Ben-DutkaWho says game consoles are flirting with death?
Given the recent next-gen sales numbers provided by Sony and Microsoft, it seems a trifle ridiculous to say that game machines are dying. Or so says industry veteran and Mortal Kombat co-creator Ed Boon. As he said on Twitter :
"3 Million Xbox Ones + 4.2 Million PS4s = 7.2 Million next-gen consoles = Reports of consoles death have been greatly exaggerated! :)"
Microsoft revealed that they had sold over 3 million Xbox One units worldwide as of December 31, 2013. Not to be outdone, Sony followed that announcement by saying the PlayStation 4 had hit 4.2 million sold as of December 28, 2013. The fact that the PS4 outstripped the Xbox One by about 1.2 million units isn't what's important; what's important is the health of the industry and we really needed this boost. 2013 was an abysmal year for gaming, so perhaps theories concerning the possible demise of game-oriented consoles was inevitable.
But clearly, they're not going anywhere just yet.
I'm kind of tired of reading from mainstream game journalists that smart phone and tablet gaming are undercutting console gaming and putting a huge dent in their popularity. I just don't see that happening anywhere, they may be undercutting handheld gaming but there can't be many fans of Gears, Cod, Halo, Killzone, and Uncharted who are suddenly satisfied playing Candy Crush Saga instead.
Candy Crush Pisses me off.
Mainstream journalists typically comprise of isheep who want nothing less than total domination of the world by everything apple.
I've always had a problem with the "consoles will be obsolete" thing.
It always seems it's this fuzzy theory that comes from some business outsider. One who thinks that the only value of a console is seen necessary only as there isn't some other more common device that offers computing power in the home.
Isn't that the argument? That one day tv's and toasters will have so much processing no one will need to buy additional hardware to play electronic games?
I don't think any gamer buys that. Buys that some household appliance or some other multipurposed media device could be everything a standard console platform is.
The other argument, though, of course, is the power of Cloud computing and the tech behind the Playstation Now. I suppose this could eventually become something of greater value but I just feel that there's safety and security in tieing purposed hardware to services and media consumption. That is, it's no accident Apple wants iPod's and iPhones associated with iTunes. That there's a symbiotic relationship between the hardware and software space. To just eliminate the hardware standard makes me think of the seemingly dozens of different on demand video services out there. There's a lose of sense of direction and leadership. THere's Vudu, Ultraviolet, Amazon video, Video Unlimited, Microsoft's stuff. It's this big unbridled forest of mediocrity. I wouldn't think that a good thing for Playstation.
Last edited by Temjin001 on 1/7/2014 10:28:39 PM
How was 2013 an abysmal year for gaming? There were so many AAA titles that came out I still have yet to finish many of them
overall the industry did not make much profit compared to previous years.
I'm not too sure about the future of gaming consoles, I do believe we'll have the big players i.e. Sony, MS, Nintendo, but consider a service like PS Now as testing the waters for how we'll have games delivered to us in the future. Six – ten years is a long time for technology to catch up (broadband speeds, smart tv's incorporating console specs to support games) by the end of this new generation, were it will become cheaper for the big player's to offer subscription models and stream game's the same way we get movies and music today. It's cheaper for them with fewer production costs and less losses on the cost of hardware to support the games. I'm not saying I support it but it's the way things are going and it will imo become the norm, especially for a younger generation of gamers who now grow up in a digital world.
Agreed, but hopefully we'll still see consoles released for the niche audience that aren't keen on the added latency of streaming. I don't mind the idea of PS Now for some titles, but prefer local processing m'self for a variety of reasons where possible. I reckon we've got at least one more generation in us before the streaming tech and infrastructure is so ubiquitous it's not worth building consoles at all.
All these companies try to predict the future so they can be the first to invest in the "next big thing". The reason we're not all millionaires is that for every one guy who predicts something correctly, 99 other guys get it wrong.
Good thing BUT PLEASE DON'T forget about/exclude/neglect backward compatibility…..LOTTA $$$$ invested in those collections.
They spent years claiming a paperless society. Still not quite there yet. Took almost 10 years for floppy disks (remember those) to die out from predicition. Talk to me in 2050.