Industry Heavyweights Say the Future of Gaming Is Console-less
If you were to mute the seizure-inducing throb of the Electronic Entertainment Expo and distill the crowd, what you’d have left is the Los Angeles Games Conference, an annual trade show that is put on by tech publisher Digital Media Wire and the Consumer Electronics Association.
The two-day event was held in Beverly Hills, Calif., and heavyweights from Sony, Electronic Arts and dozens of other companies that operate within and around the gaming space met with industry analysts for serious powwow about payment models, digital distribution and social media. The latter was the dominant topic in many of the panels—notably discussing Facebook as a gaming platform.
A trio of analysts prefaced the conference with a trend report. Each drew interesting points including a prediction of death for game consoles like the Xbox and PlayStation. Like in the music industry, the digital delivery of games and online play is expected to eventually overtake the sales of physical products.