Shigeru Miyamoto: Games will still be fun without streaming

Any time I hear about some new corporate-backed "standard" in gaming (i.e. "Get ready, this is the future of gaming, what you have now will be a thing of the past," etc.), I view it like various religious heralds of the apocalypse: It's always coming. It's always here. Get ready! VR will be the thing! Digital purchases will be the norm! Motion controls! Cartridges are dead! 3D glasses! It's here!

Even if everything just started going horribly right for the game streaming market, it'd still be decades before it overtook physical games (and consoles) to the point of endangerment of the latter. I mean, look at how long video streaming has been a thing; almost everyone has some type of readily-available streaming service, even if it's just YouTube, and there's still a massive demand for Blu-ray and DVD. Heck, some people even still successfully collect VHS, Betamax, and laser discs.

Same with digital purchases: People thought a decade ago that we'd be entirely on digital-only platforms and 100% leashed by DRM. It is a big deal and has certainly hurt some of the physical gaming market to a degree, but physical games are still a huge thing years later with no sign of extinction on the horizon.

My point is game streaming has been "coming" forever but never really arrived, and even when it does arrive, it's just going to be another market alongside current games. Every time some corporate-prophesied standard is announced people panic and assume the current golden age of gaming is at an end, but honestly only two things ever happen:

  1. Great New Thing™ catches on and is accepted alongside standard practice, or
  2. Great New Thing™ fizzles out after a year, and is tried again a couple years down the road.
/r/NintendoSwitch Thread Parent Link - gamesindustry.biz