There’s a lot of buzz around next-gen and Sony’s PlayStation 4 right now, but the biggest growth area remains the world of mobile, and especially tablets. Some in the industry believe that next-gen consoles will sell less units than in previous generations as more consumers extract gaming entertainment value from mobile and tablets, and if you ask ngmoco’s Ben Cousins, that’s likely a reason why Sony went with cheaper components for PS4.
“Soon it will be like actually, I’m getting everything I need here [on tablets], do I really need to buy a console ” Cousins said in a new interview. “I think the problem with the console model and certainly with the previous generation was that it needed the ultra-hardcore, the kids, and those kind of mid-core or whatever you it call it, mainstream gamers, to a buy a console in order to make a profit because it just needed massive volume.”
“It was interesting to see PS4 clearly go for what looks like cheaper hardware than last time around, so maybe that’s a kind of defensive move against their expectation that they’re not going to have the same install base, or maybe they just want to hit profitability quicker because of Sony’s less stable financial state at the moment.”
While right now many unique indie games appear on console services first, like PlayStation Network, Cousins believes that tablets could quickly become the destination where indies make their debuts.
“I think that what you see on consoles is the platform holders are basically trying to court developers and giving them money too, which feels a bit strange. These are exactly the sort of developers that make games in their spare time through passion or whatever and they’re having to be courted and have their games basically paid for by the console platform holders, which kind of defeats the point,” Cousins added. “It would be easier for them to just open up the platform and allow you to plug your PS4 into your PC and just develop directly onto the platform and submit to an open app store. That would be much better, I think, than courting Jonathan Blow to produce a game for the platform.”
Source: GamesIndustry International