The Reign Of Consoles Is Coming To An End – Nexon Boss

Over the course of the year we’ve heard plenty of people saying that console gaming is dying or that this will be the last generation of consoles. They might be right but from where I’m standing I don’t see it. Especially since these self-same people suggest consoles will be usurped by mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablets.

They are two independent entities with an overlap in users but neither takes users away from the other. Not yet anyway. With the advent of high-powered gaming tablets such as Razer’s Switchblade and Nvidia’s concept gaming tablet that might change but such tablets are hellishly expensive and by the time they’re affordable on the level of consoles we might have a new console generation bearing down upon us.

Of course my predicted timeline may be a little bit off.

Nexon CFO Owen Mahoney says the international publisher isn’t interested in consoles because they’ll be irrelevant in a few years.

Speaking at GamesBeat 2013, as reported by GamesIndustry, the executive said that although next-gen hardware may revitalise the console market it’ll only be a temporary boost.

“My sense is that consoles will do a lot in the first one or two years, but we’re not thinking much about consoles,” he said.

“Today the difference between those two is largely defined by the difference between a MacBook Air and an iPad. They’re very close, very similar devices. When you project out merely two years, they’re pretty much the same device,” he said.

“If a console is sitting on your hip, you don’t really need a device that’s attached to your TV set 100 percent of the time. When I look at my kids play, most of the time they’re playing off a laptop or a tablet in front of a dead 60-inch screen with a couple consoles attached. They’re just not interested.”

Sure the difference in power is narrowing but the price of mobile devices with equivalent power is exponentially greater the closer they get to consoles. There’s also the issues of battery life, cooling issues, memory capacity and other such features.

Tablets are capable of some amazing things in terms of gaming but I just can’t see them overthrowing consoles anytime soon. It’s like suggesting tablets will overthrow smartphones. They exist removed from each other.

Name: A-G Sonday
Location: Cape Town
Position: Editor, Reviews

A-G has published 3673 posts. Read all of A-G's posts.

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