The next generation will be the last to hit stores

Sep 24, 2012 12:44 GMT  ·  By

The coming generation of home consoles from Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft will be the last one and gamers will then get most of their gaming content from cloud-based services, according to the leading manufacturer of graphic cards in the world.

Phil Eisler, who is the general manager of the GeForce Grid Could Gaming division at Nvidia, has revealed that, “They say this is the last console, and I am certainly a believer in that. The last one is almost 10 years old now in terms of the technology. As we go through time, the good thing about cloud gaming is it’s going to get better every year.”

He added, “One of the reasons we’re investing in it is we see that there are some issues today, but they’re all solvable and they’re all moving in the right direction. Bandwidth is going up. The cost of server rooms is going down. We’re bringing latency down. The experience will just get better and better every year, to the point where I think it will become the predominant way that people play games.”

Eisler believes that Sony, one of the leading console manufacturers, understands the potential of the cloud because it has invested more than $380 million (€293 million) into the Gaikai service.

The company did not yet reveal how it would use the technology that Gaikai created, but it will probably include a number of streaming and cloud-based options on its next home console.

Nvidia has been making inroads into the tablet gaming space with its new set of Tegra chips and the company also has long-term plans for PC gaming.

Neither Sony nor Microsoft have yet announced any official plans for the next generation of home consoles.

Nintendo is launching the Wii U on November 18 in the United States, November 30 in Europe and December 8 in Japan.