Is Console Gaming Dying?
Consoles launched the in-house gaming market.
Back in 1985, Nintendo released the Nintendo Entertainment System and it was a hit. Console gaming was the norm for years. Later in the 80’s and in the early 90’s personal computers became more frequent for their learning capabilities and versatility in all environments.
Console gaming wasn’t too hit by the PC market in the earlier days. With newer product lines like the Playstation and Xbox launching in 1994 and 2001 respectively, the time when personal computers were really launching off. Consoles got more powerful throughout the 2000’s proving what they could do games-wise compared to PCs with games like Call Of Duty 2, Splinter Cell, Forza and Half Life 2. Things started to slow down in the late 2000’s when PCs became more affordable than ever, and easier and easier to build by yourself.
We still saw great sales on the Xbox One and PS4, but they’re becoming more like PCs. The Xbox is the most like a PC in my eyes. It runs on a modified Windows 10, recently got mouse and keyboard support for some games, and has full cross-platform play with Windows on some games like Forza and Fortnite. They’re also very architecturally similar, the original Xbox One coming with an octa-core AMD Jaguar CPU, integrated graphics, and 8 GB RAM, which is split 6 GB for games and 2 GB for OS.
There are multiple reasons to own consoles over PCs and multiple reasons to own PCs over consoles. One being console optimizations, for the price it’s hard to build a PC with new parts that are on par with an Xbox One S that you can find new for $250 or used for about $150–$200. On the other hand with used parts building a PC you can make a PC for about $150–$200 that can outrun an Xbox One S.
Consoles haven’t stopped selling well in the least. The Nintendo Switch has so far sold over 35 million units, which is alot in under 2 years. The Xbox One family has sold 41 million units in 5 years, and the PS4 89 million units in the same time. What’s more important in my eyes though, is multiplayer counts. I don’t have the numbers of exact players per month, but I do have an estimate of subscribers for Xbox Gold, and Playstation Plus.
For Xbox Gold, there are reports of about 48 million subscribers in January of 2016, and 59 million in January of 2018, so I’m going to go with about 65–70 million subscribers of Xbox Live Gold as of February 2019.
As for Playstation Plus, about 34 million as of March 2018, and 36 million in December of 2018, so i’d say it’s safe to assume about 36.3–36.5 million subscribers as of February 2019.
Obviously, Xbox has a hand over Playstation when it comes to profits and users and is growing at a rate of about 500,000 new subscribers a month. Playstation is growing at a much slower rate and has a smaller multiplayer player base. While the days of couch co-op playing and split-screen playing is quite dead, consoles themselves aren’t. Consoles in the past years have more gone under a change, both in who they are marketed towards, and who uses them.
So, no.
Consoles are here to stay.
