Yup. Because it is a clip-on one, it's not the same as the external drives you often see for computers.

Sony could easily make sure the PS6 could have the same design in that area, but I doubt it. They'll either make it different than PS5 but still clip-on or USB or something like that only. 

It depends on which type of screen we will looking in 2035. 8k is already dead and 4k will be dead. The industry will think about something different. That's what always happened if the current technology is at its peak and when there's barely room for improvement. Maybe not even a flat screen which we know for the past 20 years. Probably some kind of flexible screen or holographic medium.

Maybe this is a bold prediction, but I think Microsoft will lead because of PC/Game Pass/Xbox with Steam. Nintendo will be fine with another portable device and Sony will be struggling to release games and selling consoles because of increasing development time and production costs.

2035? 

Well, by then neural rendering will be coming into its own, if it isn't already very mature already.  

The leap between now and then in terms of perceived visuals probably will be greater than the leap between 2015 and now. 

Not because hardware is especially more powerful, but because we will have made huge gains through more efficient software and specialized deep-learning assisted rendering. 

Nvidia has already set the stage with their white papers. It is just a matter of AMD (and possibly Intel) catching up.

The current trends of moving to hardware-agnostic development and a digital-only future will also continue toward their logical conclusion.

Edit: If network bandwidth is high enough (which is possible through more developed photonics) we might see large parts of the pipeline being computed in the cloud. 

The thought that "NX" as it was known then would sell over 150 million would be considered utterly laughable in 2015; even the 3DS barely made it to 75m.

Similarly, if you'd told people in 2015 that you'd be playing Forza/Gears on Playstation or TLOU2/Spiderman/God of War on PC (officially, not via emulation) that would be considered far fetched.

The stuff AI is doing now was science fiction a decade ago, and its application in gaming is (unfortunately, it can be argued) considerable and growing rapidly in everything from content generation to DLSS to lifelike NPC interactions. (See the AI Darth Vader in Fortnite recently which quickly started being racist)

I mean, those first two things don’t really dispute what I said.

I already acknowledged that 150m would have been shocking. I remember those NX discussions from 2015 and back then I was predicting 100 million, here’s my post from May 2015.

I got the form factor wrong, I thought two separate devices with a shared library rather than a single hybrid device, but I got the general premise correct and thought it would be a massive success.

Sony & Microsoft releasing their games on different platforms would have been a surprise to many but doesn’t really fundamentally change what gaming is like. Playing on a PS5/Series in 2025 is ultimately pretty similar to what playing on a PS4/XBO was like in 2015. Playing Forza on PS or God of War on PC is cool and unexpected but it’s not some mind blowing development that makes gaming unrecognizable.

Every generation sees new advancements in technology & development methods. AI is no different, as of now it hasn’t changed gaming in any way that was unimaginable a decade ago. The games of 2025 are bigger, better looking updates of what 2015 offered.

Forza/Gears on PS or PS first party on Steam are massive changes compared to 2015; both represent giving over some of their biggest IPs to a competing platform in a way that would have been practically unthinkable a decade ago.

And literally nobody in 2015 was talking about how artificial intelligence would threaten developer's livelihoods in the foreseeable future.

To claim AI is "just another technology" or hasn't changed things is nonsense, it's probably the biggest technological breakthrough for humanity since the advent of the internet, and in just a few short years much of the industry already heavily relies on it to speed up development, or in the case of the Switch 2, as part of its core rendering toolkit.  (DLSS)

Claiming any of these things aren't a huge change from a decade ago is absurd.

i expect all games will be playing in vr with advanced neural controls

I guess we just have different opinions on what is considered a massive change.

I’m thinking more like someone playing 2D side-scrollers like Super Mario Bros jumping forward a decade and seeing 3D worlds like Mario 64.

Or someone in 1991 pre-Wolfenstein/Doom/Mortal Kombat, when Sonic the Hedgehog was considered cool & edgy, jumping ahead a decade and seeing the most popular game lets you run around and kill people or bang hookers.

Or a group of kids in 1997 having a sleep over and thinking 4-player split screen for Goldeneye was amazing jumping ahead a decade and they can all play Call of Duty together from across the country.

Or someone in the early 90s when you had a game consoles, a stereo & a VCR all hooked up to the TV simultaneously jumping ahead a decade and you can play games, listen to music and watch movies on a single device.

Take someone in 1993 when console gaming was a war between Nintendo & Sega, jump ahead a decade and Sega is out of the race, Sony has over 70% marketshare and Nintendo is losing to newcomer Microsoft.

Take someone in 1996-1999 when Nintendo is fighting hard to have the best graphics and trying to appeal to sports, racing & shooters fans then jump forward a decade and Nintendo has opted out of making powerful hardware and focusing on motion controls and fitness games.

To me the 80s-90s-00s saw massive changes after massive change in terms of graphics, genres, controllers, form factors, online features, multimedia features, etc. Whereas the last 15 or so years has been more refinement rather than revolution. With the exception of Nintendo unifying their platforms, gaming is for the most part kind of the same place it was at 15 years ago.

Technically 8 years now, but I remember Yoshi-P saying how 10 years down the road, gaming would become cloud based and that gaming hardware would become agnostic. But the pandemic slowed down this eventual reality, and he expects things to operate somewhat traditionally for one more generation. This was mentioned in late 2023 and honestly lines up with my views as well.

Switch 1 games will remain full price.