Jaffe Leaves Console Development, Says Consoles Will Die Soon

I love David Jaffe. David Jaffe loves everything he’s involved in. He thinks God of War is the best action game ever. He thinks Twisted Metal is the best vehicle combat game ever. He thinks Calling All Cars is… well, exceptions prove rules. The point is, Jaffe loves his work and for that, I love Jaffe.

But enough of the painfully unreciprocal bromance, let’s read about what Jaffe thinks of something he’s not involved with anymore: consoles. David left Sony’s feathery underarm mere months ago and he’s already predicting the end to their only profitable arm of business.

Look, consoles are going away. I think in 10 years – probably sooner, but 10 years is always the safe thing to say so you don’t sound like an idiot – but here’s what I’ll say: I’ll go on the record and say that the next generation of hardware will be the last consoles. And they should be

Now, before we all start roaring and wailing about what an outspoken idiot David Jaffe is because he holds the opinion that something we really like quite a lot is going to die soon, let’s take a moment to consider how much things have changed in this business in ten years and what the next ten years might bring.

Can you imagine if, in 2002, someone had told you that people in general would spend more time playing games on a website than they spend playing games on consoles that plug into a television. And yet, Facebook gaming is by far a bigger time sink than consoles, for far more people. I remember people being roundly ridiculed for suggesting that most games would be bought and downloaded rather than purchased in shops and I’m fairly sure that wasn’t even ten years ago. Ten years ago, YouTube wasn’t even an idea.

Jaffe isn’t predicting the demise of console makers, or gaming. He’s saying that what those makers sell us and the way we obtain those games is likely to change. Sony would become content providers, streaming games to us that we play on their space age foldaway television screens, or whatever they’ll be making in ten years time.

The next ten years are likely to be driven by soaring HD development costs, soaring mobile gaming market share and profitability (unless that bubble pops, and then we’re all screwed) and potentially great leaps forward in broadband and streaming technology. Jaffe might not be wrong, you know.

Source: GI.biz

42 Comments

  1. One Calling All Cars for Android coming right up! :-P

    Until high speed internet is standard in most households globally, consoles the way we know them will most likely have a place to call home. I’ll take locally rendered games over streamed ones any day.

    • One more home console gen in the format we know and love, after that I personally can’t see it… but SEGA assumed consoles would be reduced to a chip in a DVD player (or the like) and we’re still here…. so who knows.

      • I guess it all depends on how long and successful the next gen turns out. Could be it wont be replaced for all we know. But as long as they make money….

        I personally dread the future of digital only, as with stuff like game streaming you don’t even own the megabytes on your harddrive. And if the internet goes out… or the PSN for that matter due to maintanence or whatever. SCEE will have full control over when we can play. *shudders*

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