While one former PlayStation boss suggests we’re nearing “a point where the console becomes irrelevant,” one analyst believes the focus for hardware going forward will be for it to become “more open,” even if one of the big three games companies might lag behind the rest in making that jump.
In a recent Eurogamer interview with the former president and CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment America, Shawn Layden, it was suggested that this so-called irrelevance might not arrive in the next console generation, but the one after that. GamesRadar+ ran this idea of it not mattering what hardware or content a console has access to by Mat Piscatella, executive director of games at market research company Circana, who believes that “perhaps in an ideal world that would be the case.”
Piscatella continues: “I think you’re going to see more and more flexibility over time.” He gives the hypothetical example of Xbox two generations on, “in 2034 or whatever it is,” and asks: “Is that device going to be portable? Hybrid? Is it going to be able to remote play other types of games? Is it going to be able to cloud stream stuff from a PlayStation service? I mean, who knows, right? Like, probably? It’s possible. Is it not going to matter at all? Probably not. I think it will matter, especially for things like, you know, the operating system driving it, if it’s a Windows type device, is it a Linux. SteamOS is getting into the mix now in a big way, moving towards third-party devices.”
Despite this predicted flexibility, he doesn’t think “it’s going to be that easy,” as he suggests that “people are going to try to protect their IP and their revenue streams by putting some limitations and guardrails on it,” but overall, “I think it will become more open.” Not everyone will jump on this idea as quickly as others, though, he speculates: “Nintendo will be the absolute last people to do that, to go that way. For them, you’re probably looking 2040 something, if not later. But, you know, crystal ball stuff, and that crystal ball is real hazy.”
For the time being, this is all prediction, but Piscatella certainly knows his stuff when it comes to the games industry. With all of this thought to happen in two console generations to come, though, we still have a while to wait.