Sony's in a "bag of hurt" because of Blu-ray

http://www.theverge.com/2014/5/1/5670786/sony-earnings-adjustment-impairment-charges

"Blu-ray is dying faster than expected".

Basically the article says because of the rise of demand for streaming and digital content, they don't think Blu-ray gives them sufficient cash flow in the long run. So this decline is hurting Sony. Is this another reason why they're struggling in making big budget games and now back peddling and trying to come up with streaming and digital services like PS Now and whatever that rental service is. I think this hurts the gaming side more than the movie side of Blu-rays. I have more Blu-ray movies than games and I think there's just more and bigger companies to keep Blu-ray movies going, but I'm not too sure about gaming. Looks like MS had the right vision about pushing digital games after all. So far all my Xbox One games are digital because I like their game sharing options. I hope Sony make game sharing as good on the PS4.

Will this force you to go digital if you haven't already? We might not have a choice.

To hell with digital. Physical all the way. With all the crap companies pull on digital content I don't trust them at all.

Digital sucks.

I like an even mix of physical and digital.

Times are a changing, my friend.

You mean that when so many of us questioned Blu-Ray when it came out because steaming services was starting off were right? :o

pride in making the correct guess aside, this is pretty bad news, abeit predictable. Certain Things are nice to have on physical, and I absolutely hate to see any of the major players in the gaming industr hurt so badly -.-

I've gone digital through services like Steam, but I don't trust Microsoft enough to go digital on their console. When "Games for Windows Live" shuts down in 2 months, some of my game library is going to die with it...

That's why Redbox Blu-Ray is so popular right

Just wait until the ISPs start taking advantage of the death of net neutrality, and start charging more for bandwidth. Bluray will gain a resurgence.

You really didn't get it right.

In 2005? Onlive crashed and had to relaunch, and bluray is still here. Sony still hasn't put out their streaming service yet, and physical copies of new blockbuster games still blow away sales of digital. What is actually in the article doesn't support the notion that we will have an all digital world in the very near future. It will be almost 10 years that blu ray will have been a successful format, how long was dvd around before the successor arrived? Pride for no reason.

Nobody denied that digital is a big part of the equation. Digital only is perfect for indie games that want to cut publishing/printing/marketing/shipping costs, and perfect for F2P since you will be buying digital content anyways. But, with the poor internet service in America and the preference by many of actually owning and having the ability to control the content with a physical copy, the fact that so many jobs in the industry are reliant on digital copies, means that blu ray won't be dying anytime soon. The blowback MS got when they announced their digital only vision only highlights that.

I still prefer physical. I like buying something that I can hold in my hand and there is more freedom of use with physical as well. I don't really use Netflix and I only buy older games off Steam. New games seem to be way cheaper in shops for some reason.

I hear ya. Vinyl has its place even today. But convenience is what the mass market likes, so digital will be the thing, imo.

That's probably part of the problem. No one is buying the shit when you can rent a movie for $2

If it's dying faster than ever, than the HD-DVD never existed and Microsoft would have never opted for Blu Ray.

@gago-gago: Well digital is the future. The reason Blu-Ray is hurting some now is because of streaming services like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, Redbook & Hulu Plus. Many of these services have HD movie streaming now, so you don't really need to buy Blu-Ray movies much any more. For movies that are all talk and no action or special effects, why buy it on disc? I only buy big budget action and special effects movies on BR now. Movies like The Avengers, Fast & the Furious, Captain American, Man of Steel, etc..I'm already working on going through my DVD/BR catalog and selling most of it now. Only keeping some gems like Star Wars saga, LoTR saga, etc...

Sony obviously knew this was coming. I still don't think Blu-Ray will be dead anytime soon. Once the 4K HDTV come out and bandwidth finally becomes dirt cheap (like memory), we won't need much of anything on physical disks anymore. 4K streaming movies will be the future eventually. I hope I'm still around to see it.

Quote in title out of context.

