Five years ago, video game fans and analysts alike would have told you the next console generation would be the last. Many suspected the next round of consoles would fall flat, a prediction which gained some credence after the Wii U took a nosedive right out of the gate. The market was shifting to mobile and PC gaming, the generation had lasted years longer than it should have and nothing could possibly impress the skeptical enthusiasts. Then the PlayStation 4 launched.
Looking back at the immediate explosive success of both the PS4 and the Xbox One, it’s hard to imagine that anyone ever doubted console gaming was here to stay, but now everyone is singing a different tune. Speaking with IGN at the Develop Conference in England, Mark Cerny, lead architect of the PS4, admitted that he was exhausted with the back-and-forth discussion surrounding the death of console gaming.
“What’s amazing to me is how quickly this has changed, right?” said Cerny. “You go back two years ago, consoles are dead and Sony’s a dinosaur to be releasing one, if you talk to certain analysts. You go back one year and ‘Wow, it’s so exciting to have a new console!’ But now you’re going, ‘but they’re dead’ again. So…”
So maybe everyone needs to take video game console one generation at a time. At this point, we’re approaching 20 million consoles sales from the latest generation, many of which have been sold to those who were harbingers of the console apocalypse just a few short years ago. It looks like console gaming is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
