Sony has moved to defend its decision to eschew 4K Blu-ray support in the upcoming PlayStation 4 Pro, suggesting users are now favouring streaming over physical media when it comes to digesting content outside of games.
Speaking during an interview with The Guardian, Andrew House, President and Global CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment (SIE), commented:
"Our feeling is that while physical media continues to be a big part of the games business, we see a trend on video towards streaming […] certainly with our user base, it’s the second biggest use case for people’s time on the system so we place more emphasis on that area."
Related – PS4 Pro specs revealed
Despite the lack of 4K Blu-ray support, Sony’s new PS4 system does however support the feature for streaming Netflix content. In contrast, Microsoft has strongly hinted that its upcoming Xbox Scorpio will support 4K Blu-ray.
PS4 Pro release date and price revealed in New York City
As expected, PS4 Pro was announced during Sony’s PlayStation Meeting earlier this week, where Sony confirmed the high-end console will ship on November 10, 2016 priced at £349/$399. The PS4 Slim was also unveiled at the event, and will arrive in most regions by September 15.
Sony has confirmed that a patch allowing for HDR support will be rolled out for PS4 users next week. Despite the advanced technology afforded by the PS4 Pro, Sony has insisted it is not the start of a new console generation.