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I don't think that's going to happen. There are too many big corporate companies that will make sure that never happens. Bandwith should become faster and eventually cheaper. We are pushing a lot more data now then we did 10yrs ago and the price hasn't changed significantly.

Heh, you mean when Microsoft was busy releasing their HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360?

Given the choice, I'd rather have my games on physical media, unless they're heavily discounted digital games.

Sony is a Hardware company trying to stay afloat in a Software driven space. That new disc they are trying to introduce will go to the waste side. People arent thristy for 4K like when HD was introduced.

It has more to do with price of disc's. Who the heck wants to pay $35+ for a new Blu Ray release? When you can go to RedBox and get it for $1.50 or so.

Even older movies still hover over the $10 mark. Wasn't like that with DVD, there would be bins all the time full of $5 or less movies.

I prefer disc over stream, because it looks the best. But it is a sad fact that one day physical will end.

Everything is going digital, and sooner rather than later. Online-Only and Cloud will rule within 2 years IMHO.

Does this mean Microsoft where right with not putting blu ray in Xbox 360?

Just a bit early, wonder if the same will happen with the cloud technology.

I just dread a future having games streamed to us. Pay to play is like having a Quarter eating Arcade unit in the living room, only difference is it will rely on internet connection.

Thank god I grew up in a world before the internet and am not addicted to any of this digital crap or smartphones. LOL at 2000's kids who get anxiety attacks when they lose their cell phone for a whole 30 seconds. hahaha.

If video games/movies/music go 100% digital, then I will simply quit buying them. I am not going all digital. Physical is the best. I like the fact I can own something and sell it later. Can't sell digital crap.

The only way they might get people like me on the digital train is if they offered a way to sell back the digital content so I can get back some money like 30%-50% like I do now for my physical games. But that will never happen. :(

Steam? Music services? the beginning movement within tv and movies? Yeah you had to be blind not to predict the future in 2005, if not earlier.

Look at the article, look around the net, look up finances, physical based entertainment products does not sell what they should, and Digital is rising way faster then most nay Sayers on these boards claimed (which would be most of them). So physically dries out faster then expected. Prediction came true that Blu-Ray was fairly pointless, the amount of Money thrown in was a Waste by dinosauers hoping to cling to a dying delivery platform.

Now, Here is a fun fact, the US is not the only driving force in the World, a notion worth writing behind your ears, Europe here, and yeh most people have had some kind of On demand service for ages, and as stated Steam since 2004.

I am sorry if you think that an industry is interrested in supplying jobs over income then I am sorry, Nowhere in the World does that hold true. Cutdowns is the norm in all sectors, lowering profits in Exchange for more jobs is not. And that is another reason why (from a Financial level everyone knew that digital would be the defacto standard as fast as possible, we all heard the sentence "cheaper more effective, less physical infrastructure needed" yeah that was the nice corperate way of saying "those huge conainer transfers that costs a ton? Yeah we are going to cut all those jobs".

Now I would agree on owening a physical copy of music, or movies and such, but given the ability for console makers to even cut a physical copy, making them unplayable if desired, (and I would bet we will fee lthat for real with the older X360 and PS3 games in about 5 years, when those integral parts of en sp that required server feedback, gets turned off will prove that in games we long wavered the ability to play our games whenever we wanted in favor of ease of use).

You should also take notice that ALOT of the AAA retail games on console this gen have been avaiable day and date with the retail copies, which were not exactly true for the most part of last gen, so even the Whole. "indie" part no longer holds Water (and for one platform has not for way over 5 years).

There are negatives ofcourse, I made the right guess, which I have a sort of twisted pride in, but it is not a future I prefer, you should not mix those two up. Alot of Places does not have the infrastructure to download or stream content as needed. It gets updated fast enough that it would not be a problem in the grand scheme of Things, but the transition period sucks.

