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Gamerace on 21 March 2013
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TruckOSaurus said:
Gamerace said:

Personally, I'm with Max on that point.   The market has changed.

Sony themselves said "The living room is no longer the centre of the [gaming] universe - the gamer is".   This is fundimentally true.  As such I expect experiences that follow the gamer wherever they go will slowly take over from home based consoles.

Currently that's smartphone/tablets but could become game tablets or cloud-based services that you can play on any device seemlessly.

That's still a ways off but certainly before the end of this new gen.   I'm guessing 30m WiiU, 40-50m for PS3 and 50-60m for 720 (or maybe reversed, will have to see MS's actual offer and it's appeal to the mass market).  

Toss in SteamBox, Ouya and Smart TV that could themselves become gaming systems (cloud) and this is a whole different ballgame than it was in 2006.

I agree that the console market will shrink in the 8th gen but what you're predicting is a 50% drop from the 7th gen which in my opinion is way too drastic.

Actually I'm predicting the market will be bigger than ever in history but also more spread out than it's been since the first gen (Atari, Intellivison, ColecoVision, BallyAstrocade, Vetrex, Spectravision - a lot of people had vision it seems - etc.). 

Android devices are already set to out-power Wii and considering they bump up yearly will soon match PS3/360.   Once they get there, I expect 3rd parties to basically port every game over and devices like Ouya and WikiPad will become more legitimate contenders.  

SteamBox will also cut into console's market to some unknown degree.   It's not that the market is shrinking, it's that games will become increasingly system agnostic and the advantage of owning a home console will progressively be outshined by the vesatility of other platforms.

I'm also expecting Nintendo will launch one more console (the last dedicated game console - likely a handheld/home hybrid) after WiiU which will further cut into PS4/720 as I expect Sony/MS to go to purely online based services (gaikai/XBL) and will leave PS4/720 to compete with Nintendo's 9th gen system.