It needs to be good enough in all the markets where consoles are currently selling. If you release a streaming only device today you are cutting off millions of units in sales across the lifetime of the product because you can't release in all the countries you are currently selling the traditional console. Given in theory streaming devices should have very long product cycles, since you don't need to upgrade specs very often, you need to give yourself the biggest possible market in order to keep selling the device. I just don't see a move to streaming only devices until the 10th gen at the earliest.

Sell 85 million in the USA obviously, which is getting close to having an Xb one in every home in the USA, so that's surely doable.

People still buy that streaming only idea. Well, maybe for developed countries it would be nice, but it also would mean excluding almost 80% of the earth population a chance to own a gaming machine, and with the current efforts for pushing sales in more market than the traditional USA, Western Europe and Japan, it seem really unlikely.

Sony and Microsoft invested millions in producing ps4 and xbone locally here in brazil and in many countries , I don't think they plan just cutting us and the entire 3rd world. Imagine just cutting yourself out of china and India, I don't see it happening.

Devices? You wouldn't be selling devices. Streaming is a service. There wouldn't be any product cycle. It would be indefinite. The money is made via subscriptions and rental fees. You could stream on anything with Bluetooth, a screen, and an internet connection, as long as you have a controller. FYI, that's like every electronic device released after the year 2010. Game streaming can be "mainstream" as soon as 2020, and likely will with PS Now leading and XBL and Nintendo having smaller services like local streaming with Live and VC streaming with Nintendo.

There won't be a 10th generation. I'd wouldn't even call the NX the 8th generation. This is the last real traditional generation. All the next platforms will be infinite platforms, unrestricted by generational hardware, which is what a generation is. There won't be a PS5/XB2 that lasts from 2022-2030. That's absurd, and thinking that will happen two more times afterwards to some mythical 10th generation is legitimate comedy. Not happening. Consoles being around in like 2040? Not in your wildest dreams.

Can you really picture yourself playing an FPS, action, fighter, etc game with touch controls? Phones will never be the home console. Screens too little aswell.

What people keep forgeting is that despite all the technologies that have surfaced in the past 10-15 years we still use a generic controller to play games.

Motion control was a succesful gimmick for a while and now it's just the past, as for smartphones and touch screens they will always be viewed as a fun way to pass some time in the bus or something. Just a market for casual gamers (and kids) to spend a couple bucks to kill some time.

Maybe it's true about the downloading speeds. The average bandwidth will be always faster (although very badly distributed) and that will allow the streaming of less compressed video output at an higher resolution. But you can't beat the lag. Which has a physical limit of 1ms round trip every 150KM/100 miles (given by the speed of light). The lag can't get lower than that (and it will still be quite higher).

Then you are not considering the most important thing: to sell or stream digital movies and music is convenient for the seller. The cost is mostly on bandwidth. But to stream videogames is VERY costly. What you don't pay buying a console you pay renting a server. To get a worse experience. Better the graphics quality and performances, higher the computing power needed for each single session, higher the cost.

Then there is the third factor: people love to buy electronic toys. Some love to build their PCs, many others love to buy a console and do different things with them. Which means there is a market. Just suppose one of the three (Sony/Nintendo/MS) decides to go only streaming. Streaming most of the games available in one of the two next gen consoles. What do you think people would buy?

I don't think it's really frontloaded (unless the first 2 months, even more for X1), but of course it's a possibility that it become more frontloaded than previous generation if we look the trend of other eletronical gadgets. And Wii could be said to be frontloadish if we see how much of a step decline it had =]

Maybe he is thinking about, hooking the cellphone to the TV with wireless and the controller via bluetooth to play at home... don't think miniaturization will get us there unless for the more casuals.

I sure hope there will always be a market for dedicated gaming machines (even if with the silly social and media adds) so we can have cost efficient good hardwares with nice timeframes.

No PS console has performed like the Wii, and the PS4 isn't going to start to, either.  Why?  Well, Sony still has plenty of play on price to cause major boosts to sales, the biggest boosts coming at $299 and $199.  The PS4 has enough power to last the gen, so people are not going to start getting bored of games that look like they belong in last gen.  And most importantly, the PS4 is actually going to have great 3rd party support for the rest of the gen.  There is no way that the PS4 is going to start dropping incredibly after 2016.  There will be a slow decline until we start getting rumblings about the PS5, which should be in late 2018/early 2019.