While games will still be available on Blu-ray discs for the PlayStation 4, President of Sonys Worldwide Studios Shuhei Yoshida tells The Guardian that all titles will be available as digital downloads as well.
“PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc,” he said, adding that “The Witness will be a digital release and because of the flexibility of the digital distribution scheme, we can have more small games that might be free or available for a couple of dollars, or different services like free-to-play or subscription models.”
With them moving more towards a digital model, can we expect a “Spotify for games”-type service? “As more and more services and contents become available digitally, we’ll have more of an option to create attractive packages. So hypothetically we can look at different models like a cable TV company. We could have gold, silver or platinum levels of membership, something like that. We can do subscription services when we have more content especially now that we have the Gaikai technology available. With one subscription you have access to thousands of games that’s our dream.”
Yoshida also commented on the fact that Sony has been criticized for not actually showing the PlayStation 4 at the announcement event (watch in full below). “We have not finalised the hardware yet and decided not to try to get it finished in time,” he explained. “Also, it’s a long time from February to launch, we have to design our communication in phases. Our focus here was to show some games and talk about the key principles we wanted to save the unveiling of the actual console.”
In a separate interview with IGN, Yoshida said that all the 12 Sony-owned studios are working on PlayStation 4 games. They asked, Is it fair to say that all of the first party studios are working on PS4 games? Yoshidas answer was: Is it fair or not fair? It is fair to say.
