Next month, Sony’s long-awaited PlayStation 4 (PS4) will hit shelves, and likely disappear from them just as quickly as gamers are eager to upgrade to the eighth generation of gaming consoles. Sony hasn’t just revamped the PS4, they’ve also improved the way gamers interact with their digital content to provide users with more functionality.

Users download games directly to the console will be able to share them with other accounts on the same PS4. This means that games can be shared by multiple accounts without additional purchase as long as they are one the same system. This will also extend to PS Plus, PlayStation’s premium service.

To top it all off, according to Sony, there will be no limit to how many PS4 systems a user can sign in from to access their digital content.

So what is digital content?

Typically, digital content refers to information available for distribution on electronic media. This digital content can also be downloaded. Digital content comes in many forms, from text and audio and videos files, to games, graphics, animations, and images.

With the continued popularity of smartphones, tablets, and e-readers, the average consumer now has a variety of options to turn to besides their computer to get the latest digital content. The question that arises for vendors today is not what kind of content to create, but how to deliver it.

Currently, 56 percent of the games are digitized and by 2016 it is expected to reach 72 percent. Therefore, to be successful in the digital content realm, content creators must determine the best way to present their digital content to consumers. And that’s exactly what Sony did.

In fact, developments in the Global Digital Content Market aren’t just revolutionizing the Video Gaming Console Industry. With the growing smartphone and tablet users and increasing numbers of internet users, there is a high need for digitization of all different types of content.

Globally, the number of internet users exceeds just over 2.4 billion. With new users added daily, the data consumed by them is increasing and the growing consumption is creating a demand for digital content. Thus, this growing need for digitization is expected to drive the Global Digital Content Market at a CAGR of 11.71 percent for the 2012-2016 period.

The majority of internet users around the world use mobile devices to access digital content. This in turn has led to the increased adoption of smartphones and tablets for playing games and entertainment. Further, there are around 6.8 billion mobile phones in the world, which is equivalent to 96 percent of the world’s population.

It has been witnessed that 63-65 percent of the users use their mobile devices daily to play games, which has increased the demand for mobile games and applications development. Hence, the growing use of smartphones and tablets for playing games is one of the key drivers which will propel the growth of the Global Digital Content market in the years to come.

For more information, view our 2012-2016 Global Digital Content Market report.

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