54 gigabytes. You could fit a lot of game in there.

Subsequent to its announcement in Tokyo about a month ago, Sony Computer Entertainment today issued a press release confirming its commitment to use the Blu-ray Disc ROM format as the primary storage medium for its next game console.

The Blu-ray discs used in the next-generation PlayStation will reportedly be dual-layer, single-sided versions with a storage capacity of 54 gigabytes, compared to the 4.7 gigabytes available to most PlayStation 2 games stored on single-layer DVD-ROMs. Single-layer BD-ROM discs will hold 30 gigabytes.

The successor to the PlayStation 2 will use the sizable discs to store games and other media, potentially including music and movies. Blu-ray was originally conceived as a rewritable format for recording high-definition television broadcasts — while the version used in the next PlayStation won’t be recordable, it will be able to store extremely high-quality video using the MPEG2-TS compression format. “