James Lynch 
We recently published an article about Ubisoft boss Yves Guillemots assertion that the next generation of traditional consoles will be the last, as the industry moves away from physical copies of games and towards streaming. Well now, according to a new report obtained by ccftech, there is further evidence to suggest that this could be the case, even pencilling 2022 as the year that this may be the case.
The report claims that physical sales are dropping by 10 points year on year, and a move to an entirely digital market is almost an inevitability. One of the knock on effects of this move is that margins for publishers would be much higher, and the advent of more comprehensive subscription services and streaming companies would mix this revenue significantly.
The authors of the report, Michael J. Olson and Yung Kim, had this to say on the results:
“Our expectation is that major publishers will increasingly test and commercially develop streaming game offerings over the next 3-5 years. Streaming games from the cloud, without need for dedicated hardware or massive downloads, would materially grow the TAM (total addressable market) for high end console-style titles. Specifically, today the primary market for major video game publishers is tied to consumers that own an Xbox One, PS4 or gaming PC, which currently has an installed base of 150-250M (depending on how gaming PC is defined) and a minimum price point of $199 (Xbox One S), which creates a barrier to entry for many would-be gamers. With ongoing datacenter build-outs and improving internet speeds, streaming games from the cloud could be a commercial reality within 2-3 years.”
So a new dawn for the world of video games is very much on the horizon, and the major players in the industry must respond accordingly. It looks like Microsoft have made the first significant preparations so we shall see who is following suit in the coming months.
