Predict death of consoles ...

[GAM3R]

This is very interesing!

Google translated from Spanish to English:

It turns out that Sandy Duncan , the former boss of Xbox Europe, has recently stated that in his opinion the console war is silly because in the future, all games will be played in a "virtual" or console without any hardware.

"The industry is mainly led by technology and I honestly think dedicated games devices, consoles will die within the next 5 to 10 years. "

But his remarks were not only in that, went further, saying " There is little technological difference between some video recorders to hard drive and the Xbox 360, so within 5 or 10 years do not think we any device under our TV. Most games will be virtualized and distributed as a Web applications and services by our content provider. "And, again according to Duncan," The launch of new hardware is a big risk that companies will be progressively reduced " .

Leaving aside what a pleasure it has been dropping gems like these, would not surprise me that the future happens to be something similar to what Duncan contemplates. Yes ... predict the death of consoles such as hardware in the next 5 or 10 years, seems to me a little crazy.

The truth is data that seem somewhat believable ...
Source (http://gtgamers.wordpress.com/2008/03/29/predicen-muerte-de-consolas/) -

[zvow]

my console died in one year

[Link-Hero]

I say about 10 years at most like what the article has said. Everything is becoming digital and the amount of internet use has been increasing. Just those two facts proves it.

[Jmando265]

I say 5 years or less, OnLive will be built into almost every hdtv, since it doesn't cost them anything, along with possibly every portable and average bandwidth per person in US will continually rise along with quality, Kinect could be compatible with PCs and possibly OnLive, OnLive's latency and quality will have improved to a great degree, along with 6 month intervals of server upgrades, 4G will be much more widely available and possibly surpass the range of 3G networks. The service will soon be available around the world, with datacenters installed in Europe and in countries in Asia close to the Pacific, and possibly South America. User base could soon be on par withxbox 360's user base (depending whether OnLive will install their client in xbox or not), and MOVA-powered OnLive exclusive games will have already been launched. (With maybe the possibility of one of the console giants coordinating with OnLive to get their first-party games and their hardware supported and available on the service. OR One of the console giants have already come up with a service of their own or have teamed with Gaikai or Otoy to launch their games.)

[DerrichJohn]

finally someone who knows!! :P Digital is where its at! Everyone pretty much wins. I only trust perlman. cuz its an art to him. So he wont fuck anyone over lol

[CenturionIV]

I work for Best Buy and its all about the digital world, in fact they want in the next 3yrs to completly get rid of Movies and Cds. Working in Hometheater everything does streaming, TVs,Blu-Ray players,Google Tvs, heck even TiVo! Are focus is to convert all our customers into the digital age. Exciting stuff! I honestly think it depends on how long it takes ISP's to upgrade and be consitent, for instance i have Comcast my internet is 50mb dl and 10mb upl, However a town over and they are stuck with internet were the max is like 3mb.

[Lord Xenu]

Wow, I remember my Best Buy days. Never again lol.

Streaming and digital content is taking over whether we like it or not.

[KicknGuitar]

my console died in one year

Mine died in less than one year...
When they sent it back... It died in 2 days...
Thanks Microcrap.

[Lord Xenu]

Consoles in general are Quicker to Make, Quicker to Break. Console gaming as a whole, I don't see it lasting longer than one more generation.

[SlingShot]

ISP's will need to remove the bandwidth caps if cloud gaming is to completely take over. As it is right now we will either have to pay an insane monthly internet bill or only play every so often .... it really lies on the interweb providers.

[Lord Xenu]

Pretty much. Same goes for digital distribution. If you think about it. IT takes HOURS to download a game on the PS3. If you were going to download full classics in the future it could take forever. DC Universe alone on an average connection took between 3-6 hours. That is insane enough.

[Ghost Assassin]

I love the idea. BTW, I applied for a Geek Squad position (Double Agent) and was told that I only qualifed for the low end help desk job. Good thing they turned me down, because I found my way to this job and make WAY MORE money than the manager of that store. HA HA. Stupid Best Buy. Anyway, I'm all for digital distrobution.

On the original topic, I don't see it taking more than 2 or 3 more years at max to effectively kill the consoles. PC will live a little longer (probably 5 or 6 years) unless the Google Chrome OS really takes off. Then we'll all be using thin clients for everything. It's going to give me job security too so I'm all for it.

I really don't see a new generation making its way on the sceen at all and this generation is spent. We're now sacrificing the quality of the game for it to fit on the consoles as it is. I mean, a lot of the games that the current console gen runs is 2x AA if any and seldom good texture filtering. It's the jaggies that turn me off though. I can't stand to look at jaggies. It absolutely kills games IMO.

[JeremyB]

There are so many people that do and will continue to refuse digital media without having a physical copy that I do not think DVD's, blurays, Consoles will be leaving us anytime soon.

[tonyhoag]

Does anyone else forsee a new system in the midst of all this digitalizing that is "back to the roots"? Once Sony and Microsoft launch their digital marketplaces/"consoles" (more like services), I can see a new player coming through and rating up that empty market share (though severly diminished) for consoles.