Nah, music struggled for awhile to cope with digital but they’re recovering. It was natural for that industry to lose a lot of money, they raked in a ton from physical sales that are mostly gone now. Instead they rely on digital sales and digital streaming, where they get less of a cut. 

Video games are different because the publishers still get most of the money and there are different revenue streams than music. Furthermore he was stressing Nintendo and Sony... they literally are in complete control of their own digital marketplace. They have zero of the worry music labels had to worry about.

I have the same general fears.

At first everyone thought the Phone App market was going to be the end of traditional gaming. The potential for profit is much higher on phones. Yet look at it now. I was reading some article that says most Apps are profitless flops. Their cost to produce is minor so it is not a big deal but it is a market completely over saturated. Big publishers steal all the advert space from the smaller devs that the system was built upon. The market is also widely unpredictable as it isn't necessarily based on quality. Many apps set fire to consumers based un unpredictable meme culture. Few apps on phone can be successful if they charge up front. A race to the bottom has made all apps standardly free with in app purchases. This works for certain app types.....but all games have some sort of gambling function to it.

Or take PC gaming, mostly STEAM.  Some pulled data (I will see if I can find it) said that majority of released games on it don't make much back, like less than $1k.  It has become a fevered rat race to the bottom. You can't sell games at full price up there because consumers have become far too accustomed to the fire sales. Big Publishers get so much of the prime ad space there too.

Netflix, the king of streaming services has it's own slew of problems. It's industry shake ups that once put it on top now threaten it's life. The app has lost a tremendous amount of content over the last 4 years. It barely has licensed content anymore. Big companies were no longer satisfied with whatever profit margin they got from Netflix, and they demand more with their own App subscriptions. The number that have popped up in the last few years is just dizzying. Netflix thrives on it's own exclusive content. Yet those are under fire while different publishers pull their content into their own. Netflix has also seemingly been shrinking how many episodes they produce for exclusive content. They throw everything at the wall (5-10 episode seasons) and sees what sticks. Most of them don't..... Netflix also keeps increasing their price which is really becoming a problem for me.

So what has happened to games? The $60 package keeps shrinking. Most games now feel more like glorified frameworks of a game, that they later fill with content via DLC. "Games as a Service" as they call it. There is nothing wrong with these types of games existing, it just is super aggravating that every game now a days wants to be it. One of the key reasons people right now are so refreshed by Sony and Nintendo's commitment to more traditional singleplayer/standard cooperative games. If every game turns Free to Play I foresee the quality in said games going even further to shit, as Devs will put in minimal effort in individual titles as they throw everything at the wall and only work on the ones that catch massive public attention.

Ultimately.....a digital/stream only gaming market is dangerous to the quality that is already dwindling for games. It is also an issue of preservation(in a legal sense).  I fear the time when you you won't be able to reminisce about Game X that you enjoyed so much  5 years ago because it was only available via Digital/Stream and it was demonitized and/or removed for whatever reasons.

Forevercloud great post totally agree
I would like to say that people who say the movie industry is doing fine should do some research, ticket sales have been going down in the last decade movie theaters have increased the price of the snacks to keep the profit, that's also why we see so many sequels and remakes because people are only going to theathers to watch movies they know so movie studios are afraid to try new ideas.
Also in the case of netflix there's a lot of talk now about people working in la who can't barely pay the rent for the salary they get working for Netflix.
I might be wrong but streaming games instead of buying them could be a serious threat for the gaming industry

When it comes to Steam and mobile games, you don’t have to worry about that happening in the console space because of what you said about the games... they don’t cost much to make. So yeah, you can poop out some cheaply made POS or a F2P moneypit because if they fail, the investment wasn’t that much anyway. Console games are different. Even the “AA” games aren’t cheap to make.

The problems with Netflix or the music industry were inevitable, but weren’t planned for. As streaming grew and companies saw the money Netflix was making, they of course were going to ask for more money to license out their content. Netflix has countered this by developing a shit ton of their own quality content. Same with Hulu. They’ve all had to adapt. Where the consoles differ is there wouldn’t be 8 different streaming services for publishers to have to license out their games to. There’d be Sony and Microsoft, and maybe eventually Nintendo. No different than it is now. Developers would still make games, they’d still go up on the marketplace. You’d still buy them. 

Why would we ever get to a place of strictly streaming? Even music and movies still have physical media and will for years and years to come. If the infrastructure is not in place to do away with an 80MB CD, how will it do away with a 100GB game? Seems like a lot of fear and worrying about nothing. In the foreseeable future, streaming will be an option, nothing more.

Games have shrunk in content for years now, long before digital started to take over. Game dev costs are much higher. Also idk what you mean by game quality dropping... if anything games are better than ever. I mean, maybe you’re too young to remember, but the NES, Genesis, SNES, N64, PSone, they were loaded with god awful titles. Their libraries more resembled mobile gaming than current consoles except unlike mobile games that might run you $2 and suck shit, these were full priced $40-80 titles.

Yes at the start of the gen MS probably still was quite ahead on Gold versus +, but the discussion was last year =p

Regarding OP, I also see gamerpass making more success than PSNow on the start of next gen, even if because of price.

I have got to say, input latency of PS now is really off putting. I would also like to see a way, without external software, to use the keyboard in place of a controller. I tried out the service to see how it was, but the lag spikes and input latency are a bit much. I'm not going to knock the resolution, but dropped commands or not detecting that I've RELEASED a button is too much to look past.

Cool. But I dont care how much more gaming hours per euro cent i might be able to squeeze out. I care for quality products, quality games. That is what i support and platforms/services by Microsoft or Valve are certainly not among those.

I subscribe to Game Pass for day one 1st party games.

When Sony gives me 1st party games in PS Now, I will consider subscribing. I'm not paying $20 a month for old games, I will buy the old games instead.