Sony Computer Entertainment CEO Andrew House indicates that the company is looking to all viable means of distribution. However, he notes that there are significant barriers for delivering the highest quality HD experience through means other than a physical disc.
“There are clearly a lot of opportunities with regard to business models around games, all of which we’re interested in and are exploring,” said House. “Some of our group companies already have a stake in free-to-play models and so on. But in my view, for the very highest quality high-definition console gaming, I think there are still some significant barriers to streaming solutions.”
“Whether it’s in mobile or cloud-based services, there are opportunities there for more casual content and in our case potentially for legacy content, which we would definitely like to explore,” he noted. “But I think we are a ways away from being able to deliver the full-on top-end experience like that. The scale of data involved and issues around latency do mean that, at least for now, the easiest consumer experience is from physical media.”
“Having said that, we’re starting to see some growth in the number or proportion of our consumers that want to access their content via download. But I think it’s still pretty small,” he added. “Interestingly, some of our consumer data is saying that consumers’ expectation, or their perception of how fast their broadband connection is, doesn’t necessarily match the physical reality. So I think there’s an expectation gap there that needs to be overcome.”
Source: CVG
