PS4, Xbox One, and Wii U the Last of a Dying Breed? Hardware Consoles Going Extinct, Says Exec
At the Game Developers Conference two weeks ago, EEDAR chief product officer Geoffrey Zatkins claimed he felt the current next-gen consoles will be the last generation of hardware.
Wii U, PS4, and Xbox One are currently the eighth generation of consoles, something Zatkins felt, "could be the last generation of dedicated hardware," according to GameSpot. EEDAR is a video game market research firm, and Zatkins was speaking in a panel called "Awesome Video Game Data."
In a past interview with Famitsu, Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada shared a similar sentiment with what Zatkins said. "I think in the future, it'll will be a contest of services instead of hardware," Harada said. "When there's the PS5, it will probably be just a controller and a monitor. Then, the thing that will be left is the name of the service."
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He continued, "We previously spoke about PlayStation going from hardware to something closer to a service, regardless of the device. Of course, PlayStation will still be the center, but I think we would like to expand to different things."
This seems to be the direction the consoles themselves are heading to. Sony has created PlayStation Now, which will rent and stream videos. Microsoft will be focusing the Xbox One on cloud services, and Nintendo is bringing a whole new policy into play for the Wii U that will focus on the users' well being.
With music going mostly digital, and television and movies going next, video games are the only thing left requiring hard copies and consoles, and even that is beginning to change.
Where is the future of gaming going, and is it possible video games will inhabit an all digital world?
