Is The PS5 The Last Console?

15.04.2024 - 15:49 / fortressofsolitude.co.za / Nintendo

Amidst the rapid evolution of gaming technology, speculation abounds: could the PlayStation 5 herald the end of traditional consoles as we know them? Some believe that the PS5 and the Xbox Series X might actually be the last home consoles.

It may sound hard to believe, but video game consoles have been around for about 50 years now, and they have been in a constant state of evolution for all those years. In every sense, these consoles have changed and adapted to their respective generation of gamers. Of course, so are the games that were made for them.

If there’s one thing certain if you pay close attention to the way the game industry has always been changing, it is that it’s nearly impossible to find something that stands still. By this, we are not just talking about the hardware but also the software part of the gaming industry. Of course, we have to consider that video games are not unique to video game consoles. There are many ways to play video games other than on a gaming console, and these alternative ways to play have always been a threat to the video game console market.

In recent years, we’ve seen how this threat has taken over the market, even pushing out some major industry names from certain markets. Now, why are we even talking about the threats to the video game market? Well, it’s because now, for the first time ever, they do pose a real, tangible threat to the way we’ve been gaming for decades. And we are here to talk about this and how the days of traditional gaming consoles could be numbered already. So, let’s start by going a bit over some of these threats and how they affect our beloved traditional gaming consoles.

So, to see what could qualify as a threat to consoles, we have to define what we mean by traditional gaming consoles first. So, for all purposes remaining in this article, we will define a gaming console as a device especially made to run video games developed especially for said device, and it needs to be connected to a TV or monitor, as well as an energy outlet. Sure, it can be a quite long definition, but making sure we’re on the same page is quite important for this.

So, going by that definition, you can see one thing already, and it’s that this time, it’s a much smaller market than it’s been in years. You only really get two possible console options: the Xbox Series or the PS5. Yes, we know the most popular current one we have not mentioned yet, and there’s a good reason for that.

The Nintendo Switch is surprisingly one of the most intelligent video game consoles we’ve ever seen. Yes, it’s very underpowered compared to what Sony’s PS5 and Microsoft’s Xbox consoles have to offer, and sure, it may not be on the same level. But it knows that, and it doesn’t even try to