With the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation Portable, you could certainly download quite a few games. With the new PlayStation 4, however, it sounds like digital downloads will be a primary method of distribution. Sony Worldwide Studios boss Shuhei Yoshida told The Guardian that every single PlayStation 4 title will be available digitally.
Every PlayStation 4 game will be available to download, subscription service a possibility
is a senior editor and founding member of The Verge who covers gadgets, games, and toys. He spent 15 years editing the likes of CNET, Gizmodo, and Engadget.
“PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc,” he said in an interview last week.
And once Sony has a whole library of digital PS4 titles, Yoshida hinted, a subscription service might also be in the cards:
As more and more services and contents become available digitally, we’ll have more of an option to create attractive packages. So hypothetically we can look at different models – like a cable TV company. We could have gold, silver or platinum levels of membership, something like that. We can do subscription services when we have more content – especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available. With one subscription you have access to thousands of games – that’s our dream.
Gaikai cloud servers could wind up being key to Sony’s strategy if the company’s serious about digital distribution. While you can already download a bunch of full PS3 titles that normally ship on Blu-ray disc, they can easily top 10GB, with quite a few of them taking up 20GB or more. PlayStation 4 titles could be even larger. Blu-ray has a theoretical capacity of 50GB with a dual-layer disc, and Blu-ray XL fits 100GB. Those games could take a while to download in the United States, unless you live in Kansas City, and take up plenty of hard drive space.
However, with Gaikai’s streaming game service and Sony’s play-as-you-download tech, you could theoretically enjoy a subscription service without worrying about such things: simply stream or download as many bits as you need while you’re playing. That’s the dream, anyway.
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