SonyPlayStation4.org

Thinking about the next PlayStation, the PS4, it’s almost presumed that the games will be packaged and sold as Blu-Ray disks. But does this really make sense versus the transformation that is taking place in the way intellectual property like books, motion pictures, music, software, television programs, and video games are packaged, stored and delivered? No longer does content need to be bound in a physical form and sold as a tangible item. Instead, it is transmitted as packets of pure information via a high-speed connection. This transformation from physical to ethereal media is ultimately limited only by bandwidth. In short digital distribution is the future.

Consider the fact that Atlantic Records, a division of Warner Music Group, reported in November 2008 that a majority of its music sales are now from digital downloads.  Consider a recent report by Forrester Research which projects that digitally downloaded music will surpass physical CD sales in 2012. People are just plain tired of having to leave their homes to purchase or rent clunky physical storage containers like CD’s and DVD’s just to access digital content that could be downloaded from the convenience of their own homes via a broadband connection.  So what parallels to this can be found in the video gaming industry? And what effect, if any, will this transformation have on the next generation of video gaming systems?

Quite simply, future gaming systems will likely be browser-based; maybe not the PlayStation 4 (PS4), but almost certainly the PS5.  David Lau-Kee, co-founder of Renderware developer Criterion, ex-Electronic Arts VP and the current executive for Kerb Games and Unity has recently went so far as to predict that the “PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 are going to be browsers.”  This is a pretty bold prediction from someone who is understandably biased toward web-based gaming.

Whether or not this turns out to be true for the PS4, the PS5 will almost certainly be a browser-based, all-purpose entertainment system with specialized video gaming capabilities. The demand is there. But will the bandwidth be there soon enough? We’ll have to wait and see.