Will Xbox One’s Successor And PS5 Be Consoles Or A Service?

Its been close to two years since the PS4 and Xbox One launched and since then the rise of digital gaming has shot up. Internet speeds are getting faster, Sony is now streaming older PlayStation games through its PS Now service and Microsoft is apparently improving Xbox One’s processing power using the cloud. In short, everything is slowly taking the digital form. This begs the question…will there will be another console cycle in PS5 and a successor to Xbox One and are games becoming more of a service rather than limited to a hardware box?

Speaking to GamingBolt, Producer, Zoltán Pozsonyi from Neocore Games gave a reasonable explanation regarding where console gaming could be heading in the future and why it would be nice to not be limited by hardware.

“We’re still in the early phase of the new generation (hence we’re still calling it the “new generation”), so it’s very hard to tell what the future holds for console gaming. The industry is changing faster than ever and we’re really just trying to keep up with it. There are some very interesting experiments going on, but I think it will take more than a couple of years to perfect the technology behind it,” explains Zoltán.

A few years ago a games analysts were claiming that the PS4 and Xbox One will be the last console cycle along with the constant claims of PC gaming is dead. Neither of them turned out to be true which means console manufacturers will keep on building new products in the future.

“We all remember the voices that proclaimed the downfall of consoles not too long ago, suggesting that this generation might be the last, but the current numbers don’t seem to support that theory. It’s slightly similar to our own experience – 10 years ago we were constantly warned about the inevitable decline of PC gaming, and PC gaming still looks fine to us. We think that the decline of both PC and console gaming seems unlikely at the moment, and trends are shaped by gamers and not theoreticians, so we are ready to create games on platforms we have the opportunity to work for and which fit our chosen gameplay.”

“It’d be great to reach the point where games are not limited by hardware and the periphery, but we won’t think that it will happen very soon. It might be a safe bet to say that until console manufacturers have considerable success with their products, they won’t abandon the idea of a next generation. They base their decisions on financial realities, and as we see it, the sales numbers indicate that gamers clearly love buying consoles.”

Right now it’s too early to speculate what the next generation of consoles will look like but given the sales of numbers of both the PS4 and to an extent, the Xbox One, Sony and Microsoft are probably researching their next console logistics already.