Within the latest episode of his Youtube show, Pachter Factor, the Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter waxed poetic about several different topics, including the future of gaming consoles as well as where plans such as Microsoft’s Play Anywhere fit into the next steps. Perhaps surprisingly, Pachter believes that disk drives won’t be going away at any point. Perhaps not for the reasons a consumer would think of though.
Even with the constant growth of digital distribution and its growing acceptance by consumers, next-gen consoles (the PS5 and next Xbox) won’t be losing the disk drive because to cut that out would mean cutting retailers out – and the last thing Microsoft, Sony or Nintendo want to do is burn their retail partners who they need to get consoles in homes in the first place. As an aside to this, he also believes about half of the user base value the concept of used games too much to let physical die.
While Pachter doesn’t believe consoles are going away or that anyone is going to duck out of the race, he does believe that Xbox Play Anywhere is the building blocks to Microsoft’s next move, where that service and the Xbox as a physical system will switch in importance for the company. Predicting that devices will continue to become smarter, PC playable games will be the focal point. “I don’t think that they’ll care if you play it on a PC or a tablet or an Amazon Echo device.” Said Pachter.
