Is the importance of Blu-Ray overstated?

[jalsonmi]

MikeB said:
@ jalsomni

All companies including Sony are pushing for (cheaper) digital distribution. However as an additional option, just like all the other companies you mentioned above.

I bought many PSN games and I would love to download some high quality music videos to my PS3. But for instance Gran Turismo 5: Prologue sold much better on Blu-Ray disc than on the PSN and I am sure for bigger games like the full version nearly all Gran Turismo fans will want to have it on Blu-Ray disc.

Again, games are an entirely different issue than movies. More people bought GT5P than downloaded because:

a) We're talking now abotu the finite space on a PS3 hardrive, as opposed to the infinate variations of distribution models, download sizes and potential means of storage digital media provides.

b) Games (specifically in terms of console gaming) as a medium are still very much oriented towards discs as the means of consumption. Different mediums are at different places in terms of their level of adoption of consumption via new media. Music is the most far gone (though arguably writing actually is, as much more reading is done online than via printed form these days). Movies are close to where music was around the time Napster folded. Television is still primarily viewed via, well, via a television (thanks to in certain places and certain ways free broadcasting and similar ease of use to new media). Video games are actually pretty close to movies in this manner but we tend to ignore things like Yahoo games and their user bases ten times or more that of any console when it comes to video games. In terms of console gaming, the size of the file is much more prevalent to the quality of the media as a whole. Viewing Kill Bill on an iPhone doesn't suddenly give it a crappy ending or make the Crazy 88 into the Crazy 14. Video games, ironically because they are created purely digitally, right now need the things external storage devices like discs give them--space for all that code so we can have a longer game with more enemies on screen at once and all that jazz. But tis won't always be the case. It used to be emulations of anything post 4th gen was pretty impossible. That's not the case any more, and eventaully, when bandwitch and harddisk space gets to a big enough point, games probbly will become a primarily downloaded medium. Hell, I remember a forum on that topic on VGChartz a few weeks ago. It may not happen soon, but it will probably happen eventually.