This week, EA made headlines because they released an estimate which said that 55 million new-gen consoles had been sold so far. That’s a headline because when you take
But rather than the whole “PS4 is killing Xbox One” narrative, I think it’s more significant that 55 million of these consoles have been sold period. Both the PS4 and Xbox One are tracking above last gen. I believe The Xbox 360 was at about 17 million at this point, while the PS3 was at 21 million.
Why is this kind of crazy? Because all we’ve been hearing about the past five years or so was how this console generation was destined to be the last, and game consoles in general were a trend that was bound to be phased out soon enough.
That hasn’t happened, of course. Sales of the Xbox One and PS4 are booming, and
So why all the doom and gloom predictions? Because I think most of them were coming from the general or tech press, rather than those more inside gaming who really understand the wants and needs of players.
The long and short of it is that despite claims to the contrary, there still is not something that has blossomed into becoming a true replacement for a game console. Here are at least five things that many thought would kill consoles, but haven’t managed to come close as of yet.
But neither of these types of players appear to be eating into the console base. Casual PC players already own a PC for school or work, and will probably still own a console on the side. Hardcore PC players could own a console as well, but even if they don’t, since PC gaming is still so expensive in many ways, cheaper, play-games-out-of-the-box consoles still hold their appeal, and these two markets co-exist relatively peacefully, despite the usual fanboy wars over platforms.
While the mobile games market has started to slowly strangle the portable handheld market, where Sony isn’t going to make another PSP, and even Nintendo is starting to get into the mobile game, mobile does not compete with actual video game consoles. For anyone who is involved in gaming, it’s well known that the scenes are completely different from one another, and consoles still produce gaming experiences that mobile simply can’t hope to replicate. Consoles give us Fallout 4. Mobile gives us Fallout Shelter. And so on. That doesn’t meant there isn’t fun to be had with mobile games, but they just do not have the scope or quality to compete with consoles on a regular basis. Though the mobile market is a money-making machine for many, it’s merely expanded the base of people who “game,” rather than eclipse the console market at all.
This movement was driven by two main forces, OnLive, the game streaming platform which was quickly shut down and sold for parts after it debuted, and PlayStation Now, which is a cool way to play older PlayStation games (and why PS4 will never get true backward compatibility), but we still do not have the ability to effectively stream new release titles. Yes, it would be great if instead of consoles, we were simply sold a controller and every device we owned from our smart TVs to our laptops could stream every new game, but we have not arrived there yet, and it still seems to be quite a ways off.
Though it’s great that these boxes are supporting gaming, most of it is converted mobile titles which, as we’ve already established, are no great threat to consoles. An Apple TV box that can play phone games and maybe a few titles that could be on par with consoles is not going to have anyone throwing out their Xboxes or PlayStations at this point. It’s something the industry needs to keep an eye on, but again, it’s been no real threat to consoles so far.
I don’t get whether Steam Machines are supposed to appeal to PC gamers who want to play Steam games on their TV, or to console gamers who want to have a gaming PC experience in console form. I don’t really think either group was clamoring for something like this, and though perhaps Steam Machines don’t do anything terribly wrong, they are certainly not console killers either.
That’s all of the current threats, negated. And on the horizon? VR. The next great console killer!
But VR relies on powerful PCs or consoles themselves in the case of PlayStation VR. And if VR is mass adopted, it’s going to take years and years for that to happen, and from early reports, I feel like VR is going to be more of a separate “mobile gaming” type experience where it has its own category of games that don’t really replace a traditional console experience. It may be too early to tell that, and perhaps we could live in a future someday where all gaming is VR, but certainly not for a long, long while, and so VR does not feel like an immediate threat.
Consoles have competition, yes, but fundamentally, the gaming market is big enough here PCs, mobile, Steam Machines, set-top offerings and VR can all co-exist relatively peacefully without one eating all the others. And because of a thirty year history, affordability, playability and top-notch games, consoles are not, and have not been, in danger of dying out.
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