Consoles cannot die in a way that matters | 10 Years Ago This Month
Brendan Sinclair
Managing Editor
Wednesday 15th June 2022
The games industry moves pretty fast, and there's a tendency for all involved to look constantly to what's next without so much worrying about what came before. That said, even an industry so entrenched in the now can learn from its past.
So to refresh our collective memory and perhaps offer some perspective on our field's history, GamesIndustry.biz runs this monthly feature highlighting happenings in gaming from exactly a decade ago.
In June of 2012, consoles were dead.
The time of death was noted by David Jaffe, game director on 2005's God of War, who was predicting not-great fortunes for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U.
It wasn't for the "OMG Nintendo doomed lol" sort of reasons you get from rabid console war fanboys, but for the "OMG consoles doomed lol" sort of reasons you get from serious industry observers. (And to be fair, Jaffe also mentioned a lack of interest in the software shown, which was a sentiment many shared after Nintendo's E3 briefing.)
"It's a declining market, I think," Jaffe explained. "That doesn't speak ill to any of them as pieces of hardware -- it just speaks about the fact that the industry has changed, the business models have changed and the world has gotten even smaller with smartphones and tablets and the internet, and stuff like Gaikai and streaming.
"Look, consoles are going away. I think in ten years -- probably sooner, but ten years is always the safe thing to say so you don't sound like an idiot..."
David Jaffe
"Look, consoles are going away. I think in ten years -- probably sooner, but ten years is always the safe thing to say so you don't sound like an idiot -- but here's what I'll say: I'll go on the record and say that the next generation
Read more on gamesindustry.biz
