100% NEXT-GEN DIGITAL CONSOLES
As technology and the medium of video games have both evolved, we’ve begun to see a clear shift in the way games are sold and consumed. We’ve moved from cartridges, to disks, to now, when a large portion of the market prefers to purchase its games digitally. Sony tried their hand at going completely digital with the PSP Go, and it’s fair to say that that didn’t work out too well, but in recent years, purchasing games digitally has become much, much more common than it used to be a decade ago. But while it’s possible that there might come a time when consoles go fully digital, do we really see it happening as early as the next generation, with the PS5 and the next Xbox?
No, it doesn’t seem likely. A massive share of the market still buys its games physically, and if any of the console manufacturers made the decision to go fully digital so soon, more than anything else, they’d be alienating large parts of their audiences who either just don’t want to make digital purchases, or simply don’t have the means to do so on a regular basis. So no, it’s not likely that next-gen consoles will be 100% digital. The generation after that? That’s slightly more plausible, but I still wouldn’t be too sure.
