drinkandswim on 06 January 2019
| Shadow1980 said: I find it puzzling that so many people treat it as axiomatic that dedicated consoles are doomed. Well, technically nothing is permanent and everything is doomed in the long run, some things earlier than others, so I guess anyone can proclaim something to be doomed and then, after years or decades or whatever, they or someone else could say "Haha! I/They were right!" But are consoles going away in our lifetimes? I doubt it. Consoles have persisted for over 40 years (aside from the market implosion in 1983-85), and I don't see any reason why the Big Three would just up and stop making them. Console sales are still very strong and the market shows no signs of stopping. Streaming is probably decades away from getting to the point where it'd be feasible enough to be the standard, as average internet speeds, bandwidth caps, and reliability are still laughable in most places. And I somehow doubt that the Big Three would just up and decide to become the first segment of the entertainment industry to outright force people to move to a full-digital subscription-based service model, basically saying "This is the only way games will be distributed from now on. Take it or leave it." The demand for physical copies is simply too high, and there's no reason to assume that digital will continue to erode physical's market share indefinitely like it did with music (e-book sales notably ceased growing as a share of book sales years ago). I would also think many gamers would be wary of a streaming service given how Netflix frequently rotates content in and out of availability. Imagine a game you like simply vanishing for months at a time, maybe permanently because of some rights issue (something that has already happened with digital downloads, except when you have a download at least it stays on your hard drive). So, no, I don't see streaming becoming the norm within the next 30 years, and I sure as hell don't believe that the industry will force it on everyone. |
I dont think consoles are doomed in our lifetime, but i am interested to see what the next gen brings.
