Sony exec forecasts physical media future

If in ten years we've all got diskless PlayStations and Xboxes, we'll all be able to jeer at Sony Computer Enterainment CEO Kaz Hirai who this week forecast such things are at least that far off, if not longer.

There are two reasons for this, he told trade paper MCV, one technical, one commercial.

From a technological standpoint, the network isn't up to it. “We do business in parts of the world where network infrastructure isn’t as robust as one would hope,” he said.

Then there's the - probably more important - commercial angle: “There’s always going to be requirement for a business of our size and scope to have a physical medium."

In short, Sony not yet ready to dismantle its infrastructure of disc makers, distributors and resellers in favour of massiver server farms and downloads.

This despite the fact that this is how music has gone and, arguably, movies aren't all that far away from going.

It may happen, Hirai told the paper, but not in the stort term: "To think everything will be downloaded in two years, three years or even ten years from now is taking it a little bit to the extreme.”

We shall see. ®