Forbes - Is the death of consoles inevitable?

[Soundwave]

Nintyfan90 said:

Soundwave said:

There are lots of things today that would seem like "magic" 15 years ago. 

If you told someone in the year 1999/2000 that you'd be able to carry around a device the size of half a deck of cards that can store thousands of CDs worth of music on it in 1s and 0s a lot of people wouldn't believe it, and that's just a iPod, which is laughably outdated compared to an iPhone. 

Or you could just watch thousands of movies ala carte at home instantly with the click of a button rather than having to go to Blockbuster Video to rent them like everyone did in the past. 

There will be plenty of things your kids laugh at, game consoles is likely one of them. 

In the future I imagine likely all your movies/games/music etc. will be streamed to whatever device you feel like playing on, physical media and dedicated consoles will go the way of the dodo and dinosaur. 

That and in 10-15 years even pocket smartphone devices will be able to generate incredibly high end visuals, rendering a giant sized console moot. 

It truly is funny seeing people like you and spemanpig take different types of media and apply them to video games. The fact of the matter is video games are nothing like the other types of media out there. Music and books take very little space and havent taken much more space compared to their past counterparts. Does Michael Jacksons Thiller take much more space than Adeles 25? No, now can you say the same about Super Mario Bros. all the way up to NSMBU? The medias arent at all comparable, thats why all digital works for music and books. Music and books in the next century probably will take no more space than they do now.

Movies is also another monster media that is nothing like video games. The reason streaming a movie works vs. video games is simple really. Lag has no effect on a movie, you can simply rewind and watch a segment back over. Video games now have tons of online lag issues, now you want my single player games to face the sames lag issues? No thanks.

Higher speed internet and things like Google Fiber are inevitable. If you think your kids will be using the same internet you are think again. 

Storage space is accelerating all the time too, I don't see that as a particularily huge issue. 

If you think gaming will largely be the same in 15-20 years as it is today .... I'll just say I seriously, seriously doubt it. I think by then the "giant shoe box under your TV to play video games" concept will be more or less dead. 

A kid's cell phone will likely be able to stream games to any display around them with graphics that are approaching/close to photorealism.