Noobenheim News for Nerds There’s just something about the feeling of a controller in my hand to really make me appreciate gaming. I understand the argument that PC is a better gaming experience, that having a mouse in one hand and WASD in the other gives you better control and accuracy, and how financially superior it is having cheaper upgrades and cheaper games due to Steam. I get that. But there’s still something about that controller in my hand and navigating that UI specifically dedicated to gaming that just cheers me up.
Is the age of console gaming soon to be dead?
Phil Spencer, head of Microsoft’s Xbox division, said he would like to see console gaming embrace the mobile platform business model. Now that Xbox One runs Windows 10, Microsoft is urging game developers to produce games on their Universal Windows Platform so that the game can be accessible on both PC and console. If the games are linked universally to your Microsoft account, you’d be able to bring games from old devices to new devices just as you can redownload apps when you get a new phone. Spencer also stated how he wants to see new hardware innovations occur much like mobile phones with shorter gaps between releases. This seems to already be happening with the release of the Xbox One S and the soon-to-be-released Project Scorpio.
In an interview with Engadget, Microsoft’s head of Xbox games marketing Aaron Greenberg detailed how the new versions of the consoles can still link with past iterations.
For us, we think the future is without console generations; we think that the ability to build a library, a community, to be able to iterate with the hardware — we’re making a pretty big bet on that with Project Scorpio. We’re basically saying, “This isn’t a new generation; everything you have continues forward and it works.” We think of this as a family of devices.Aaron Greenberg
Twitch chief executive Emmett Shear agrees that the entire console generation idea is archaic.
What about the sales of consoles?
Consoles sales have drastically declined since the previous generation. Nintendo’s Wii console was the most successful of last generation and is by far the least successful this generation, having dropped 87.4% in sales. It’s not alone: Microsoft’s Xbox sales are 76.2% lower and Sony’s Playstation sales are 48.1% lower.
