Size matters to Sony

October 31st, 2006, 17:06 Posted By: wraggster

"We'll be pushing the 25GB threshold very quickly, and I expect this time next year we will see games that are justifying 50GB," says Phil Harrison

In an interview with Edge magazine, head of Sony Worldwide Studios, Phil Harrison, says that the huge data consumption of PS3 games will require the storage space afforded by Blu-ray discs.

Sony's use of Blu-ray in PS3 places huge faith in the, as yet, un-established disc format. Universal Studios' withdrawal of Blu-ray support has raised concerns for the format's success, and the implications for the PS3 should it fail.

But Harrison shrugs off such a scenario, saying: "In the event that the movie advantage isn't clear - either because of the format itself not being widely adopted or some other reason - it actually doesn't matter, because we need the Blu-ray disc as developers."

Single-layer Blu-ray discs are able to store 25GB of data, with a dual-layer version planned later, which doubles the capacity to 50GB. This is way beyond the 8.5GB capacity of the DVDs used by Xbox 360.

It'll be interesting to see how much PS3 will games benefit, in actual gameplay terms, from this massive storage space.

There are 4 comments - Join In and Discuss Here