An exclusive gaming industry community targeted
to, and designed for Professionals, Businesses
and Students in the sectors and industries
of Gaming, New Media and the Web, all closely
related with it's Business and Industry.
A Rich content driven service including articles,
contributed discussion, news, reviews, networking, downloads,
and debate.
We strive to cater for cultural influencers,
technology decision makers, early adopters and business leaders in the gaming industry.
A medium to share your or contribute your ideas,
experiences, questions and point of view or network
with other colleagues here at iVirtua Community.
Former Vice President of Xbox EuropeSandy Duncan has cast his doubts on the long term future of the consolemarket, claiming consoles as we know them will die out with a decade.
Speaking in an interview,he said: "There is a definite convergence of other devices, such as settop boxes. There's hardly any technology difference between some harddisc video recorders and an Xbox 360, for example.
"In factin 5 to 10 years I don't think you'll have any box at all under yourTV, most of this stuff will be virtualized as web services by yourcontent provider."
We think he means you'll stream data from aserver or PC straight to your telly, so technically they'll still be abox involved somewhere - it just won't be a console as we know it.
Whilst Duncan has a vested interest seeing digital distributionchannels open up (he now runs a casual games company), his commentsmatch those of Analyst Billy Pidgeon, who earlier on in the weekdebated whether the PlayStation 3 would be the last console we'd ever see.
Which, if nothing else, would validate Sony's claim that the PlayStation 3 would have a lifecycle of at least ten years.