"Pointing out that the entry of bigger players into the console space killed arcades, and that TV killed cinema attendance, Ben Cousins painted a bleak picture of the future of consoles.
Cousins formerly worked at EA and DICE on games like Battlefield Heroes, and prior to that Sony. He now heads Ngmoco’s new Stockholm, Sweden studio.
Though the talk was about the “death” of consoles, Cousins did clarify: “By ‘die’, I mean talk about something that has significantly smaller market share with no sign of return.”
This happens when “customers move to a new solution” or “a new product comes into your category and massively expands the overall market.” He sees both happening as mobile devices – tablets and smartphones – disrupt consoles. "
I really can’t see that happening - the hardcore audience are never going to switch to mobile gaming and they take up the majority of the console market.
PC gaming will die. Every day there are less PCs sold and more tablets/phones. For a lot of people smartphones and tablets are all they need, and they also offer much more comfortable game acquisition experience than computers.
Retails already give very little support for gaming, forcing most game purchases to be done online. Other than geeks that know what Steam is, it’s rare for average pc gamers to get games. It’s more likely they will grab some cheap educational kids’ game off a discount rack in TJMax than to grab a game from Steam.
Consoles, though, will just shift direction. Physical sales will slow down but be replaced by pure digital purchases. Soon, you will just buy the next gen Xbox and instead of going back to the store for games, you will just buy them digitally like you do on smartphones and tablets.
In addition, these consoles are going to evolve into media center devices, they will be your window into Netflix, Hulu and other video streaming services, plus some music too (there is some huge opportunity there for amazing visualizers being used at home parties, btw.)
The Apple TV will likely shift at some point to become a console-like device, just like the Xbox is slowly morphing into an Apple TV like device.
As to who will control those arenas… My money is it will be shared by Microsoft, Apple, with Sony and Nintendo slightly behind (Nintendo seems to have a hard time evolving into this new media centric era.) Google will keep trying and not be able to get in.
So in short:
Consoles won’t die, they will evolve.
Nah i dont think so. Mobile development will dominate, but there are still a lot of people who preffer old fashion mouse and keyboard, and i am defenetly one of those.
Just as there are a lot of people that still prefer old fashion paper and ink for the source of their daily news.
We have to remember and learn from history: our preferences are preprogrammed on us as a type of nostalgia. Our generation grew up with certain technologies and other than incremental improvements we can’t seem to ever prefer anything else. But we grow older and the younger generations outnumber us. The future will be what they prefer.
Actually PC gaming is on a rise. There’s quite a bit of PC games released lately and sales have never been higher. Gabe is a billionaire, steam has millions of active users. Even the new ps4 is rumored to run on a x86 processor which makes it even closer to a PC. The people who game on mobiles were never PC gamers anyway. I would never change my Battlefield 3 or Counter Strike to some mobile game on a touch screen.
Mobile games are good timewasters on a subway but that’s about it.
Yeah, there was just an article on the Escapist on how PC gaming rose something like 11% last year.
I don’t think consoles or PC games are in any danger of dying any time soon. People have been predicting the death of the PC game market for like 10 to 20 years now, and it’s doing alright (perhaps not what it was in it’s heyday, but nowhere near the DOOOOOOOM predictions you tend to see). I suspect the same will be true of the consoles.
I, for one, have no intention of ever gaming on a mobile device. I’m too attached to my 26" monitor and keyboard/mouse/controller to downgrade to something with less CPU/GPU power on a smaller screen just because you can take it with you to the restaurant. I doubt I’m the only one
PC gaming will not die. Not everyone has a console - and not everyone wants to play games on their mobile device.
Some games are best suited for the PC because of the keyboad, mouse or game specific USB device, and attempting to port these games to a console or mobile is futile at best - although it doesn’t stop people from trying.
There is still a market for PC games, but you just have to really undertand your target market and why your game is superior on PC than on any other platform - or a similar game already on other platforms.
I haven’t owned a console since sega genesis. I’ve been a PC gamer since I got Ultima Online for xmas in 1997, and I’m not interested in playing games on mobiles (am interested in making them though). I think mobiles are good for kids games and old women. Those are the markets I’d try to reach as a mobile developer.
Mobiles have a long way to go before they can replace laptops, let alone desktop gaming computers. People playing skyrim aren’t likely to rush out and buy chuzzle as an alternative…
Mobile processing power is advancing extremely fast. Way faster than desktop. At the speed it’s going, in 4 years, the only difference between phones/tablets and PCs will be the input methods. Heck PC gaming already is a shadow of it’s former glory.
Keep in mind, when I say PC Gaming is dying, I mean it in the same sense as the OP article: it will exist, but it will become very small.
And for other posts: I would love to see the numbers behind that 11% gaming increase for last year, not because I don’t believe it but because of origin.
How much of that is due to free to play gaming on Facebook? I know we would not count that as the same market, but investors would.
How much of that was also exclusively Steam growth? Steam is a rather closed ecosystem at the end of the day and not a representation of the classic PC game free for all market we have grown to know.
And I misremembered, the number they quoted was 15%, not 11%.
