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Is Apple going to kill the next generation of consoles?

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Its only a matter of time before the new generation of consoles hits us, hopefully delivering a KO punch of visual clarity and online capabilities that will last for several years, before the cycle repeats itself. But that’s a traditional way of thinking, and the market for new powerhouse gaming consoles might soon be a thing of the past, all thanks to the growing market of communication devices.

In an interview with Gamesindustry, Dave Perry, the CEO for cloud gaming platform Gakai, feels that mobile devices such as Apple particularly, pose a tremendous threat to the industry. “I think the concern there is that they’re generating hardware so quickly now.”

“If you’re creating and shipping new hardware every 12 months, and during that 12 months you’re also giving pretty impressive upgrades, the features that people want, and you’re giving them those every six months and hardware every 12 months, I think the idea that you would have five to seven years on hardware refreshes is becoming a technical problem.”

Still, current consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PS3 aren’t just solely gaming platforms, as they offer some form of mulitmedia entertainment as well, far more than their smaller handheld console brethren, which could be a massive problem for that market, according to Perry.

“I think the handhelds are getting challenged very aggressively by the mobile phones. "I find myself spending a lot of money on iPhone, and if you look at a handheld today, the ones that people keep making, they still make them as a gaming machine.”

“Kids today, don’t want to carry anything that just does one thing. They carry their phone and it does everything. And so if you make single function devices, then you’ve got a problem. That’s my concern for handhelds, is this single function side of it.”

And when Perry was quizzed on the possibility of cloud gaming threatening consoles as well in the future, he responded;

“We don’t think we’re a threat to console. I think the threat to consoles is actually Apple. I know they’re adding Netflix and stuff, but they really need to be that sort of multifunction device to survive. And if you think about it, that ultimately turns them into cell phones. So I don’t think cloud gaming is their problem."

Source: Gameindustry.biz via CVG

 

Last Updated: August 10, 2011

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