Well, maybe consoles won't be extinct after this gen or the next one, but maybe they should be. It would be better for us. I'm siding with @Wasdie here.
I've been thinking about this. These are 360º closed platforms, which only offers us restrictions. They became a net, in which we emprison ourselves willfully, to overpay for the products and services provided. This is what consoles became. Consoles played their role in the market, but that should be history by the next-gen.
There was once a need for consoles. You wouldn't get so many people into playing games if there wasn't an Atari. Then a NES. And a PS1. Even the 6th gen. If one console maker was to get out of the market, a hole the PC wouldn't be able to fill at the time would be left, and consumers and publishers would suffer, so another company would have to substitute it with another console (Sega -> Microsoft for example).
Would there be as many gamers now if there weren't consoles back in all those previous gens? How many non-gamer people could the PC by itself "convert" to gaming consumers back then, in societies that mostly took PCs as work tools? And there were so many small studios and publishers. Japan had such a presence in the market, and was very console-oriented. PCs back then didn't get most of the games available on consoles. And vice-versa.
But in the 7th gen (2005 onwards), the market changed so much. It was streamlined. Heavily. The number of studios and publishers dwindled, the market got concentrated on few huge companies. Small companies that couldn't afford ports for completely different hardwares slowly got extinct. Japan basically retracted to it's own market. Sales became more important than exclusivity deals, which couldn't match developing costs anymore. Porting to PC became not only easier than before, but a necessary move.
But most importantly, habits changed. By 2005, internet access was definitely widespread, and the PC was not just a working tool anymore for most people. You didn't have to be an "hermit" anymore to find in the PC an entertainment medium, even if it only meant watching Youtube (which was founded in 2005), or messing with any kind of social media (Facebook, for example, only opened for everyone in 2006). 7th gen consoles still offered good value for their hardware, new techs and innovations were provided at a loss for manufacturers. Exclusives were already diminishing in numbers though.
By the time of the 8th gen, the barriers that existed limiting PC were almost all demolished, while the ones on consoles are still there, and most are kept artificially. Actually, more were established: for example, unlike on PC, you must pay even to use your already paid for internet access, to access a feature that you also already paid for. Platform holders control what game gets released on their system, and at what conditions. They decide what kind of competing services they will allow in their "territory" (remember EA Access and Sony?). They can dictate what is the standard price point for new games. They may eventually decide if used games should be prohibited. And so on.
All the gaming needs that were created or explored by console makers historically, the innovation and value only they could dedicate to gaming now are all gone or shared with PC. All that's left is the stagnant hardware, few exclusives, higher prices and ever more restrictive policies from companies that could change their business model to a software-centric one without damaging the industry like it would before. The console experience now achievable through PC with the proper hardware and peripherals, the only real difference being the existance of exclusives.There are many ways to substitute these consoles with more cost effective machines, with more open platforms, and the competition is there for that. These conditions didn't exist before.
Now, why not do away with the very idea of "exclusive" titles that today only serves as a means of keeping the pool of gamers divided in at least 4 major segments? What would we lose if console makers instead became big publishers like Ubisoft, Bethesda, Take-Two, EA, Activision Blizzard, etc.? I think we'd lose nothing or at least not much, but we'd profit with increased competition, better value and wider libraries.
Of course I'm not saying consoles won't be a thing in the mid or even long-term future, all I'm saying is that that may not be in our best interests as consumers. Even for companies actually, since the only ports they would need to make is between different computer OSs (Windows, Linux, OSX).
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