Consoles are relics. While we of the gaming press might shiver and flap about the latest news on the next generation of TV-feeding boxes, gaming itself is passing by. The issue is that gaming can happen anywhere. Computers, sure, but also there’s this host of mobile platforms like phones and tablets that have sneaked in during the night and robbed a chunk of the market directly from the pantry of the big consoles. The games being made beyond the console walled garden are catching on with a whole new generation of gamers who don’t need and couldn’t afford to drop hundreds on a electronic altar, nor would they consider paying the better part of a hundred human dollars for a game. How can consoles deal with being usurped by the very flow of information around us? GamesIndustry has the story.
Some of the biggest games of our generation are also the smallest. Minecraft, Angry Birds, Bejeweled, Peggle, League of Legends, anything Facebook. These games are raking in millions, if not billions, and they don’t need console horsepower to do it.
So if it costs hundreds of millions to make games for consoles, but only a few hundred grand to make them outside the console garden, and the payoff is about the same, well… Consoles have a problem, don’t they?