by the the time the PS4 comes out, you can just buy that straight away instead.

I do believe in media-less content - I hate having CD and DVD cases all over the place. The thing that makes me doubt it most is internet connection speed and reliability. Imagine if people still had slow internet connections - it could take a week or two to get one game, you could only get one at a time.

Is this the ressurection of famed Vaporware console, the Phantom, flying Sony colors?

youre right, no-one has seen the full power of the ps3 (or the Wii and even 360 for that matter). but we must create opinions based on what we have seen, and its not exactly light years ahead

i cant see it standing up in 5 years, at least not against the competition

But... but... what about having an awesome game collection? What about having a giant pile of cases within which nestle little gems that you bought and never played which you discover on a lazy Sunday? As lovely as Live Arcade is, I enjoy the collecting side of having a huge pile of games.

Fundamentally it's no different, except takes up zero physical space. And you can't lose them because they're saved.

It is about what we see, and if the power isn't used it's a waste - but the PS3 isn't even out yet, and the X360 has already had a year, so I don't know if it's fair to compare it just yet - give it a chance.

But don't you just love that fresh box smell?

theres nothing like showing off your games collection as well, all racked up, piled up, everywhere.

'check out these thumbnails' doesnt have the same effect