And you are right, some of that is from the social games. Others bits are from the FtP MMOG markets. And Steam growth (digital distribution) is another factor (though why you consider that not representative of the PC game market I’m not sure I quite understand). Anyway, read the article, it goes into it with a bit more detail.
I used to game on computers (BBC Micro then Amiga before Windows became a strong gaming platform), and still game on consoles, but mobile games now dominate my game time. It is far more than a time waster.
Battlefield 3 and Counter Strike are far better on console, but they are only one of many genres.
Smart phones are already making life tough for handheld consoles. As things develop, it is easy to see people having second thoughts about buying a console when devices they already have meet their gaming needs.
I think Ben makes a good point, although I might be biased as we worked in the same studio early in our video game careers.
I think that the consoles will become apple Tv like devices, the apple tv is going to try to do the same, i think innuendo will do fine they have the best off the shelf controller for a TV.
For users it may make no difference, but for developers it is a big difference. It used to be that you were able to make a game and just sell it on your website, perhaps as shareware (anyone remembers those?) or you could even get a deal with a store directly and get them to order a handful of your games. THAT was the PC market.
Today, Steam seems to be nearly monopolizing the PC gaming market via DLC, and they are rather picky as to what makes it into their store (way more picky than Apple.) Things may change a bit once the Windows 8 App store goes live though, and then as Indies we may be able to consider yourself part of this new DLC service world. However compatibility headaches and other support issues are making every day the common user less and less want to bother with PC gaming in general. They will attend to their flash farms in Facebook, but it’s too easy to spend money on Steam in a game that will not run on your computer.
Going for low spec games is not even a safe bet, as Steam sells games that were built for XP and refuse to run on anything newer (shakes fist at Stubs The Zombie!!!)
But even if we ignore those non-tech savvy computer users and assume ratios remain the same as they have been for the past 10 years (on geek/non-savvy) we still face an issue: PC sales are slowing down. Drastically. iPads and other tablets are taking over. I saw some numbers yesterday that Apple sold more iPad2s than Dell sold computers! That’s huge! In 5 years only geeks will bother with computers.
I disagree. Although author of said article is an expert and my knowledge in no way compares to him, he is missing the forest for the trees.
Console gaming will remain robust as will PC gaming as these are niche markets in themselves
Console gaming = Niche of Hardcore gamers who do not like fiddling with/upgrading their machines.
PC gaming = Niche of Hardcore gamers who LIKE fiddling with/upgrading their machines PLUS people who love their PC and hate switching devices. Huge reason why PC Anything will take a long time to die. Does a little bit of everything and facilitates the lazy who hate switching between devices
With tablet gaming, we are at best witnessing the birth of a new niche. What this niche will look like will depend on the evolution of Gaming tablets, how powerful they will become and what could be done with them. Till we see that, difficult to say what will happen.
Boils down to: Don’t just look at the machine. Look at the people using the machine.
(Don’t just look at the TV, look at the people using the TV
That is why TV will never die just like radio )
Yea that game has impressive graphics, but it has the same drawback that consoles have with limited gameplay. You can move a few directions, and send a few different commands, but it’s nothing like what you get from a good competitive PC game.
And no, in 4 years the graphic processor, cpu, and memory on mobiles will not be equivalent to a gaming desktop at that time…
People who like playing games with 5-6 buttons total might be sold on mobiles vs. consoles but PC market is very strong and much different from both of those other platforms for more reasons than mere graphics.
edit how the hell you plan to write games on a tablet when “only nerds will use PCs”??
Also my headset is going to plug into a tablet with a 6" screen and give me the same experience as my 8 gigs of ram, ubber sound card, 2 gig video card, quad core connected to my plasma television??? It’s not just a PC but a home theatre, etc
Technology starts out big and then becomes small, tablet will never surpass PC.
Funny part is if you did get a tablet that was comparable to a good laptop, that you could plug into your TV, and plug your own controller into you’d have a Console!!!
pc gaming will never die. Its a completely different experience to consoles and smart devices. Not to mention the fact that pc hardware drives cutting edge game development and vice versa.
There will always be gaming companies that want to offer the most cutting edge graphics, which is not an option for consoles or smart devices.
I doubt even consoles will die out unless they start making smart devices that are as powerful, and include tv-out capability.
Good luck cooling your phone or having a nuclear power generator small enough to fit in a phone. By the time efficient cooling for phones is discovered, same tech will be used for PCs many times stronger. PC is more than just a gaming machine. CG industry drives PCs to become faster too. Phones are advancing fast because the base idea is already there. It’s going to slow down when it reaches a cliff.
No it won’t. AAA gaming on PC is quite big. Maybe not as big as console but there’s a huge demand still. Overall PCs perform better, games can support modding and other cool stuff. As I said before, casuals don’t count. If casuals leave PC platform, it does not reduce the hardcore market which is big.
Steam counts a lot. If steam doesn’t count, nothing does really. Steam is a gaming platform that has tons of games and gamers and everyone profits. It’s easy for customer, it’s easy for developer. Win win.
