Predictions about the Death of Consoles

[scotland]

Here is one more - the death of Cash.

I heard that this morning that some places, like Starbucks, want to go cashless. The news reports this as a positive thing. Not to me. I like that some of my purchases, even if its just a Big Gulp at the 7-11, is not forever linked to my consumer purchases.

[scotland]

One of the times I felt consoles might be going away was in the mid to late 1990s. basically the 5th generation.

I was gaming mostly on PCs at that time. From Doom to Myst to Mechwarrior to Star Wars, the best games seemed to be on PC. Windows PCs had overcome being business machines, and had become solid gaming machines. With the dot com boom, more people had PCs. The joystick and keyboard felt much better than a dualshock controller. You could put in cheat codes, or download all sorts of stuff like new maps or skins, off the web.

While we discuss the lack of nostalgia for the PS2, it may have helped consoles succeed alongside the PC. Now its not a choice of PC or console, but Why Not Both.

Have you ever thought consoles were going away?

[ptdebate]

Here is one more - the death of Cash.

I heard that this morning that some places, like Starbucks, want to go cashless. The news reports this as a positive thing. Not to me. I like that some of my purchases, even if its just a Big Gulp at the 7-11, is not forever linked to my consumer purchases.

I don't see any strong positives to eliminating cash, but personally I hate carrying it because it feels unsafe. I only carry small quantities of cash if I'm traveling in a country where credit card acceptance is low. Also, you can't earn points on cash purchases .

[ptdebate]

Have you ever thought consoles were going away?

The time I thought it was going away was right around the start of the 8th generation. The new consoles seemed just like underpowered PCs. There wasn't as much of a cost/benefit factor as there had been in the 6th generation, which was in some ways the best generation for console games.

Turns out, the consoles being what they were, highly standardized AMD boxes, worked in their favor. Quality titles came quickly and in a large number for the PS4, marking a significant departure from the PS3 launch. And their extremely effective marketing strategy certainly didn't hurt.

Even the Xbox One has some strengths in this regard. It runs a customized version of Windows, which I imagine makes porting from PC even easier.