The death of consoles is only a decade or so away, according to Crytek’s boss Cevat Yerli.
Speaking to Golem, he said (translated):
The console will displace the PC, you can hear again and again. On the contrary: I suspect that the next-generation home console will be the last one. Tablet PCs hit the market and changed the gaming lifestyle, consumers play shorter and faster. Of course there are still hardcore gamers who sit for only an hour to install and then play for eight hours. But these consumers are becoming the minority. Today’s gamers buy a game for 99 cents, download it and play it for 15 to 20 minutes per day over a period of two months – and then they move on. Because the market changes, the panel quality is not so much in demand. The next generation of consoles will come under massive pressure from smartphones, tablets and browser games.
He then said that they had no plans to work on either the Wii U or Vita, saying:
The PlayStation Vita is currently too uncertain for us as a platform. Technically, I find the Vita very appealing, and have fun with it – no question. From a business perspective it is a bit too late.
Yerli also didn’t share our view that the cloud could be the future:
Hardcore gamers don’t want [streamed games], but rather the hardware that they like – namely hardcore PC and consoles.
They want no compression artefacts, latency and the like. If one is streaming a game like Crysis, it does not look good. It’s like watching Avatar in low-res on YouTube.
Of course, he doesn’t seem to be taking into consideration that by the end of the next generation of consoles, average internet speeds are set to be far higher, meaning that cloud gaming could be truly indistinguishable from local play.
[Via]
