Since the invention of the first console in the early 70’s, consoles have stuck around and have become an integral part of most peoples’ lives.
Consoles are continually advancing and becoming more and more popular among the masses. With the immense success of the PS5 and Xbox Series X, it seems like consoles are here to stay forever.
However, Final Fantasy XVI producer Naoki Yoshida seems to think otherwise. In an interview with the Financial Times, Yoshida made some interesting remarks about the future of consoles.
“Once 5G becomes the global standard, there will definitely come a time when we can transfer images to any device,” said the Square Enix executive.
He further explained, “Players can enjoy a high-quality gaming experience on any device by not being tied to a gaming hardware or TV monitor. We’re definitely heading in that direction, and I don’t think coronavirus will slow this shift.”
Cloud Gaming services like Google’s Stadia have been around for quite a while, but they’ve yet to catch any significant steam because of the fact that smooth Cloud Gaming requires a super fast internet connection.
This is where 5G comes in. 5G reaches gigabit speeds easily, which is more than enough to have a flawless experience with Cloud Gaming. If 5G becomes the norm, it wouldn’t be stupid to think that Cloud Gaming may overtake home consoles in the future.
Yoshida brought up another interesting point during this interview. “With home consoles, you need to sit in front of the television…and turn on the power and wait for the hardware to start up, so it was a time-consuming entertainment.” said Yoshida.
If you don’t know already, with Cloud Gaming services like Google Stadia, you can stream games directly on your phone. You can play AAA titles like The Witcher 3 and GTA V straight on your mobile device, but only if you have an extremely fast internet connection.
If you had access to 5G and unlimited bandwidth, you’d be able to easily use these Cloud Gaming services on your phone. As compared to using consoles or a PC, gaming on your phone is much more convenient and simple.
Being able to just pick up your phone and fire up a AAA title seems like a whole lot of fun.
What Yoshida is saying must have some truth in it as massive corporations like Microsoft and Amazon are pouring in millions of dollars to develop their Cloud Gaming services, even though they’re not very popular yet. This means that they predict that Cloud Gaming will blow up in the relative future.
All of that said, it’ll take quite a long time for consoles to fade out of popularity; if that ever even happens.
The PlayStation 5 was the fastest selling video game hardware platform off all time in the US, so obviously consoles aren’t going away any time soon.
But if 5G becomes the global standard, Cloud Gaming services may end up becoming the future of the gaming industry.