As ever, rumours are still moving around the net about the arrival of a PS4 in a couple of years time. No official specs or even a mention have been found yet except for a few comments made by Sony people saying the expect there to be more and more playstations over the years.
The next question asks if Sony will dump blu-ray in favour of holography. Some content over on the NY Times recently indicated that GE were researching storage capacity on holographic disks (HVD). The technology has been around a few years but isn’t yet available on the market. A theoretical 3.9 TB of data could be stored if the companies working on it get it right. Given those numbers and the time left until a PS4 launch (2012 at a guess) it would appear that HVD’s might be the way forwards.
“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.
As of now the technology is expensive, but given a few years and a lot more research we could see prices drop to a more normal and acceptable level.
As well as being capable of playing HVD’s it would be possible to be backwards compatible too making all your old DVD’s and Blu-Ray discs compatible. This would add convenience to the system while allowing the limits to be pushed on the cutting edge games of the new generation.
Of course you also have to wonder if the PS4 will completely do away with an optical drive and go based on downloadable content only. With Virgin Media testing 200 Meg connections at the moment in the UK there might not even be a need for optical storage on the device (although we do understand that not every country would have access to fast connections).
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
Drop the optical drive all together – never happen! Not everyone in their target audience will have an internet connection or one so fast they can use DLC effectively. This would be a seriously dumb move on Sony’s part and personally I think its more than 5 years away.
should phase out the optical drive, either go on content downloadable direction or flash memory like SSD/SD card.
This may actually be a smart move. Toshiba was the maker of HD DVD, so you can bet Microsoft has heard of this new storage.
stupid stupid stupid!!! I want to have a disk it makes me feel good looking at my CD’s all stacked up in my holder, and also if you want to go play the game at your friends house what do you do?? download it there?? i myself think DLC games are idiotic
Do you think the same with audio CD’s too?
People which think downloading will replaceoptical drives are kidding themselves. The world is about 20 years away from that, and Sony would be ruling out a huge demographic. The pattern of PS releases is a new format of optical.drives every version. History has a tendency of repeating itself. Blue ray has been out since 2006 in stores. 2013 as a release date for ps4 is likely, perhaps 2014. That’s a 8 year life cycle for s technology. Pretty good innings I think.
Ever heard of the HVD alliance?
Big companies like Sony, Apple and the likes are investing in this technology.
They wouldn’t be spending hundreds of millions to not deploy this into systems.
HVD has a massive throughput in regards to data rates, not just storage space.
Let’s get one things straight… games are not going to be streamed off the Internet for at least 20 years. Hell, even the most developed countries have abysmal speeds and infrastructure.
HVD will be produced for businesses and the corporate sectors, it’s just a question of when it will be utilised for mainstream purposes. Probably when games and movies require a higher resolution.
PS4 comes out I reckon in around 2015. A lot can happen in 4 years. Just look at how fast the world is moving.