Game Consoles May Soon Be Gone, Forever
With the Playstation 5 and XBOX Series X coming this Holiday season, the next generation of consoles will only continue to cement itself as one of the primary ways to play games. However, there’s a blossoming technological advancement in the world of gaming that deserves attention from players and console manufacturers alike, because if or when it’s implemented properly, it’ll change the way we play forever. I’m talking about Game Streaming.
Ever since the idea of “cloud gaming” hit the scene in the early teens, gaming companies have been tinkering with services that let players stream games over the internet on demand, rather than downloading and running those games on a dedicated device — recently the consumer market has seen a lot of progress in that department, now it’s just a question of smoothing out the kinks.
Originating with pioneer companies like OnLive and Gaikai, cloud gaming was quickly picked up by the big names in the industry, with Sony minting Playstation Now in 2015 and companies like Microsoft and Nvidia unveiling their takes on the game streaming formula in the past few months. As they continue to develop their products, it won’t be long before streaming games is just as viable as the downloadable alternative.
So here’s the question: if game streaming gets its act together, what does that do to the value of a dedicated game console? Could this be the last generation of consoles full of expensive hardware, or will Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo still find a way to make these things necessary?
As much as I appreciate and enjoy having a box that plays video games sitting on my shelf, it’s hard to say whether or not the majority of consumers think the same thing. If, during the lifespan of these next consoles (which could easily be 5–8 years), game streaming continues to improve at the same rate as the last few months, then this could mean gaming consoles are going the way of the DVD player.
