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What a wacky few years we've had in the games industry! Economic uncertainty and decrepit console hardware have led to widespread stagnation and weakening sales in core games, leaving upstarts in new categories like free-to-play and mobile to steal all the headlines. What a jolly good thing it is, then, that the next-generation consoles will soon be here to save the day! PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 are mere months away, and when they show up we can hit the reset switch and do away with all this scary change. The good old days are just around the corner!Just kidding. All that stuff is well and truly dead and buried. Just look at the PlayStation 2, which ceased production in December. The 150-million PS2 empire was built on a cheap DVD player and exclusive games at the peak of their power, but neither of those scenarios is replicable in the modern day. There is no revolutionary new technology to ride like a Trojan Horse into people's living rooms, and buying up all the best third-party games would be prohibitively expensive, even for a company with a market cap like Microsoft's.
Even if it was possible to recreate the conditions the PS2 faced, the competition now is stronger than ever - particularly because it is a different kind of competition. Smartphones and tablets are building competitive game stores and becoming more powerful and more connected as well - not just to the internet, but to other devices, potentially including your TV. If your phone was powerful enough to run Call of Duty and talk to your TV, why would you need a console?
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