Could PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X be swan song for consoles?

Image collected
The upcoming release of a ninth generation of consoles by Sony and Microsoft is defined to be a sales slam dunk with consumers seeking entertainment during pandemic confinement, but could in addition, it be their swan song as the habits of gamers change?

Both companies have been dripping out information for months about the PlayStation 5 (PS5) and the Xbox Series X to build excitement, and today have announced the consoles will hit shelves -- and living rooms -- in mid-November.

Pre-orders for the PS5 quickly maxed out at several retailers, showing many gamers are indeed raring to upgrade and establishing a sales battle just in time for the vacation season.

And it will be considered a major upgrade when it comes to hardware as the current generation of machines were released completely back 2013. Both new consoles will offer you a lot more powerful central and graphics processors, support 4K televisions, and offer ray tracing, that allows for better rendition of how light behaves. All this will all make for more fluid and vivid play.

"When one looks at the technical specifications of the brand new consoles, they are 10 times above the existing generation. We're going to have games that are more beautiful, more realistic, more immersive. Folks are going to be impressed," said Charles-Louis Planade, a gaming expert with Midcap Partners.

Sony gets the 110 million PS4 consoles it has sold in the last seven years as a gauge of success, more than double the number of its competitor the Xbox One.

"For Microsoft, the task is never to to let Sony get too far ahead, maybe even the overall game with it," Planade told AFP.

Considering the growing number of players, the analyst believes it possible they could match their previous success.

Others aren't so sure given the changes in the industry, which is already starting to move from big expensive machines to cloud gaming, where in fact the play is going on online.

"This generation may be the last physical consoles. It will likely be the last time we'll here talk of teraflops," said Audrey Leprince, co-founder of the independent game studio THE OVERALL GAME Bakers.

A teraflop refers to the capacity of a processor to calculate a trillion operations, and both Sony and Microsoft have been vaunting the speed and power of their new consoles.

Leprince said there haven't been any major innovations with game interfaces or with the games themselves.

But "the stone in the pond... may be the shift to the subscription model" which means the console makers have become a "Netflix of video gaming", she said.

The subscriptions -- Game Pass for Microsoft and PlayStation Plus for Sony "are likely to completely revolutionise the industry as was the case for films and music," said Leprince.

THE OVERALL GAME Pass already operates much such as a Netflix for video gaming by offering usage of a catalogue of titles, while PlayStation Plus offers other services that are appealing to gamers such as playing online with friends.

"The challenge for the console manufacturers is to carry onto their subscribers in order never to give an opening to challengers" such as for example Google or Amazon, said Planade.

Both web giants are betting on cloud gaming that allows them to dispense with consoles. Games can operate on a number of devices such as smartphones and tablets. Since it is the servers in the cloud that do the heavy lifting when it comes to processing, you don't have for powerful and costly consoles.

But both firms also have take a step towards cloud gaming by offering more affordable versions of their new consoles without drives. Games must be downloaded from the net or streamed, and have dedicated xCloud and PlayStation Now services.

"We're in a transition phase" said Laurent Michaud, an analyst who specialises on the video game industry, who expects consoles and cloud gaming to coexist for some time.

The "trends indicate that this will not be the last generation of consoles", he believes.

Many gamers value playing on big, high res screens, and publishers will want to exploit 8K televisions which give you a much superior experience.

"Networks, even in a few years, won't be rapid enough to transport" images for 8K screens, noted Michaud.

With "technology putting all of the manufacturers on a single level" it is the catalogue of games "which will be even more important than previously for the success of the generation."

Not by chance both Sony and Microsoft have lined up several eagerly awaited video game titles to launch with the consoles. 
Source: https://japantoday.com

Tags :

Share this news on:

Previous Story

Trending Topics

Archive