What a potential post-Xbox future could mean for Sony and Nintendo
"All signs point to the hardware becoming less and less important to Microsoft."
tl;dr: A handful of games industry analysts share ungrounded guesswork.
One is cited as "independent games analyst Pelham Smithers," which conjures a very clear image in my mind that Midjourney obviously agrees with.
It's going to be interesting that's for sure. The situation with Sony is not something I expected to hear. I also had no idea investor were lukewarm on future PlayStations. But after what's happening at MS, it does make sense.
I think the future is going to be closer to a PC world. Look at all the 3rd party handhelds coming out that can play top of the line games. Sony and MS see the writing on the wall and I do believe the days of PlayStation and Xbox are probably numbered. Though atleast one or two more generations are still likey.
Nintendo has a lot to worry about with Switch 2 as well. It makes sense why they held back it's release for more games. It's not a special idea anymore and they know it too. Nintendo will be the last one to hold out before special consoles are a thing of the past.
Obviously this is all just an educated guess and I could be completely wrong. Just a hunch is all.
I do believe the days of PlayStation and Xbox are probably numbered. Though atleast one or two more generations are still likey.
I've been reading this statement for the past 20 years.
Has 30% cut of all third party games and subscription requirement to play online not been enough to keep wanting to continue Sony consoles? They sell so many consoles and they are so much more accessible than PCs.
Unfortunately I suspect we'll get third party 'consoles' that are basically the equivalent of the handhelds from nthe console market, potentially locked to set stores.
The only reason we currently don't have any prevalent under TV consoles that are glorified steam deck competitors is because anyone interested in that market is tech savvy enough to see you may as well have a PC doing the same.
I don't see consoles dying out for a decade yet but I suspect the next step is this. That or they'll embrace cloud gaming, where people are just streaming games of their servers, making them much harder to pirate, easier to charge a subscription for and easier to maintain and release smaller hardware changes. This has 99 downsides although does come with the upside of basically not requiring the larger tech companies to hold back innovation by generation, which may accelerate the the gaming tech industry slightly. I saw an article back when the PS5 was releasing that was basically about how a huge field of graphics tech has a boon on a major console release and stagnates with it, which is caused by so many of the people making content for high end graphical tech being people making games for consoles and there is little reason to outpace what they can perform.
All of that is my speculation from absolutely nowhere in the industry, so take it all with a big swig of salt.
Kinda makes sense. The costs must be staggering to develop new proprietary graphics chips that can outperform current gen PCs and still hit the low(ish) price targets. They then have to basically sell every unit at a loss and hope to make it back with game sales. This has worked out for Nintendo's model since they have thrived on (relatively) cheap and underpowered hardware, and a bevy of exclusive titles that they continue to sell for full price even years after release. Its harder from the angle Microsoft was taking. They were able to create a few decent exclusives but it seems like most of their titles were crossplatform or became that way over time. I was playing Halo Infinite on my SteamDeck. Haven't owned an Xbox since the first one.
That with handhelds like the steam deck becoming more and more popular the time and expense of developing your own hardware, controllers and ecosystem is making less sense.
They may still develop their own handhelds but system exclusives make less sense that just making a subscription to PSN or Xbox live
