The Consoles that wouldn’t die

Remember when the current console generation was being launched, and there was a widespread idea, also shared by me, that the PS4, Xbox One and Wii U were going to fail in the face of tablets, mobile phones, indie games, and all? That the new generation was a “prayer to stop time“?

And many articles on “Why consoles gaming is dying“, “Consoles are dying“?

And yet here we are. Ars Technica has an article comparing sales across console generations, with the current generation doing much better than the previous one, on a quarter-to-quarter basis.

Console sales

I suspect that the story was that many critics, myself included, were personally jaded by console hardware, and much more interested in indie and experimental games than in the latest military shooter. But our sentiments just weren’t widely that shared. People still want new games on new hardware, even if they only look marginally better than those of the previous generation. The PS4 is slick, and the share button is worth paying for. You also buy a new console because that is where the games are going to be.

Also, cloud gaming never took off (and I suspect it won’t due to latency issues).

Yes, you can be wrong.

PS. And Super Mario Maker is also an exhilarating experience.

3 thoughts on “The Consoles that wouldn’t die”

  1. Oh, the console (and even moreso handheld) death stories go back further than that. Over a decade ago the buzzword was ‘convergence’, supposedly an inexorable process making dedicated devices obsolete. (Of course the growth of mobile ‘phone gaming actually did come to pass, but then the new buzzword was ‘casual’.)

  2. I’d love to see that graph depicting PC sales too. “Death of PC” has been hailed way more times than console :-)

    Maybe its just generally, that the market size is increasing with every new kid born onto the planet. Gaming is still rolling out into the older generation. E.g. my mother wouldnt touch games with a cattle prod – me I grew up with it. So half the world is still open space for market expansion.

  3. @Robert Ah yes. In a way the Xbox One was marketed as the ultimate convergence device, and the PS2 was also sold in part on its DVD player.

    @Thomas PCs are dead! But it’s an interesting point about geographical and demographical reach. Would love to see an analysis of that.

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