There May Be No Consoles in the Future, EA Exec Says


Consoles, as they are traditionally known, may be going the way of the Dodo bird. That’s according to Electronic Arts Chief Competition Officer Peter Moore, who said in a new interview that the rise of streaming may signal an end to consoles as we know them.

“I’m not sure there will be consoles, as we know them anymore,” Moore told The Daily Orange. “Games will be accessed by streaming technology, so we don’t need hardware intermediaries in between the two.”

He added: “If you and I want to play Battlefield 12 against each other, we’ll just jump into a game via whatever monitor we happen to have in our homes. It’ll be on a chip, rather than in a box.”

The Daily Orange reported the Moore said the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One are “well set up to advance as technology does.” This point is particularly interesting, given that rumors have suggested that Sony or Microsoft, or both, might be planning to release incremental updates to their latest consoles.

Bear in mind that what Moore is talking about sounds like its something of a far-future prediction. He is not alone, however, in believing that consoles as we know them won’t be around forever.

In 2013, Tekken boss Katsuhiro Harada offered this take, “When there’s the PS5, it will probably be just a controller and a monitor. Then, the thing that will be left is the name of the service.”

More recently, gaming veteran Lorne Lanning said that PlayStation boss Shuhei Yoshida told him that Sony itself was unsure if there would ever be a PlayStation 5.

Sony is rumored to be working on a new, more powerful version of the PS4 codenamed Neo. For its part, Microsoft has said Xbox fans should not expect an Xbox One and a half. A recent report claimed Microsoft might announce a new Xbox device at E3, though it remains to be seen what this will be.

What role do you think consoles will play in gaming’s future? Let us know in the comments below!