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Michael Pachter Once Again Predicts the End of Dedicated Gaming Consoles: Future of Gaming is with Hubs and Screens

Simply mentioning his name is likely to elicit groans from gaming enthusiasts of any platform, but hate him or love him, Michael Pacther remains an influential analyst and commentator in the video game sphere. This time, the famed analyst has revised one of his most frequently made predictions; the death of console gaming. 

Since at least 2013, Pachter has (erroneously) predicted the end of console gaming as we know it. Initially, Pachter promulgated that the seventh generation of consoles (Xbox 360, Playstation 3, Wii) would be the last. The runaway success of the Playstation 4 certainly upends that assertion. This year however, Pachter has modified his outlook: he still believes that consoles will be no more (he predicts 2018 will be the year of the paradigm shift), but only in terms of the form factor we have all grown accustomed to. 

Pachter’s latest prediction echoes the sentiment of former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, who when asked about tablets vs PCs, argued that PC would always exist and that tablets are just PCs in a different form factor. Pachter similarly sees a future where traditional home gaming will still exist, but in a new form factor. What does Pacther believe will take the place of consoles? Mobile, of course. 

Pachter believes that the future of gaming rests with a setup that is very familiar to anyone that already pairs their smartphone or tablet with their television or media player. While giving a presentation at GamesBeat 2015, Pachter expressed that, 

[…] we all have a monitor in our home. We all have a CPU and a GPU. It might be a tablet. It might be a laptop. It’s going to be the iPad Pro. It’ll be the Surface Pro. So once we have that, all we’re really missing is the controller and then wait for all that stuff to talk. And the way that stuff will talk is Chromecast. The Apple TV. So it is very easy to replicate the console experience with a CPU and a  GPU combo that is pretty damned competitive with current generation consoles. We won’t be there with the iPhone 6s, but we’ll be there with the iPhone 9.

The missing controller that Pachter seeks already exists, be it the Amazon Fire TV Game Controller or the ever venerable Moga. Indeed, for the past few years, hardcore mobile gamers (yes, there is such a thing) have enjoyed the mobile platform as a serious competitor to traditional gaming, in part thanks to HID controllers such as the Moga. 

Truly, the only missing component at this point is a standardized controller, be it a single controller for Android and a single controller for iOS, or a single controller for mobile in general. Once that day comes, the future that Pachter sees may no longer be a vision of the near future, but our reality. Sound off in the comments below. Do you agree with Pachter or is this yet another instance of an ill-timed death knell for console gaming?

Additional Source: GamenGuide

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