IGN - Trip Hawkins tells IGN that games machines are becoming “a hobby business”.
Trip Hawkins believes that console gaming is destined to be niche, a wonkish hobbyist’s enthusiasm, a sliver of the great global games market. Why is this important? Because of who Trip is, or at least, who he was.
I kind of agree with this. As much as I like consoles the casual market is getting too big and now those kind of gamers can get that light gaming experience basically everywhere which would reduce the total hardware sales of consoles.
Pity then that EA and the like didn't build for niche markets. Insisted on taking them mainstream.
Yeah, eventually mobile/PC gaming will takeover the gaming industry for simple fact that everyone has a smartphone/PC these days. It's basic logic. The PC market is bigger than that of the PS3/360/Wii/Vita/DS/3DS combined. Same deal with the smartphone market.
Really the only thing holding PC gaming back is the misconception that you need to spend thousands of dollars to play your games on high settings.
Publishers will always want to cater to the biggest markets out there...hence adding multiplayer to Dead Space 3/Mass Effect 3 in order to appeal to more consumers. The proof is in the pudding.
.....it`s not like there is anything wrong with that.
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't a game from that so called niche currently hold the record for most sucessful entertainment launch? When you think of all the mainstream movies that come out each year including huge names, that doesn't sound very niche to me.