IndustryGamers - Informing the Games Industry

Blu-ray Capacity Upgrade Announced by Sony, Panasonic

Posted January 5, 2010 by David Radd

Single layer Blu-ray discs already hold five times the data of a standard DVD and that number will be increasing soon. Blu-ray.com [thanks MCV] is reporting that Sony and Panasonic have produced a new optical disc evaluation technology that will increase Blu-ray layers from 25 GB to 33.4 GB.

The two companies have developed a new i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) that evaluates a disc's genuineness. It is widely believed that all existing Blu-ray players (including PS3s) will be able to play these higher capacity discs with a firmware update.

It is expected that that this layer capacity increase will happen by the end of 2010. Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima, who previously had complained that even Blu-ray didn't offer enough space, should be pretty happy to get more space for his games. 

David Radd has worked as a gaming journalist since 2004 at sites such as GamerFeed, Gigex and GameDaily Biz.