14 DAY TRIAL // Many people consider game consoles to be the future of gaming, but there are quite a few reasons to believe the opposite. Even more, there are some people who think that this generation of consoles is the last one and they will cease to exist as we know them. Of course that anybody could say something like that just for the sake of controversy, but what we're talking about now wasn't said by "anybody", but Wild Tangent founder, Alex St John.
You are probably already aware that Alex St John is a well-known supporter of PC systems and, what's even better when it comes to him - he has the arguments to prove one right: he did that during the Wedbush Morgan Securities annual Management Access Conference, as reported by website gamesindustry.
"The thing that's interesting is, a console is not a game enabling device - it's a game blocking device, unless you've paid for it. So, the principle value of a console is as DRM technology to solve the piracy problem," St John said.
He also commented that, at the moment, consoles don't have better graphics anymore - and any person who owns a PC and a gaming console can agree with that. Of course, this doesn't mean that automatically all the PC games have better graphics, but they do have the possibility to achieve it. But that is not the main advantage of the PC systems over the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii consoles, according to St John. He sees the future of gaming as a community-based one, recognizing World of Warcraft and Pogo as good examples: two games that can't be stolen or pirated (since "you can't steal a community") and, therefore, two games generating huge amounts of income.
"I think the business model in ten years - and probably going to happen very quickly - there are going to be two left in gaming. It's going to be microtransaction based... And, again, because I'm a mathematician and an engineer, microcurrency-based economies are just the most efficient way to maximize revenue... They work really well. And second is advertising, because advertising is a great alternative payment type for kids who don't have access to online currency and are huge game players. So, if you don't have any way to take money from kids, then the only way to get kids to play is by advertisers marketing to them."
So the guy has a point, indeed. This doesn't mean death of consoles. This probably means that consoles will have to adapt sooner rather than later if they want to survive. And if we check all the DLC and extra bits console owners have to pay in order to expand their gaming experience, they have already started to do so. It just remains to see whether they are fast enough.