Phil Harrison is full of wacky ideas. Like the idea to jump ship from Sony to Atari. Nevertheless, the aerodynamic Brit has madethe bold claimthat the next generation of children will refuse to buy discs.
“There’s a generation of kids being born today and probably already alive who I’m pretty confident will never buy a physical media product,” claims the Infogrames president. “They will never buy a DVD, they will never buy a CD, and they will never buy a game in a box.”
I’m going to have to raise an eyebrow at this quote. Not only for the rather bizarre theory that a generation of kids willsuddenlyjust refuse to buy physical media, but also for the fact that it’s unlikely consoles will be advanced enough to provide the kind of full-length products we expect to see at retail.
As far as I’m aware, bandwidth is not yet at a level which makes a purely download-only console work for this generation, never mind whatever technological advancements and file sizes the next generation brings. Perhaps we will make huge technological leaps soon that will allow HD gaming to be downloaded efficiently, but I have to side with those who believe it’ll be quite a while for retail games to die.
