You're basically saying we are headed toward the one-console future or a future where the console doesn't exist at all. It's hard to see that happening unless Sony just doesn't see value in having a Playstation brand generating $30 Billion a year.
The Playstation brand made $30 billion last year alone. Why would they decide to give up on the console market and just make their games playable on PCs only or through TVs through some kind of app? Why wouldn't they want to dictate things on their terms to try to generate the most revenue and profit?
And why would Nintendo give up their $12 Billion a year and all of their profit? They have a higher profit margin than Playstation and Xbox? Why give that up? Their view on gaming is different than Sony's. Their approach to gaming is also different that PC gamer's and Steam's. So why just stop being Nintendo overnight? Or why stop after the year 2035?
It’s not a case of “giving up” anything. It will simply be a case of wanting to survive and keep making 30Bn ( or more)
Hardware is always sold at a loss. Four years in and no real permanent price drops on either of these consoles… talk within the industry itself about how console sales have essentially plateaued but game dev costs keep rising. Company’s like square selling shit tonnes and still somehow finding a way to tell us “ this ain’t enough money” …. Mass layoffs left right and center…. . I could go on….. none of this sounds like an industry that is comfortabe about its future.
I thin Nintendo and Sony will hold on to the old business model for as long as they can but inna world where companies seek endless growth and profits and the cost of things keeps rising…. And as consumer habit shift ever more towards a digital downloads as the preffered way to consume all forms of media, as game prices rise, just like the cost of living itself, and subscriptions become ever more appealing, Nintendo and Sony will follow the money… in the words of wiz Kalifa” wherever this change go this game goes” …. These companies will always focus on their profits first, not the ideology of niche hardcore gamers.
I’d like consoles to stick around forever. And ten years ago I would have never thought it even plausible But realistically you can see where things are going if you just look at how tik tok raised gen z and gen alpha consume content. Free to play games with their back end supported by DLC. And not a care in the world for any thing called a console. They are all playing on tablets. So when we are all grey and not so heavy on the games anymore ( because let’s face it if you are over 35 on this forum you are probably Atleast a decade or two away from arthritis, and/ or grandparent hood. At that point todays youth are Tommorows young adults and what do these companies do if they are not meeting Tommorow a gamers via their main way of interacting with anything that they entertain themselves with… the tablet? Shit….. by then these games streaming services will have come along in leap ands bounds. If they can do low latency, with high resolution and they are apps in the TVs people already own, the need for a console will be not so nessacary. Right now Tesla and BMW have gaming apps built in, when you buy the new ones. And given that we are seeing a shift to the account being more important than the hardware, you can kind of see where it’s all going. One day PSN, Gamepass, and Nintendo could just be app stores like steam. TVs could have GPUs built in them ( teslas have GPUs in them) maybe a USB port for an external hard drive to download games as well as stream.
Personally I’d rather a one console future ( one where we build our own consoles to whatever specs we like what we do with PCs right now) and all the companies just put their apps and games on it. So maybe some sort of steam OS that runs gamepass, PSN, Nintendo’s and whatever else. All my accounts on one box. And I should be able to play those games from the one box. I think we will end up at some variation of that. Digital will become the way in which we own games. The account will be king in the eyes of the publishers…Subscriptions might be a nightmare because every publisher is gonna want to get a price of that pie. Ain’t enough to go around. So it’s gonna be brutal, for a while . Will be interested to see how the biz tackles the challenges in the Horizon…. And make no mistake they are coming. How people consume games, how they pay for them. It gonna affect how they are made and distributed. And then we will see services fighting for exclusive content. I see a point where the walled gardens come crumbling down as these companies make More aggressive moves to get money from each others audience. Because the ones on their platform alone will not be enough. We are already seeing the signs of that even from the market leader. Nintendo stubbornly sticking to their guns but the question has to be asked… how long can they keep that up for? Mayamto is not getting any younger, the hybrid console concept certainly helped Distance themselves a bit more from xbox and PS. But how many more of those kinds of innovations do they have in them? Nintendo has two problems in the future …. Tablets getting more powerful, and playing games people typically see as console games. And that younger fanbase who they love to target, jumping to tablets instead of Nintendo for gaming. Because they are already doing it now, choosing tablets over any console.
