During the aftermath of Sony’s PlayStation 4 reveal on Wednesday, The Guardian got a chance to speak to Shuhei Yoshida, the President of Sony Worldwide Studios, about the company’s next-generation box. While Yoshida wouldn’t reveal when we’ll get a look at the final box, he did delve into a discussion of digital downloads as well as the possibility of a tiered subscription model.
On the subject of digital downloads, Yoshida confirmed that every PS4 game will be available to download from the PlayStation Store: “PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download.” Though some games, such as The Witness, will only be available as downloads.
As for a tiered subscription model, Yoshida said:
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.
How the current model of free online play/paid PlayStation Plus will fit into this new subscription setup remains to be seen.
