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Comment by WestCoastJustin | Hacker News Reader

After letting the article percolate for a bit. Just think about what the industry will look like in 10 years.

- internet game distribution is going to change content delivery just like it changed VHF/DVD rental stores. The game stores will be gone, walmart will not display/sell them.

- those who can provide a pipeline like netflix for games are going to destroy the current establishment. It will likely be worse than what netflix did, simply because the development of games is easy compared it TV/Movies.

- the idea of xbox, playstation, wii might be gone. There might be a generic console with an online pipeline connected to it. Or maybe you will have a xbox, playstation, wii portal that will connect you to the pipeline just like what netflix does for movies?

Maybe I'm just talking out my ass but it looks like things are going to massively change.

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The dawning horror for the console vendors is that the change is already happening around them and on every iPhone, iPad, Samsung, Android, etc device. These already have digital-only distribution. These already have very high-quality GPU's that push almost as many triangles as an xBox 360 or PS3, and are on a faster product-iteration-cycle. Some of these - iPad3 and Samsung Galaxy Tab's - already have higher-resolution screens than your 60" HDTV and many people are using them more hours per day and spending more dollars per device than they ever did on consoles. Yikes, if I were still in the console biz, I would push like hell to move a little faster than updating hardware every 7-8 years and doing poorly with software.

well, xbox 360 kinda had digital distribution since it's launch.

You could argue a very similar point by replacing mobile devices with PC in your argument. But I console vendors don't look in horror in the PC market.

You are also missing a fairly big aspect of a game console, the games themselves.

many people are using them more hours per day and spending more dollars per device than they ever did on consoles

Do you have a reference for this? Sounds interesting, but I haven't seen the comparison before.

Sounds like a SteamBox. http://au.ign.com/articles/2013/01/18/the-promise-and-potent...

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