Miguel Hernandez
Writer
There has been much talk about the death of console gaming, with some saying devices like the iPad 3 can already put out impressive graphics for a tablet. I think its total crap. Sure smartphones can run games like Angry Birds, with 500 million playing it around the world as opposed to the 25 million who have played Call Of Duty, but the fact remains: consoles are still making a ton of money each year. 25 billion dollars a year for the traditional gaming business alone, more than the movie industry.
Ideas of the console being dead come from the claims of tablets and phones taking over the gaming market, but in truth their place is not to overtake the consoles, more than likely they will take the place of handheld devices such as the Vita and 3DS. The Wii U is the only announced next generation console, with the Microsoft and Playstation showing no signs of new machine, Nintendo will be free to sell unhindered in the next generation.
While it may be expensive to make a new console, with Microsoft and Sony losing 10 billion dollars since 2000, the benefit of having millions of consoles with many more games sold along with those consoles is well worth that loss. The best indicator to see if the console market is dead is to look at the market in the first place. Consumers are still buying consoles at high rates, last Black Friday shows that, I witnessed Xbox 360′s, PS3′s and Wii’s disappearing off shelves. This generation is the longest, Nintendo is launching first but I believe Microsoft and Sony will soon follow, possibly in 2013 for Microsoft. Don’t worry about the console dying, as Founder of Epic Games Tim Sweeney said, consoles are perfectly formed for the purpose of playing games, they are entirely engineered to output fast moving graphics. Their entire eco-system is competition, fun and excitement. Nothing else can compare to consoles when you want a traditional gaming experience. Wii U will sell millions when it launches and so will the other consoles because regardless of what many say, millions of people still want to play video games on the couch.