Ubisoft CEO: Cloud gaming will replace consoles after the next generation (around 2027)
Better start saving up for that PlayStation 5, Xbox Two, or Nintendo Swatch (that last follow-up name idea is a freebie, by the way). That generation of consoles might be the last one ever, according to Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot. After that, he predicts cheap local boxes could provide easier access to ever-evolving high-end gaming streamed to the masses from cloud-based servers.
"I think we will see another generation, but there is a good chance that step-by-step we will see less and less hardware," Guillemot said in a recent interview with Variety. "With time, I think streaming will become more accessible to many players and make it not necessary to have big hardware at home. There will be one more console generation and then after that, we will be streaming, all of us."
Guillemot has a history of making grandiose predictions for the direction of the gaming market. In 2007, he predicted gaming would be "twice as big as music" by 2011. And he was right, by the way: in the US market, at least, games were a $16+ billion industry in 2011, compared to about $7 billion in revenues for the music industry in the same year.
Ubisoft CEO: Cloud gaming will replace consoles after the next generation Shift to games running on remote servers could cause big changes in the industry. |