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Listen to the analysts and people who are supposed to be in the know for any amount of time, and you’ll nearly drown in the doomsday speculation and writing on the fictional walls; the games console is going the way of the dodo! Gone will be the console, left will only be the PC. And by PC I mean traditional desktop and laptop, tablet computer and smartphone.

I’ll give you that the video games market is indeed changing, compared to only some 6 years ago. This, however, doesn’t mean that the games console is dead and buried any time soon.

It’s not even a far stretch of the imagination when you look at actual sales numbers. Sure, new consoles like the WiiU has yet to truly take off in many markets, but that’s hardly a serious indication that the whole concept is tanking. Look at what is actually selling well, not just in one country, but on a global scale. Millions of units sold and in active use daily is hardly my definition of something that’s dying and going away.

How many older game consoles are still around? The Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 are very much still going strong, and any replacement for either is still a bit into the future. Trust me on that one, by the way, there will be new consoles from both Microsoft and Sony. Neither company is going to walk away from that revenue stream any time soon. Take the venerable Nintendo, still going strong with their vision of building dedicated gaming hardware in both portable and home console form. They’re not letting go of their hardware business any time soon!

Heck, in all this nonsense even the mighty Apple and Valve are said to be moving towards making their own dedicated games consoles. I don’t think that Apple is, but I can definitely see Valve moving towards a console of their own.

Why those who play games on tablets and smartphones can impossibly own and play on a “proper” games consoles is a complete mystery to me, and I would love for the analysts to explain it to me. I really don’t see why you couldn’t enjoy both of those worlds, why playing games on one would be mutually exclusive and blocking you off from the other. But analysts aren’t exactly known for their strong sense of logic.

“There can be only one” might work well in the world of Highlander, but works extremely poorly in real life. There are too many different wills and desires in the world, and all humans are individuals. General purpose machines can impossibly cover every conceivable use case and scenario, whereas a dedicated games console can cover many more in their specific area. Being unable to see this and still collecting a paycheck as an analyst, honestly frightens me.

But hey, even hax need to eat, right?

Robert Falck

Robert is a freelance tech writer from Sweden. You can follow his posts here on the British Tech Network, listen to him yap away on the British Tech iOS Show and read even more of his stuff on his site streakmachine.com or you can even follow him on twitter @streakmachine or app.net @streakmachine. (But you won't find him on Facebook!)

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Robert Falck

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