For a long time now, the vidoe game industry has been steadily chasing this dream of an all-digital future, where physical media is all but extinguished and games are all streamed via the internet. This future has been all but realized on PC save for the streaming requirement, but publishers have not yet been able to make it happen in the console sector. And, if a certain ex-Sony exec is to be believed, they’re likely going to have to wait a while longer yet.

As reported by Tech 4 Gamers, former Sony executive Shawn Layden recently appeared on a podcast known as “Kiwi Talkz”, and briefly discussed whether the PS6 would be entirely digital. In Mr. Layden’s opinion, that would be unlikely due largely to the scale of the PlayStation market. According to him, Sony would risk losing millions of potential customers if it didn’t offer some sort of disc drive option for its next system. So, if this logic holds true, those of us who still prefer physical storage will likely still have a home on PlayStation once the next console generation rolls around.

I know that AAA games are getting too big for blu-ray discs and that developing new physical storage likely isn’t seen as financially viable by these companies, but I still find myself disappointed that something more viable hasn’t come about in the past 15 years. I don’t want to stream my stuff, and I’d prefer not to have to rely on an HDD not failing in the long term in order to keep my purchases.

This was and is the beauty of discs. No power required. No moving parts. Good for the next 50+ years if you take care of them and have a way to read them. How on earth that kind of safety and reliability came to be regarded as “obsolete” is beyond me. Well, thanks to many places in the world still not being reliably connected to high-speed internet, our discs are still supposedly safe. Still, here’s hoping some sort of solution comes out in the next few years that puts the power of preservation back in consumers’ hands.

How do you feel about digital vs. physical? Would you want to see a successor to blu-ray come out in the next few years or so?

Image by Flickr user Fe Ilya (CC BY-SA 2.0)