Are games consoles facing extinction?
The games industry is in constant flux; what we think we know today as fact is gone often completely different the next day.
Once upon a time, we used to go to a brick and mortar shop to buy the latest releases; now we can snap them up online and download them to our device without leaving our homes. Developers used to have to partner with publishers for their games to reach market; now they can use digital platforms and release their wares into the world without a middle man. We used to have a dedicated device like a console or PC to play the latest AAA blockbusters, now we can also play these directly on our mobile phone.
Much has changed in the last decade so there’s no reason to believe that how we play games today will be the same ten years from now. At the recent IGN Live, GamesIndustry.biz head Christopher Dring spoke to some of the smartest minds in the business to see how they feel playing games will change in the future.
For a long time, consoles have been one of the dominant forms of playing games, but the sector has stagnated somewhat, failing to grow and attract new audiences.
Tencent advisor and PlayStation alum Shawn Layden believes that consoles are indeed in trouble, but this isn't anything new.
"If you look at the history of consoles, the global install base in any one of those generations never rose above 250 million," he said. "There was that one point when Wii came out, and thanks to Wii Fit, an extra 20 million units were sold because everyone thought they could lose weight. But that wasn't sustainable and came crashing down and we're still in that 250 million overall install base of active consoles. That's a challenge.
"During the pandemic, revenue rose by 20 or 25%, but we were still getting more money from the same people. It wasn't necessarily bringing new people into the console gaming world. That's the existential threat to gaming right now."
Van Burnham, the author of Supercade: A Visual History of the Videogame Age, said that, having spoken to
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