During a Nasdaq event on the 5th of December, EA CFO Blake Jorgensen stated that the consumers should expect to see consoles along with disc drives to stay around for years to come. The consoles won’t be going digital in the near future as disc drives are still a major part of the machines.
Not only for gaming but for other types of entertainment contents as well. According to the CFO, he can’t see them disappearing anytime soon.
Consoles and disc drive probably stay around for a long period of time. I think it’s the consumer deciding what’s the easiest way for them to buy a game. And it may mean they no longer have a store down the street from them so they decide to buy it [digitally] maybe it’s easier for them to do.
Previously in 2014, Xbox owner Phil Spencer revealed the inside discussion amongst the developers on whether or not the Xbox One should have an “optical disc drive”. They opted out of it due to the concerns related to bandwidth and game size. It is a fact that internet speeds vary across the world and also that a standard AAA video game exceeds 50 GB in size, without the updates and new content.
In 2009, Sony launched the digital-only PSP Go but canceled it just two years later. Many in the industry including the Tekken developer Katsuhiro Harada believes that the future of gaming consoles lies in the services being offered, not the dedicated hardware.
When there’s the PS5, it will probably be just a controller and a monitor. Then, the thing that will be left is the name of the service.
With digital gaming on the rise it is not hard to see Harada’s comments as a distant reality but a reality nonetheless.
