Sony reveals next-gen 1TB ‘Archival’ Blu-ray disc

What is being described as the next-generation iteration of Blu-ray” has been revealed by Sony.

GameSpot reports that the new ‘Archival Disc’ will eventually hold up to 1TB of information, although the first versions of the format – arriving summer 2015 – will offer 300GB of storage.

That’s a six-fold increase over the 50GB currently offered by the types of Blu-ray used with PS3, PS4 and Xbox One.

Sony and co-creators Panasonic will subsequently release 500GB and then eventually 1TB versions

Archival Disc is a new standard for professional-use, next-generation optical discs, with the objective of expanding the market for long-term digital data storage," Sony said.

"In recent times, demand for archival capabilities has increased significantly in the film industry, as well as in cloud data centres that handle big data, where advances in network services have caused data volumes to soar."