'Consoles to die in 5 to 10 years', says ex-Microsoft man

[jdnation]

Bull$#@!, it won't happen... know why? Because of console generations changing to become more powerful and add more features and refine old ones... In other words, hardware will have to change and grow every cycle if you want games to get better and better. And that requires another completely rebuilt box to accomodate new hardware technology.

What he could mean though is that pretty soon instead of having DVD players, music, cable and gaming boxes separately, it'll all conform to a single box that does it all so there's less space to take up. But if you want to progress, then it means changing the underlying hardware, which means get another box. People like consoles because of the convenience, noone wil settle for some kind of PC thing that you need to keep updating to get the latest. Buying a new console in 10 years sounds resonable to me.

[Spotfist]

This is fantastic! someone from Micsrosoft telling us how things are going to be played out in the future, oh sorry an X employee of microsoft none the less...

I think as usual "they" have it all wrong, perhaps what he meant to say was that soon consoles will not merely be consoles but rather mulimedia device streaming who knows what to our TV's, this I can believe but consoles being killed off I can't! the thing is console gaming is getting bigger and bigger, hell we just had a "next format" war that was won by the PS3!!!! A console decided the future of our video needs! Only someone from Micrsoft would see this as the end of the console market!

I long for the day when I can post comments on a forum from my PS3/Xbox360 as I did this one... hehe

[____anders____]

that is just a bunch of BS, cus a lot of the "hardcore gamers" would just stop playing a game cus it feels better to have a physical copy of the game rather than having an account on a site or whatever and download the games, and even worse the site could just stop working if you have to stream the games.

and what about those who can't afford that kind of broadband, streaming really eats up your bandwidth - and fast too, nonononono, i don't want all software, i want hardware consoles cus then you can play offline too, take my console with me on my vacation or something, you can't do that with streaming services..

that guy don't know what he's talking about!, he's an idiot..

[Steely]

.. Okay, let's say maybe in the year 2040-ish, perhaps, something familiar to this would happen.

I'm sure the technology leap won't be that great in a decade. And even so, it would get rid of all convenience. I mean, you'd have to have wifi to play games, which means if you don't play at home there would have to be internet where you DO play, which screws portability-

I mean, come on.

To be blunt, I just believe he is a delusional man, used to the new innovations in computers. He's been computers too long, I guess.

[csd-san]

It's just an opinion. We all have one of those. So I'll stick with consoles till I have a reason to switch. And right now I don't. So voila.

[jamotto]

What a terrible title for this article, its pretty obvious to me that he meant that consoles will be integrated into the TV just like how they are integrating DVD players and home theater systems into TV's. I also agree that the games will come via a "Steam" like service which considering the extremely good business that Steam and related services have had is a very real possibility. The only thing I don't agree with is the time line 5 - 10 years is a bit short, I would add at least 5 to 10 years to that.

[osgeld]

i think the selling point of he whole console thing is the whole budget thing because it costs a hell of a lot more to buy a pc with the same specs as the xbox 360. I also find that pc's are a bit less stable and more prone to system failure and crashes (if you dont count the 360 of course haha)

bull$#@! it cost more

lets look at the specs

3.2ghz power pc - this is your expense getting a 3+ ghz quadcore x86 equiv


video a custom ati video card, well sir the dev kits have raideon 9800's in them, thats a 3 year old 50$ card

512mb ram, you can get 2gb and faster for less than 50 bucks

20 gig hard drive (dont most computer stores give those away now)

dvd drive - 19 bucks

so you can infact biuld a faster computer with 4x the ram and the same support for a hundered bucks (or so) less

[Eviltaco64]

I dont think Nintendo would ever make that move.
A lot of their market is young and casual gamers that could easily find something else to do. So a lot of their market wouldnt make the switch in my opinion.

[Greg_Alexander]

LOL. What a load of tosh. :rofl:
The PS3 the last console we'll ever see? wtf?
A consoles usual lifespan is about 5 years. Some, like the Megadrive/Genesis & PS2 hang around for longer. Does this guy think we've reached a ceiling in terms of graphical performance for example? Not a chance.

Also people like to have hard copies of game they love. Sure, some will prefer to have only downloaded versions, but you can't beat a hard copy.

[Zimond]

bull$#@! it cost more

lets look at the specs

3.2ghz power pc - this is your expense getting a 3+ ghz quadcore x86 equiv


video a custom ati video card, well sir the dev kits have raideon 9800's in them, thats a 3 year old 50$ card

512mb ram, you can get 2gb and faster for less than 50 bucks

20 gig hard drive (dont most computer stores give those away now)

dvd drive - 19 bucks

so you can infact biuld a faster computer with 4x the ram and the same support for a hundered bucks (or so) less

THAT is just bull$#@!. You cannot compare just numbers when you compare a console to a pc. A PC with the same specs would never be as good as the console.

Every PC is different and exactly that fact draws all the hardware power away...
every console is the same.