Speaking at the 5th annual PLAY Digital Media conference, EA Sports President Peter Moore has revealed that disk based gaming is a ‘burning platform’.
In fact, Moore went as far as to suggest that the future of console based gaming as a whole lay in the digital realm.
“Look at the platform we’re on, it’s a burning platform,” said Moore. “As a concept, do you stay on the platform and face certain death, or do you jump into the water and face probable death? Most of you would choose probable death, so you start moving towards a hybrid model of digital distribution.”
To clarify he stated that “the concept of physical packaged discs and the core business model that is video games as it currently stands is a burning platform” reports IGN.
“As digital distribution becomes more and more, we’ll continue as an industry to work with retail and to ship discs, but more and more of the content will be in the ‘cloud.'” he added. “More content will be delivered daily, weekly, or monthly, and less will be of the old model of cartridges and discs.”
Moore also revealed that he believes that Microsoft will be the first of the three major console hardware manufacturers to release an entirely digital console.
Although the concept of a gaming console sans disk drive may be a nice ideal, it seems somewhat unrealistic for the global gaming community as a whole in the near future. Some countries, such as South Africa are still struggling to provide high speed, cheap and reliable broadband to its citizens.
A console which is based entirely on downloaded content would certainly require the use of a cost effective and fast internet connection, something which very few third world countries will be able to provide for within the next decade.
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