| iFlow said: What is with the absurd amount of consoles arriving this next gen!? There is the WiiU, Xbox 720, PS4, SteamBox, Ouya, and the one I just found about while reading Game Informer, the Alienware X51. I don't know if I should be scared for the industry or happy for it..what about you guys? |
Wii expanded the market and Apple has expanded it even further. Gaming used to be a 'geek sport' but now it's pretty universal. Consoles still cater to the gaming enthusiast crowd 'core gamers' and that market is still mainly 720/PS4 and to a lesser extent WiiU. PC crowd is getting broken up with steam Box and Alien but may take some console gamers (we know too little to judge) and Ouya, eSfere and such are competing for the audience Wii and iOS created - so they'll likely take some share from WiiU and maybe 720 (Kinect crowd).
However as tablets increase in power yearly, they'll quickly close the gap with consoles, get gradually higher end games and tablets and Android (iOS??) based games systems will progressly pull more and more people away from consoles. MS sees this which is why the next system will be so multimedia heavy and have such dynamic features (projected images, etc) to keep people coming back to it. PS4/WiiU I think are in a lot of trouble as their market will erode. Nintendo having launched first can potentially squeeze out one more home console before consoles completely go the way of the dinosaurs, but for Sony I think PS4 will be the last hurrah and while it may be great, I don't expect it to do even PS3 numbers.
