Gamertell

Remember back in the day when multiple games shipped on a single cart? Well it seems Sony is hoping to use modern technology to offer more than one thing (not games) on the same disc. According to Video Business, Sony is working on a hybrid Blu-ray disc that will offer a full PS3 game and a full feature film.

The article noes that a game takes up 30 to 40 GB of a Blu-ray disc’s 50 GB capacity, leaving 10 GB for a film or at least “provide access” to a movie. From the article:

“We are actively pushing, and the way that we see the future is that the movie and the game are placed on the same disc,” said John Koller, director of hardware marketing for the PS3. “There are a lot of developers who say, ‘[W]e have this game based on a movie, wouldn’t it be great to marry these concepts?’ We will definitely see this stuff this year.”

That puts the movie-game hybrid disc on shelves in 2009 and making pricey PS3 games a little more attractive on shelves during the holidays.

Specific film companies that will be working with Sony to offer movies on the discs were not indicated (we’ll assume Sony Pictures is on board). The article also indicates that Sony doesn’t plan to reduce its console price (yet), attributing an upsurge in system sales that corresponded with the release of The Dark Knight on Blu-ray. That disc also included BD-Live, a multimedia service that works in conjunction with the disc but requires an internet-capable Blu-ray player (as in the PS3).

Although the PS3 is not the lowest price Blu-ray player on the market, Koller indicated that Sony is planning to launch a PR (“educational”) campaign to inform consumers that the PS3 is superior to Blu-ray players which don’t “match up dollar to dollar, feature to feature with the PS3.”

This would certainly be a boon to gamers who like to watch movies based on games and vice versa. Likewise, a game-movie hybrid disc would also be appealing to rental companies that only offer one or the other (and even to Blockbuster which would mean shipping only one disc instead of two when it adds games to its Total Access service).

Read [Video Business] Via [Geek.com]