Why Haven’t Video Game Consoles Died Yet?

PC Gaming: Like consoles, the PC gaming market is as strong as it’s ever been, and while there is certainly crossover between PC gamers and console players, one market is not poised to kill the other. PC Gaming is usually divided into two main markets, casual and hardcore. “Casual” would be those who play a gamer or two on the computer, ones that don’t require hyper expensive gaming machines, titles like League of Legends or Hearthstone. The “hardcore” market will play most of their games on PC, and have high-end machines that cost far, far more than consoles, and are able to play many games at maxed out settings.

But neither of these types of players appear to be eating into the console base. Casual PC players already own a PC for school or work, and will probably still own a console on the side. Hardcore PC players could own a console as well, but even if they don’t, since PC gaming is still so expensive in many ways, cheaper, play-games-out-of-the-box consoles still hold their appeal, and these two markets co-exist relatively peacefully, despite the usual fanboy wars over platforms.

The Mobile Games Market: It is very clear the mobile games market has exploded in the last few years, but rather than replace consoles, it’s merely become its own sort of behemoth, and expanded the network of who traditionally plays games to include toddlers, housewives, the elderly, and everyone in between.

While the mobile games market has started to slowly strangle the portable handheld market, where Sony isn’t going to make another PSP, and even Nintendo is starting to get into the mobile game, mobile does not compete with actual video game consoles. For anyone who is involved in gaming, it’s well known that the scenes are completely different from one another, and consoles still produce gaming experiences that mobile simply can’t hope to replicate. Consoles give us Fallout 4. Mobile gives us Fallout Shelter. And so on. That doesn’t meant there isn’t fun to be had with mobile games, but they just do not have the scope or quality to compete with consoles on a regular basis. Though the mobile market is a money-making machine for many, it’s merely expanded the base of people who “game,” rather than eclipse the console market at all.

Game Streaming: This is part of the whole “why do we even need boxes anymore?” philosophy of why game consoles are supposedly dying. With new streaming capabilities, why do we need big clunky boxes and discs? Short answer: Because game streaming still is not up to snuff to be a reliable way to play new releases, unlike what we’ve seen with TV and movies.

This movement was driven by two main forces, OnLive, the game streaming platform which was quickly shut down and sold for parts after it debuted, and PlayStation Now, which is a cool way to play older PlayStation games (and why PS4 will never get true backward compatibility), but we still do not have the ability to effectively stream new release titles. Yes, it would be great if instead of consoles, we were simply sold a controller and every device we owned from our smart TVs to our laptops could stream every new game, but we have not arrived there yet, and it still seems to be quite a ways off.

Boxes: This is a similar category to the above, but this is when people have predicted that boxes like Apple TV and Amazon Fire would be able to kill consoles by offering their own kind of gaming experiences with many “major developers” on board. I’ll include the Ouya in here too, as that was the original box that was supposed to change everything, but we all know how that went.

Though it’s great that these boxes are supporting gaming, most of it is converted mobile titles which, as we’ve already established, are no great threat to consoles. An Apple TV box that can play phone games and maybe a few titles that could be on par with consoles is not going to have anyone throwing out their Xboxes or PlayStations at this point. It’s something the industry needs to keep an eye on, but again, it’s been no real threat to consoles so far.

Steam Machines: This is a different category of “alternative” boxes, but I read so many damn “Will Steam Machines Kill Consoles?” headlines the past few years, it probably should be on the list. I don’t think Steam Machines are a fundamentally bad idea, but with dozens of models and sky-high prices, I have never really understood the market for them. It’s like a console, in PC form, but the price is so high you might as well just buy a gaming PC.

I don’t get whether Steam Machines are supposed to appeal to PC gamers who want to play Steam games on their TV, or to console gamers who want to have a gaming PC experience in console form. I don’t really think either group was clamoring for something like this, and though perhaps Steam Machines don’t do anything terribly wrong, they are certainly not console killers either.

That’s all of the current threats, negated. And on the horizon? VR. The next great console killer!

But VR relies on powerful PCs or consoles themselves in the case of PlayStation VR. And if VR is mass adopted, it’s going to take years and years for that to happen, and from early reports, I feel like VR is going to be more of a separate “mobile gaming” type experience where it has its own category of games that don’t really replace a traditional console experience. It may be too early to tell that, and perhaps we could live in a future someday where all gaming is VR, but certainly not for a long, long while, and so VR does not feel like an immediate threat.

Consoles have competition, yes, but fundamentally, the gaming market is big enough here PCs, mobile, Steam Machines, set-top offerings and VR can all co-exist relatively peacefully without one eating all the others. And because of a thirty year history, affordability, playability and top-notch games, consoles are not, and have not been, in danger of dying out.

Source: Forbes.com