Do you still believe that consoles or PC might cease to exist as a platform in future?

I'm not trying to make this a flamebait topic. Bear with me.

So, try to imagine gaming in, e.g. 15 to 20 years in the future.

How do I see it? I can imagine Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, Steam, and other platforms as apps that we download to our "entertainment system" which runs everything. It may even be embedded to a Smart TV which connects to a cloud and runs the games.

Basically, platforms might cease to exist in the form of "hardware" but will continue to exist in the form of service.

How do you see it?

Will a gaming platform always be "hardware"? Do you still believe a console or a PC as a gaming platform may "die" in the future?

Xbox will definitely become app for PC or microsoft store and i believe series x is last microsoft console. its not even a console at all. as its pre build PC. and Halo will finally become PC exclusive.

playstation and nintendo will forever exist.

As an American, what is the difference between the phrase "in the future" versus the British "in future"? I ask because not everyone on this forum speaks and understand the same type of English.

I'm not American, nor British :-D Dunno why I wrote it like that. Probably just a habit.

Yeah, it actually seems like MS is going in that direction. But, I'm not so sure about PS and Nintendo existing forever.

I mean, is it really viable for gaming that every platform owner has its own hardware?

Gaming is going to the cloud, for many this is how they play now. Many people are getting much better experiences with Stadia than they get with a PS4 or xbox one. As a PC gamer i don't want to keep spending thousands every few years so i'm looking forward for when gaming becomes like Netflix

predicting the future is the most difficult thing there is. There is one thing for sure tho, stuff always changes. microsoft and playstation might not even exist anymore, or not in their current form.

I could see both Sony and MS becoming software platforms that can be reached from any PC (MS is there already?). But I still think console hardware will be around. When you buy a console you know that all AAA games will be optimized for it for the next 6 years. You don’t have to think, research, update or anything else. It will just work.

The demand for that kind of convenience will never go away.

PC will exist for a long time because people like to customize shit and play the way they want. Even for the console players who are more likely to turn to basic bitch streaming, the quality is still not there. The infrastructure is not ready. Not everybody has the bandwidth and there are not enough servers everywhere to eliminate lag.

This!!!

As long as PC remains as a destination for awesomeness of playing your games however you want, that's all I care. I won't shed of tears if consoles cease to exist however. But I'm sure Nintendo will still be around, so that's saying something.

Gaming going to change but I am not certain on the direction. Hardware agnostic gaming is the future though.

@IgGy621985: How do I lower my income tax with a game streaming service?

I don't understand your question?

Tax deduction for work expenses

What work expenses? Dude, I'm talking exclusively about gaming.

lmao

Ron finally broke.

I think he's attempting a joke, not sure.

Obviously neither form factor will exist at some point in the future.

At this point i only firmly believe in only one thing that i apply on daily life:

~ No expactations lead to no disappointments ~

...yet there's still that "little" variable called "surprise", which usually leads to disappointment which i definitely don't expect.

Hell yeah. Firm believer in the death of consoles. They are already admitted in the hospital and very soon will be put on ventilators before finally dying.

PC will always exist simply from the virtue of it being an open and critical platform. You can also do a lot more with PC's, they are more or less irreplaceable.

Consoles are, for lack of a better word, toys. Toys are not critical, and people grow old or tired of their toys.

What I see happening is that consoles will eventually morph into PC's, or certain companies will just throw in the towel and not bother. Consoles represent a minority of their respective company's total income (I think MS is 21% from Xbox, and Sony is 27% from Playstation).

Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, streaming will take hold and there will simply be no point in having dedicated consoles to play games when all you need is some little thing you just plug into your TV.

Either way, I don't see consoles lasting long. They're always struggling it seems, always competing. Computer hardware has competition, sure, but it's more of an organic, true-capitalism competition than a "let's **** with the statistics" kind of capitalism you see with consoles.

I think what he is saying is that if you work from home, you can deduct your PC from your taxes if it is critical to your job. Not sure about that though.

Next we'll be getting Ghosts praising a game with a female protagonist.

The world has gone mad.

Mad I tell you!

I truly hope physical never goes away.. even though I know that's probably far from the case. Either way that's what I prefer and will continue to support for as long as possible. Services are getting better and digital isn't nearly as bad as it used to be, but I still only really support it if I'm feeling lazy at the time or that's the only way I can get a game.