The newest console offerings are not too far away as Microsoft and Sony begin to gear up for the holiday season - and with those the next gen consoles. The question around what platforms could survive and how viable they are has been around since consoles were first introduced, but we’re seeing the gap closing in terms of what hardware can offer, but also in the interests of gamers as changes continue to arise. We’ll take a look at some of the reasons why both non-mobile and mobile gaming could cause our consoles to start taking a back seat.

Esports - This is definitely something that is to be considered going forward as esports is seeing an enormous boom - whilst there are console games that are a part of the esports market, this is typically aimed around the PC gamer with titles such as League of Legends and DoTA. With this increased interest, many who were staunch supporters for console gaming may begin to transition toward a PC as they look to get involved in some of these bigger games.

Hardware - We’re seeing a huge closing of the gap here - before, dedicated gaming PC’s were very much ahead in this area as the console components were typically either more expensive or there were struggles with form factor when considering overheating issues that plagued earlier consoles. Now, for the most part, the hardware you find in consoles very much resembles that of which would go in a low-mid tier gaming PC - the next gen consoles are moving more toward 4K 60fps gaming, but this is still a step behind the same on PC as higher fps values still remain - not such a big difference for many, but definitely important in competitive gaming.

Accessibility - This may be the biggest factor of all, and the area in which we’re seeing mobile gaming dominate. Over the past two decades, Nintendo has very much held the handheld gaming market as innovations in platforms such as the Gameboy led the way, but that’s quickly changing. Whilst the Nintendo Switch has performed extremely well, the mobile gaming market is beginning to take over and is expected to lead the gaming industry in general over the next few years. Accessibility is the big reason behind this - we all have our smartphones, the entry to the games we play is very open as there are many free options and discounts as the best bonus codes and discount coupons are everywhere on the internet - it also has to be mentioned that as hardware inside our mobile devices continues to grow in strength, the games available on them will continue to get better.

Figures on consoles are still looking good, and both Sony and Microsoft will surely be prepared for strong releases in the holiday season - Sony had fixed the pricing issues for the PS4 so did turn to making gains on each console sale where Microsoft were still struggling and hopefully will see that change, but the forecast numbers have reduced from where they were the year before. A lot of attention from gamers, developers and publishers especially will be put on to how these next gen consoles perform - the current systems have had a cycle of seven years, if innovations can’t be made on console performance in a similar timeline, the next decade of gaming could look very different.