It was once the future! A shiny (sort of) new physical media that would let us store so many gigabytes of data on our discs that we wouldnāt know what to do with it all! So it may surprise you to learn that Blu-Ray is already on the downward slide.
Sonyās latest financial results are expected to take a big hit, partly from some shenanigans in the PC business, but also because the companyās investment in Blu-Ray (Sony invented the format) is coming up short. Only eight years after it first hit the market, Sony now admits that ādemand for physical media [is] contracting faster than anticipated.ā
So demand isnāt just on the decline ā only threeyears after Blu-Ray sales were up by 35% ā itās slipping faster than Sony was ready for. Guess the coming of services like Netflix (and equivalent overseas offerings) have bit harder and faster than even Sony were expecting.
Note that the format isnāt dead. Itāll be around for a little while yet, both for those who persist with owning physical movie collections and for us gamers, since both the PS4 and Xbox One use Blu-Ray discs.
But for most other folks, once the DVDs dry up the all-digital future might not be as far away as you might have thought.
