Alex St. John really likes to talk about stuff. For those who don’t know (and I didn’t know until this morning) he is the head of WildTangent, an online gaming network. He recently spoke in Seattle at the Casual Connect conference calling the console market "extremely fragile."
He also told Edge Magazine that the "notion of the console wired to the big TV–its time is up." The evidence for his theory is based on laptops changing the computer market. Ninety percent of people have enough power to do what they need to do with a laptop. He predicts as more people have laptops they will be gaming on their laptops.
He goes on, saying:
"…kids can play anywhere, or they plug in a gamepad and plug into a TV for that ‘immersive’ experience. People in our generation might cling to that idea of the console running BioShock, but laptop gaming is going to dominate the market for this next generation. The console era is fading rapidly because graphics are no longer the differentiator: people are looking for other things like community or new types of input."
Remember that the guy running the online gaming network is saying this.
This sounds more like what he hopes is coming, rather than what will come to fruition. If there is one thing I have learned about technology it is that the dedicated devices work better than the ones that do a hundred different things. My dedicated console will run games better than a computer because that’s all it has to do. My iPod plays music better than the PSP, or that quirky little add-on to the DS.
As long as there are gamers, there will be dedicated gaming platforms. As long as huge companies like Microsoft and Sony are in the game, there will be dedicated gaming platforms. These monoliths have invested too much money to see their industry fade.
Sorry Alex.
[via Edge Online]
