Sony, Panasonic plan next-gen optical discs

Sony and Panasonic have teamed up to develop a new standard of optical discs for the next-generation.

By the end of 2015, the two tech companies plan to have optical discs with the recording capacity of 300GB.

The purpose of the discs will be primarily for businesses to store and preserve large amounts of data, but the discs could make their way into the consumer market where needed – possibly with the delivery of 4K videos and future games.

“In recent years, there has been an increasing need for archive capabilities, not only from video production industries, such as motion pictures and broadcasting, but also from cloud data centres that handle increasingly large volumes of data following the evolution in network services,” reads the press release.

“Both Sony and Panasonic have a proven track record in developing Blu-ray Disc format technologies, and by actively promoting the adoption of a new standard for next-generation high-capacity optical discs, they intend to offer solutions that preserve valuable data for future generations.”

The two companies will focus on the optical disc format due to its excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and temperature changes.

If the discs would make their way into the consumer market, game developers could include significantly more data on the next-gen discs, which would open up opportunities for larger and longer games, or higher fidelity textures and assets.