Sony consoles will not be all digital anytime soon

Sony’s attempt at an all digital format with the PSPgo wasn’t as popular as the UMD based PSP consoles. Sony views the PSPgo as a learning experience as to how much consumers depend of physical media. While the PSPgo is not considered a failure within Sony, it has learned that discs are still the preferred type of media. Therefore Sony’s consoles will not be exclusively digital in the years to come.

In an interview with MCV, Sony Computer Entertainment president and CEO Kazuo (Kaz) Hirai outlined the future plans for the PlayStation brand. Hirai spoke about the consumer response to the PSPgo compared to the PSP-3000. The higher price point for the PSPgo was one of the reasons people found it unappealing. With fewer parts, one would expect the PSPgo would be cheaper to make, with the savings being passed on to the customer. Hirai pointed out it’s not that simple.

“Because of the cost reductions we’ve been able to do over the years, the traditional PSP has benefited. But the PSPgo is a completely different design, so the cost trend is different,” Hirai said.

Along with a different cost trend, the PSPgo also catered to a specific market. SCE’s operations branch beyond North America, Europe and Japan. There are other territories around the world where broadband internet is not the norm. The citizens in these places may not have around the clock access to high speed internet. Hirai acknowledges this and says there will always be a need for disc based games.

Moving forward, Sony will not be solely dependent on digital media. As long as there’s a part of the world that Sony wants to bring games to, devices like the PSPgo will not take precedent over others.

“So to say we are going to put all our eggs into a network-only device basket? I think that is taking that a little too far,” Hirai said. In general, to think everything will be downloaded in two to three years or even ten years from now is taking it a little bit to the extreme.”

Via [MCV] Read [Exophase]