ISPs are a huge problem, if they try to put a cap on Things, you might see a meltdown of services, rather then a return to physical. I assume the overall scheme from manufactors and sellers, are to lower production costs, but cutting those physical lines, will generate "some" income, remaking it would cost ALOT, if they pull it all Down, and then gets hit by caps.

Ofcourse free market would dictate that if caps were put on, another providerwould likely rise, that had not, and the notion of not having a cap would likely bring people in.

The single worst part of digital, is the last sembence and illusion of ownership would disappear :(

Physical media > digital

Well they're well positioned for digital content either way. The PS4 is the fastest selling console ever and if they put it into as many homes as they did the PS2 then they've got a massive user base they can control and deliver content to. Wouldn't surprise me if we see a big push along with PS Now.

I really hope you are right, but a big thing the ISPs were wanting to do for years was set up the internet plans in tiers, and start charging companies for prime bandwidth access. The main thing stopping that was net neutrality. If they can pull it off the way they want, anything internet-related is about to get a lot more expensive, including streaming. If that happens, you will see Bluray make a resurgence.

I still hope you are right.

Jeez, I maybe have a Blu-ray collection of about 30 movies, in the 7+ years that I've had a PS3 with Blu-ray. By comparison, I got a DVD player in 1997, and I'd acquired a collection of a 250-300 movie on DVD in that same period. Yeah, streaming services probably has a lot to do with that. I think this was brought up last night after Sony's revised earnings (losses) forecast that their disc printing operations was losing money because nobody is buying discs for media. If you think about what having Blu-ray in the PS3 cost Sony it probably cost them billions in losses, because they were selling PS3's for $600 when they cost like $950 to make. They didn't turn a profit on hardware for years, until summer of 2010, when they'd already sold like 40 million consoles... that's gotta be billions upon billions of losses attributed to selling them for less than they cost to make.

Playstation Now is streaming all of the time. If that succeeds, why wouldnt they do the same with new titles as well?

A bit curious, I assume you are from the US? what is the average Blu-Ray Price over there?

I used to rant this same rant.

Now my collection is 400 games strong, and since I went digital I started spending about a grand less per year on video games. Video games are not the box or the disk or the silly paper insert, they are data. Digital gives you this data for far less money then physical, and it can't break or get stolen.

@Desmonic: Of course it was a popular guess at the time. Fact one: People had seen eight tracks get replaced by tapes, and tapes get replaced by CDs. Then Napster and Itunes came along.... Fact two: People were already downloading movies off the internet.

Those two trends are not hard to combine into the obvious hypothesis.

This, i think we might be into the last gen or two of consoles (or at least kind of hardware we see currently).

Once the online infrastructure is strong enough to allow it then streaming offers a lot. Sony don't have to try and sell hardware, that's expensive for both the consumer and Sony whilst opening up the size of the market they can sell to. They can offer their content to a host of devices pretty much regardless of their power be it TVs, desktop TV boxes, laptops, handhelds and so on. The hardware can be more flexible since it's all on Sony's end, no updating every generation, better backwards compatibility and so on.

People (and companies) being dragged kicking and screaming into the digital age. Good thing I've been jumping to the digital ship more and more. Physical is dying...yeah!!

Plus, no incentives to go digital either.

Good point! I'm really eager to see what big companies start to rally together to try and swing more power back to their, and subsequently our, favor.

digital is hardly replacing blu-ray. RedBox is very popular and that's physical media. Netflix is getting more expensive and more and more movies are getting removed from the already pathetic selection they've had (netflix works best for TV series) Blu-ray sections in stores continue to expand and it's now the standard format for current gen game consoles. Furthermore, doesn't matter how good your internet it, it won't beat the quality of a disk. The people that care about quality to the extreme will always go physical over digital.

I still prefer to watch physical media for movies at least.

it really depends on the movie or type of movie, some go as low as $5 or $8 per movie, bigger release can be as much a $30-$35, but those tend to be the DVD + BR + digital combo packs for movies