360TB on a single disc sounds great and all, but we don’t really know when we’ll get our hands on such technology. Sony and Panasonic, however, have just agreed on developing the next-generation of optical discs and are targeting 2015.

PanaSony (can I call them that?) are aiming for a more modest but still impressive 300GB on these discs. For comparison, the current Blu-ray discs max out at 128GB for their quadruple layer versions. The industry standard, however, remains at 50GB.

The two companies are planning to target professionals or other companies that might have the need for large capacity optical media. And even as more people turn to cloud solutions for their storage needs, they make a pretty good case for the traditional disk format:

Optical discs have excellent properties to protect them against the environment, such as dust-resistance and water-resistance, and can also withstand changes in temperature and humidity when stored. They also allow inter-generational compatibility between different formats, ensuring that data can continue to be read even as formats evolve. This makes them a robust medium for long-term storage of content.

They also add that those same cloud solutions have a need for archival capabilities in their data centers.

As for us, we’ll probably need something to store all those 4K porn movies.

[via The Verge, image via Dwayne Bent]