PS4 to Get New Disk Format?

We have mentioned in the past that Sony could consider dropping optical drives on their next generation Sony Playstation 4 when launched, although Sony have more recently indicated that they are not yet ready to abandon physical medium just yet. Also the poll we ran also indicated that 74% of our readers would want an optical drive.

This leads us on to another thing to discuss that we have also mentioned before, and that is if Sony will continue to use Blu-ray optical discs, or if they will move on to something else as they traditionally do between generations of consoles. One idea is that they could make use of Holography on their optical discs to cram even more data on to them. A while back GE were apparently testing HVD for storage with theoretical capacities of up to 3.9TB per disk that would provide plenty of space for a game or even a good number of games.

By increasing the capacity of optical storage it would further allow developers to more comfortably work with 1080p HD video formats and high quality audio in games without worrying about being restricted to certain physical limits, or spanning across to a second or third disk.

Another reason for such large capacities being needed could be related to security according to psxextreme who mention an area of the disc could be used for enhanced security keeping copied games to a minimum.

We haven’t really had any official word on the Playstation 4 just yet although plenty of hints at a next gen console have been dropped by high profile gaming folk along with some of Sony’s staff. We expect that the PS4 will arrive in the next 2 to 3 years though sometime in 2012… maybe with a new optical drive format.