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The Next Console Generation Will Be The Last...... Except For Nintendo

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Adrock:
Ubisoft’s Yves Guillemot Says The Next Console Generation Will Be The Last

I saw this article last night then saw The Perm’s post, but I thought it deserved its own thread instead of being tucked into the Switch Port Begging thread.

Basically, Guillemot believes we’re headed into a streaming only future after the next generation of consoles. Despite being the CEO of a major publisher, it’s too early for him to know any concrete plans. Guillemot may be basing this on moves and statements Sony and Microsoft have made.

PlayStation CEO, John Kodera, recently said PS4 is “entering the end of its lifecycle” and the next generation of PlayStation is three years away. To me, three years is still a long time. It would put the end of next generation around 2029-2030. Kodera also said, “We need to depart from the traditional way of looking at the console cycle. We’re no longer in a time when you can think just about the console or just about the network like they’re two different things.” Kodera said this around the same time Sony CEO, Kenichiro Yoshida, implied that content, software, services, and subscriptions are a path forward for the company. Hmm.

And Microsoft? It hasn’t been acting like a company that wants to focus on hardware anymore. Microsoft no longer releases Xbox One sales numbers (probably because PS4 is trouncing it), said Xbox One X is “not for everyone,” allows Xbox games to stream to a PC, and introduced Xbox Play Anywhere, an Xbox One/PC crossbuy program. Microsoft supports Xbox One because it’s already out and bailing on the console now would interfere with what it wants to do in the future: transition Xbox into a software-based platform. This isn’t an original idea. People have been talking about it for years.

Nintendo has put itself in a position to not give up hardware even if merging its console and handheld into one device might suggest it will eventually downsize to no hardware. It wants one Switch per person, not household. The path to getting there is dropping the cost of entry. While I personally prefer to use Switch as a home console, lurking through ResetEra and comment sections suggests the opposite for other people. I often read comments like “I hope [Game X] is released on Switch so I can play it on the go.” Nintendo finally released hardware that people can hope a game releases on the platform without it sounding crazy.

For me, Switch is almost good enough to be “good enough.” It gets a ton of indie games and some current generation games thanks to scaling. “Good enough” is when we don’t question whether a game will come to a platform; it will abeit with worse graphics except we won’t care. In 2004, Satoru Iwata famously said technical specs don’t matter. Whenever Nintendo releases the successor to Switch, those words may finally hold some weight for developers. Better specs will yield diminishing returns. What people will want is convenience.

If Sony is hinting at eventually moving forward as a services and content provider and Microsoft is practically already doing that, Nintendo may be the last hardware manufacturer which would be weird because after Sega, a lot of people thought Nintendo would be the next to withdraw. No matter how good streaming gets in 10 to 12 years, will it ever be consistent enough to move away from the current model? I think there will always be a niche of people who want dedicated gaming hardware because it’s easy, tangible, and reliable. And that’s where the successors of Switch fit in.

TLDR:
1. Microsoft will never release a true successor to Xbox One meant to compete with Sony and Nintendo.
2. Sony will release a successor because PlayStation is too popular not to. However, it wants to transition out of hardware because even back in 1999, Sony’s former CEO, Nobuyuki Idei, warned that “The hardware business is peanuts.”
3. Nintendo will never stop releasing dedicated gaming hardware because it’s happy with its niche, and Switch is the company’s path to being successful there.

ShyGuy:
I can see Microsoft leaving, maybe making a surface set top box. Sony will hang on, and Nintendo too. Time for Amazon to jump in!

Ian Sane:
Microsoft is leaving the console biz.  The Xbox One is irrelevant.  I would consider the Wii U more relevant than it, simply because of the exclusives (though they're all being ported to the Switch).  The only reason to own an XB1 over a PS4 is if you're a big Halo or Gears of War nut and those franchises aren't even being made by their original devs anymore.

If streaming is the future then the devs don't even need a hardware standard to go on anymore.  They just need a receiver of sorts.  The cloud server that runs the game can be whatever they want.  I suppose a company like MS can find a market as a supplier of those servers.  Devs aren't going to make their own hardware that often, they'll want to use something standardized.  Though indy devs won't be able to use a streaming model as they won't have the finances to maintain servers.  The concept makes sense for Ubisoft but not small companies, unless they can "rent" server space on a bigger company's server.

Nintendo has a reason to stick with dedicated hardware simply because this streaming idea will not fly with a portable system.  You couldn't really rely on a stable internet connection on the go like that.  Someday in the future, sure, but not in the next few years.

Though if cloud gaming became the way to do it, Nintendo can always join with their own servers at any time.  There wouldn't need to be any proprietary system.  If you had an electronic device you could run the games.  I could see someone like Nintendo trying to make a closed system but I think once an open system was established you couldn't get away with it.  All the user should need is a controller, a screen, speakers and an internet connection.  Though I could see Nintendo then pushing wacky controllers again so that people have to buy THEIR controller to play their games.

I don't want cloud gaming to be the future since that gives up any sort of consumer ownership... but I'm an old fart in the grand scheme of things.  Millennials decide this, not me, and they don't have the same concerns as me.

Luigi Dude:
Pretty much everyone behind the Xbox brand has left Microsoft by now.  Especially after Xbox One blew up in their face early on, I doubt the company wants to go through another messy hardware development.  The focus on cross-play Microsoft has been pushing makes it pretty clear to me they're planning on transitioning out of the current hardware model.

nickmitch:
It makes the most sense for MS to be on the forefront of this.  They're in a great position to transition over to that sort of model.  Don't Surface tablets already play Xbox games? and connect to XB1 controllers?  They pitch the Xbox as something that works across devices and cloud computing just increases the number of devices.  They only thing they might think to add is an "Xbox Mini" that streams the games to a TV, something that's in a small package for people who still want something closer to a traditional gaming setup.

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