Video Game shift

[Zeke365]

Lately I have looking at something thing and it about the new move for video games. I feel like game console are a thing of the past by observation and that a lot of people have bought smartphones and tablets for their gaming needs and I just don't know what to think now. When I play my Wii U and 3DS it feels as if it as old as a radio( Part of that could be growing up to). Don't get get me wrong I love my Wii U and 3Ds it just I don't see many people have them.
I think in a lot of ways that smartphones and tablets have that fresh gaming feel like we saw with the DS. I do not know own any smartphone or tablet because I don't want to get into that addiction so I m stuck between my past and this smartphone tablet phenomenon.
I don't know what going to happen but I think either one of two things are going to happen, 1.Smartphones and tablets will kill off all game consoles or we will see another video crash like in 83 where there too much of the same on the market.

Tell me your thoughts.

[SilverToast]

To be honest, I don't think that smart phone gaming and video game consoles compete with each other.
They have different business models and markets.

Some people who are into smart phone gaming wouldn't spend money to play video games on a console. They probably play because it is just more convenient to play games on a smart phone that they will use for text and calling rather than buy a video game console just for gaming.

Any article you see that says smartphone gaming will replace video game consoles are probably just click-bait articles.

[LastLfan]

However some smart phone games are truly great like infinity blade and device 6, but they're still seperate markets

[Xeno]

Different demographics and segments. Consoles serve a purpose and compete with the PC market, which is still thriving and not going anywhere. Most smartphone and tablet games, while capable of being very advanced, are just fun little time killer games. Tables and smartphones may expand into being controllers or part of a larger gaming system if a provider like Apple or Google decide to go into that domain, but that seems unlikely due to the existing competition.

[Davidizer13]

But you don't buy a smartphone or a tablet for a specific game, like you would with a console. Consoles don't have much purpose beyond gaming (as much as they've tried to be DVD players and Netflix boxes), but you buy a smartphone because you want to browse the Internet on the go as well as being able to make calls on it. Consoles sell on their "killer apps" - exclusive games that you have to buy that console to play, things like Call of Duty, Super Smash Brothers, Final Fantasy, etc. For mobile devices, the "killer app," the reason you buy them are the things you can do with it, not the software you can buy for it. In that way, mobile is a lot more like the PC than a console, where the gaming is a side thing in relation to its intended, more common use. For that reason, as long as there are console-exclusive games, there will be consoles.

[Kilvakar]

I don't think smartphones and tablets are going to kill off console gaming any time soon. There's just too much of a difference in what they can do and the types of games they can play.

I think the biggest shift in the gaming industry right now is the move from physical disks that you can insert and play in any appropriate console to digital download and online play. It looks to me like Sony and Microsoft are trying to push this to prevent piracy, but it means more and more that you have to be connected to the internet to play, can't play without key codes and passwords, can't play the same game on a different console, etc. Nintendo doesn't seem to be moving in that direction as much (thankfully!).

[Ante Bellum]

What Kilvakar said, smartphones and tablets just can't do what consoles do, gaming wise. You can play Flappy Bird or Cut the Rope, maybe a simple RPG, with one or two fingers, but could you imagine trying to play Call of the Final Halo's Smash on an iPhone? Or, hey, would you rather give a child a smartphone or a piece of toast 2DS?
There's also the matter of exclusivity. I don't think Nintendo's going to try to move Pokémon to iOS anytime soon, and that alone is a powerhouse of a franchise. If major companies make games largely exclusive to consoles, people are going to continue buying their machines.

[Peanut]

There also have been some attempts to move some PC games (Command and Conquer comes to mind) over to the IOS and I don't think they've been very successful. I think Firaxis was considering putting future titles onto Tablets but I'm not sure if they were going to move exclusively to tablets. So, I don't think PCs and Consoles are going away. At worst I could maybe see Triple A titles becoming less prevalent simply because games like Candy Crush are making loads of money where as games like Kingdoms of Amalur and Bioshock Infinite didn't but that would be more of a shift in marketing and production then a shift in hardware. This might be the last console round as we know it but I don't think it will be because Tablets and Smartphones have killed the gaming industry but because the techonology will have advanced to the point where you no longer need to buy a box to play the latest and greatest games.

I also don't think there will be another crash like in 83. As I recall, the crash in 83 was caused by an influx of low quality games that saturated the market and killed sales (like ET). Currently, we don't see titles with the weight of a name like ET being completely terrible. At worst we've had Diablo 3 and Sim City, which were both good games that were damaged by restrictive DRM and a lack of planning. We're also at the start of a new console round so that means that we aren't getting as nearly as many new games and IPs as we would be if we were in the middle of it. This is pretty normal and has happened just about every time that a new set of consoles has been released. Industries connected to Video games are also doing pretty well. According to a few articles, Twitch maybe bought out by Google for (I think) $1 Billion. Twitch is built on the back of console and PC gaming so it would be an odd investment for Google to make if the Video Game market as a whole looked like it was going to collapse. All in all, the sky isn't falling and things will be fine.

[Ante Bellum]

Actually, that reminds me. Back a few years, some companies made iOS versions of their games. Assassin's Creed is one I seem to remember, but I'm sure there were others. I tried some demos, and let's just say that they were pretty bad. Back to only being able to use a couple points of contact to control the game, you can imagine how clunky they were.

[Davidizer13]

The closest port of a major game to a tablet I've seen would be the iOS port of X-COM: Enemy Unknown. That one works because most of the interface is turn-based and doesn't require the same immediate precision necessary for your average action shoot-em-up or platform game, and because it's unique enough that the market's not flooded with shallow freemium ripoffs of it (as is the case with, say, Call of Duty). Some indie developers have had some successes with better games, like FTL or Frozen Synapse, and Superbrothers: Swords and Sourcery EP managed to jump the other way, but again, they each had a unique experience that would be difficult to recreate by the companies that usually do the cheap cash-in type games that mobile is infamous for. Which, in my opinion, is the biggest challenge mobile gaming has in making better games: the mental jump required to pay that little bit for a better gaming experience, even for just a couple bucks, when something close enough to that can be had for "free*." Consumers willing to pay up front for them are less common, developers don't get the money they need to make a better experience, and the cycle goes on.

[LastLfan]

Case i point being 2048 vs threes, threes is a much more finished game and is a labor of love, but because 2048 is similar but free more people are willing to try it. Some people even say threes is the ripoff. I feel like ios will always have its time killer games but some games are willing to be different like plague inc, infinity blade(which was the first ios game to use unreal3) and a dark room

[nillapoet]

Judging solely by the sales numbers of the PS4 and Xbox1, I'd say consoles are going not going to be going away anytime soon.