EA CCO Imagines End of Consoles

According to some commentators, consoles will soon become a relic of the past. With the rise of game streaming services and the increasing PCification of consoles, it’s not hard to see why these living rooming stalwarts may soon disappear. For those holding this view, they’ve just gained an important supporter in the form of EA’s Chief Competition Officer, Peter Moore. According to Moore, gaming consoles may soon change into an unrecognizable form.

“I’m not sure there will be consoles, as we know them anymore. Games will be accessed by streaming technology, so we don’t need hardware intermediaries in between the two. If you and I want to play ‘Battlefield 12’ against each other, we’ll just jump into a game via whatever monitor we happen to have in our homes. It’ll be on a chip, rather than in a box.”

According to Moore, the Xbox One and PS4 are also destined to be upgraded throughout their lifecycle, making them potentially the last consoles we will ever see. This isn’t hard to see as there are significant hardware upgrades rumoured for both the Xbox One and PS4. Furthermore, the work Microsoft has done with UWP suggests that the Xbox will likely die off earlier than the PS4 as Windows PC eats up the Xbox console exclusives.

Of course, the vision Moore is proposing has a number of caveats. In order to properly stream a game, there has to enough low latency internet and bandwidth available to gamers. Given the way ISPs act, especially in North America, that dream may still be many years away. Until then, wouldn’t we just call those streaming devices consoles though?