http://www.cinemablend.com/games/Editorial-Xbox-720-PS4-Bypassing-Blu-Ray-For-Holography-17142.html

Full article in link provided.

You're going to make a lot of PS3 fanboys angry cuz they think Blu-Ray is the future for this century

ahah, well so much for Blu Ray..

The article makes a good point that the PS4 could be a combo player being able to read Blu Ray's and HOM's



2011 is fast approaching and the talk about the next generation of consoles is already buzzing about the gaming news circuits. Everyone is concerned with how Sony will financially manage a PS4, while another group is concerned with how Microsoft will approach optical media formats and the impervious blockade of Blu-Ray movie content. Well folks, there’s a cost-effective solution for Sony and a content-effective solution for Microsoft and it’s called holography.

The NY Times recently ran an article about a General Electric science and research team and their findings of storage capacity in the medium of holography. This isn’t particularly new news, given that holography has been around for ages. However, what it is new about these findings is that they can use holographic optical media to maintain data storage equivalent to 100 standard DVDs.

“This could be the next generation of low-cost storage,” said Richard Doherty, an analyst at Envisioneering, a technology research firm.

The light-pattern encoded medium, at the moment, is fairly expensive and will only be available for medical, marketing and research purposes. However, by 2011 the team is expecting mass-market breakthroughs that will see Holographic Optical Media being used as a standard-fare storage medium.

According to the article, “The recent breakthrough by the team, working at the G.E. lab in Niskayuna, N.Y., north of Albany, was a 200-fold increase in the reflective power of their holograms, putting them at the bottom range of light reflections readable by current Blu-ray machines.”

So what does this mean? It means that Holographic Optical Media can be read by Blu-Ray devices but doesn’t have to be limited to Blu-Ray technology. This also means that Sony and Microsoft could potentially build optical drives around the convenience of current and past generation media formats while embracing Holography for the most demanding of next-generation game development on the Xbox 720 and PlayStation 4.

For those wondering about price and economic convenience, just know that by 2012 the research shows, according to the article, that “…holographic discs using its technology will be less than 10 cents a gigabyte — and fall in the future.”

By 2011 holographic discs are already expected to be cheaper per gigabyte than the $1 per gigabyte ratio of Blu-Ray when it launched in 2006. I don’t know about anyone else but the timeframe really seems to coincide nicely with the suspected launch of the new consoles in 2011.

So is it possible that the PS4 could bypass a Blu-Ray only format for an HOM/Blu-Ray combo? And would this be a good move for Microsoft, especially given that a player that can read Blu-Ray can also use HOM? Well, time will only tell but I would definitely look forward to the consoles if they did use this kind of optical storage medium, given that storage capacity would no longer be a pang for developers.

At present, General Electric is currently licensing out the technology and working with partners to further solidify the new medium across multiple technology and business markets.

What is interesting is that the article does not mention Nintendo -- and Nintendo already has a patent application out for this: http://kotaku.com/5031293/nintendo-dabbling-in-holographic-storage

Back to the OP, this emergent technology may be another reason the current generation may last into 2012. No one wants to guess wrong and get burned (e.g., HD-DVD). That being said, since Nintendo tends to rely on its own formats, it could actually go first next time around.

Mike from Morgantown

Blu Ray is moderately successful because of Movie studio support this new teh needs backers from software and hardware manufacturers just like Blu Ray had most against HD DVD

E3 2010 or 2011 could reveal more about the future consoles. Either way I will be buying both consoles on their launches. Expect launch prices of around US$400 each.

Well SONY said themselves that BR isnt the future and expects it to be gone due to rapid growth in technology

I hope the consoles are launched a year apart say 2011/2012 or 2012/2013. Imagine if X720 and PS4 were launched on the same launch date and priced the same at US$400?

Yeah, another useless storage medium to drive up future console costs! Hurray!

BD should be much cheap than holographic storage in 2011/2012. BR storage should be up to 100-200GB per disk. Will they seriously need more than that?

One of the main lessons learned this generation is that hardware price matters over features. Unless it is almost as cheap as Blu-Ray at the time of console launch, no one will include it.

Hope that the 720 incorporates this in it's drive. I've been saying for a few years that HVD is the way to go for the next-box.