Let's not make straw man arguments. Also, the era of a single console for platform holder is probably over. They aren't making a 700$ PS6 and telling people to get two jobs to afford it. An affordable option will be there, with lower specs.
Why bother with a new console at all then ?
To me it's pretty clear that generations are over. At some point there will be no investment to try and migrate users. PS5 will probably get games for as long as developers want, and Sony will not pressure them to make PS6 exclusives.
I'm not sure this is how the math works in this case. When it comes to gaming, data centers generate massive waste for operators. Not only do you have to be provisioned for your peak demand, you have to be provisioned in each region individually. You can't rely on geo redundancy like you could for things that don't care about latency. Your US data center won't run games for European users when Americans are fast asleep. So even if you amortize cloud hardware over multiple users over time, you also amortize console development cost over multiple buyers over time. There is a fixed price of "adding" new account to your cloud service and as an operator you're not going to just swallow it - you'll push it to enduser. So thinking that this cost somehow dissipates and cloud is zero cost for gamers whereas console isn't is bogus.
I don't understand your argument at all then, and you haven't given a clear answer. You've argued that cloud won't happen because local consoles will always be preferable, but now you say local consoles will plateau. So you think gamers won't look at their 2030 tier graphics on their console, and the 2040 era graphics available on game streaming, and want the latter?
Not sure where console development cost comes into it. I'm saying the hardware costs to manufacture a machine capable of serving a gamer's needs will be amortised across users, so more hardware can be used, enabling generational advancements in games beyond the possibility of local machines. That is, $3000 of hardware for one user won't fly, but $3000 for 5 users will.
Who said its zero cost to the end user?? It'll be a choice between a $1200 up front cost or $30 a month for 5 years at $1800. In 2060 it'll be $3000 for a console or $55 a month.
In a nutshell, my argument is:
So the end of home gaming advances and gamers are going to accept the hardware limits and neither care for expensive new hardware that's clearly better nor expensive streamed gaming that's better.
We have 300€ graphics cards that have been stagnant for many years, phones, cameras, TV's, CPU's offering minor upgrades every year, and still people buy them anyways. This same stagnation will and is hitting gaming too, and there isn't much that we can do about it.
Except there is, because we can move to a different model.
Your examples have basically hit 'good enough' and don't necessarily need to be better as that contributes very little improvement to the end user experience (though debatable; mobile advances are seeing more technical games on mobiles - mobile gamers aren't content to stick with 2015 level mobile graphics forever) . In contrast, the end-point of video games, photoaccuracy, is a long way off still. A better phone or camera to what we have now won't make any real difference, whereas a console or platform that can create games like reality will.It isn't just graphics, though. Simulation has a long way to go as well. Hardware advances may not offer immediate graphical improvements, but could offer improvements to gameplay that can't be seen in screenshots. And there is always the promise that the power of the cloud enabling games that could never have been achieved otherwise.
This, we are between 20-40 years away from this. We need to eventually have mobile devices that can hit photorealism and we dont even yet have home consoles that can do this. There's still a long way to go that requires advancements in materials, process nodes, architectural paradigms, software stacks tools and AI,etc.Except there is, because we can move to a different model.
Perhaps, but as the market and tech changes, it increases the possibility of it finally happening. VR is going to go large at some point, but not while headsets are cumbersome. If the tech becomes like sunglasses and affordable, it'll get a different lease of life versus what we've seen since the 90s.
